Musings of Two Creative Minds

To celebrate my first novel "The Bridge" being #44 on Smashwords Horror Bestseller list of books over 100K words, I'm taking 50% off the price.  It's now available there for $1.50 for this weekend.  So take advantage of it while you can.  There's 15 reviews on this page so you can get a good idea of what others have been saying about this strange blend of paranormal mystery and science fiction. Remember: Smashwords offers this book in the following e-reader formats:  Apple, Sony, Nook, Kindle, Kobo, EPUB, PDF (for regular laptops and desktop computers), and others. Oh, and if you're one of those people who already bought a copy and loved it, please help spread the word of this special promotion.  Thanks so much and have a great weekend everybody. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/272613

Well gang,here it is.  I finally finished the cover for my debut novel this afternoon.  It took some doing but I finished it finally.  With my tight budget and the fact that I'm an artist in my own right, it only made sense to do the cover myself.  I've already got about a 1/4 of the novel formatted.  I'm using Createspace.  I'll do another entry on what went into the formatting and why I made the choices I did.  I hope to post that one in a day or so.  I want to focus on finishing the formatting and getting the whole thing together before New Year's Eve if possible.   In the meantime, any comments on the book cover would be welcome.

As you probably already saw in my previous entry I've been working on the book cover for my Paranormal/Mystery/Sci-Fi novel "THE BRIDGE".   It's been an interesting experience.  I do not recommend it for everyone unless you're an artist yourself.  I'm loving it because I have way more control over the creation of the image that is going to basically be my "Introductory Handshake" to the world.  I've seen images used on books that I thought were interesting but did not always have all that much to do with what actually happened inside the story.  There were some with a scene displayed on the cover that never appeared, even remotely in the story and I always found that a bit frustrating.  I know we all want to capture the audiences imagination and interest, but I want to make sure I'm being fair about it.   Now given that the title of my novel is "THE BRIDGE" I could've just gone with a bridge from around the right time-frame...

This is a rough vine charcoal sketch/design  I came up with for the cover of my first novel "THE BRIDGE".  I'm not happy with the top half so I'm going to have another go and put in a figure of a woman with incredibly long flowing hair standing in the middle of the bridge.  Like in this image, her hair will stretch down to ground and further down the stonework to create the the words of the title.  A dark stormy sky will be her backdrop.  The other words will be put in during editing of the image.  I am planning on soft pastel or an Ink/Watercolor combination to bring color into the final image. All that is seen in the image actually takes place in the book itself.  I like to be honest with my readers and give them a hint of what they will find between the covers.

I added a new installment on my Vlog about writing.  Here's the video from my YouTube channel  "AllanTheAuthor".  This particular video is all about animals and how they can affect your writing.  Whether it be giving you ideas, or being used as plot points to help move a story along, or even finding out the animal has a story of its own. I hope you all enjoy it and if you feel like it check out my other writing videos on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/akrummenacker?feature=guide

As part of my college studies, I took a class on Creative Writing this semester.  I've had some really good exercises to work on during the course, some of which I'll share with you all in time.  But what I wrote today just surprised even me and I thought I'd share it with you all and hopefully give you a  little laugh.  It's a very short story mind you and was done quickly so please excuse any grammatical or lack of serious detail.  I was following the guidelines of keeping it short.  Now the exercise was to write a short scene where a person has an audition/interview to go to.  And several things have to happen: someone unexpected shows up, a routine is disrupted, irrational behavior or thoughts occur, there are negative and positive actions, and finally a terrible thing to happen occurs.  So now I give you my effort at this exercise:             Jane couldn’t believe it, the call ha...

Just posted another snippet from my Horror/Mystery novel "THE SHIP".  This is my 2nd novel and is still underway.  I hope to have a completed 1st draft by the end of next month at the latest.  If you'd like to check it out here's the link... New post from my 2nd novel "The Ship" on my Wordpress blog http://akrummenacker.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/new-scene-from-my-paranormalhorrormystery-novel-the-ship/

     Today I want to discuss a setting and also a plot device I'm using.  Above you see the remains of a concrete ship.  Yes, you read correctly a ship partly made from concrete.  This vessel is the S. S. Palo Alto, built to serve in WWI when steel and metal supplies were becoming scarce.  She was part of a fleet of 12 experimental vessels.  Unfortunately, she was completed in 1919 after the war was over and made her only self-powered voyage to the San Francisco Bay Area.  There she sat for 10 years and was eventually purchased by an entertainment company and towed to Seacliff near Santa Cruz.  Once she came here, she was refitted and turned into an entertainment showcase.  An arcade, fine dining, a bar, even a pool was built inside of her to the pleasures of her many visitors.  The middle photo above is a model replica of her in those glory days when she was known as "The Amusement Ship".  Unfortunately, two ye...

     I took these photos at the Long Marine Lab located on the campus of the University of Santa Cruz.  All of them are of a young Gray Whale skeleton that is 25 feet long and is obviously outdoors.  The creature has been put up on metal pipes to keep it off the ground and give it that more caught in the moment feel.  As you can see in photo #3 it has been placed next to a path and a mere 20-30 feet from a fence that allows visitors to look over a cliff and out at the ocean.  The view there is breathtaking and can really inspire a person's imagination.      In my case it inspired a terrifying scene for my second novel where a young female reporter has been snooping into matters regarding  Cassandra Elliott (billionaire heiress) and her lover Julie DeLuca-Cloudfoot (shamaness and internet erotic lesbian wrestler) my two leading characters for this novel.   They have been stalked by a strange figure wearing clothing...

Hang in there everyone, I haven't forgotten this blog.  I've just been really short on time due to college.  I have one more full week of classes coming up and then it's FINALS WEEK!!!!  So I have to prepare for those as well.  After all is said and done and I've had a few days to catch my breath I'll be posting here with more tips and insights on writing.  So stay tuned. In the meantime, please check out the other blog where I've posted a sample from my comedy/fantasy novel about the Devil's other son Clausmodeus.  Enjoy... http://akrummenacker.wordpress.com/

Survived three major exams this last week.  Got a mid-term coming up in two more weeks and will be starting to study for that one in the next few days.  Hopefully, I can do a proper entry here soon, I hate neglecting everyone.  I've got a lot to say about writing sequels and the difficulties I'm encountering. In the meantime please enjoy this link to another section of my first novel "The Bridge".  Have a great weekend and keep writing everyone. http://akrummenacker.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/still-more-from-my-novel-the-bridge/

College has been keeping me pretty busy so I haven't had as much time to post  anything about writing here.  I hope to do so soon, after this weekend specifically.  I've got 3 tests coming up next week, 2 on Monday and 1on Thursday, plus an on-line exam for the weekend.  Whew! In the meantime I've posted another piece from my horror/sci-fi/mystery novel at my other blog.  Hope you enjoy it gang.   Keep writing. http://akrummenacker.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/the-bridge-another-section-that-brings-us-full-circle-gang/

Just a quick post here.  I put up the link where you can read another scene from my horror/mystery/sci-fi novel "The Bridge".  I'll be posting here about writing again soon.  I'm using the other blog mostly to post samples of my works, both completed and still in progress.  I hope you get a chance to check them about.  Have a great weekend everyone.

I have a Writer's Page on  Facebook, where I post whatever progress I made on my writing.  So the other day I looked at several of my recent entries where I talk about how much progress I was making.  I was counting how many words per day I had written and this sounded really good.  But when I went back to the novel itself it felt like I hadn't made a lot of progress after all.  This puzzled me exceedingly so I started to think about it.  As I did so my eyes focused on the novel in progress and I spotted several areas where I needed to fix a problem.  That's when I had a "Light Bulb Moment", I was editing while I was still creating the first draft.  Not a bad thing in and of itself, but I had been doing this almost constantly.  Each day I'd go back to see what I had done when I left off in order to recapture the mood and the moment and I wound up doing bunch of 'repairs' before moving on.  Now don't get me wrong, it's important to make...

I posted another section of my novel "The Bridge" at my WordPress Blog.  You can check it out by clicking on this link: http://akrummenacker.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/another-installment-from-my-novel-the-bridge/ Hope you all enjoy it.  I'll be posting a new blog entry here shortly.  Stay tuned.

I'd like to write, but I don't know what to write about. Sound familiar?  When people talk to me about what I'm trying to do, I hear that same refrain over and over.  And I know where they're coming from.  I only decided to try my hand at writing about two years ago.  Why didn't I do it sooner?  Because I had nothing but fan-fic ideas.  Inserting myself or my friends into situations involving established well known characters like Dr. Who, Harry Potter, etc. Although my friends and I were involved, we'd just get to lend a hand and interact with these beloved characters who were still the star of the stories.  Or I'd create an original character/being who, happened to cross paths with The Doctor.  My creation was not superior to him, but they got to work together and went their separate ways.  This was fun because I was involved in fan clubs with their own newsletters where these tales would be published.  So I had both an outlet and a...