Markhat Unmasked!

Stand well back, gentle readers.

Stand back and brace yourselves, for the next image you will see is an artist's rendition of Markhat, Rannit's most (in)famous finder-for-hire.

Both of these amazing pieces of hand-drawn art were created by artist Raevyn Tws (his Facebook page is here). Both were drawn without the use of computer assistance of any kind, a feat which still leaves me awestruck.

The artist (who, it must be noted, rocks) captured Markhat delivering one of his smart-aleck one-liners. Maybe Markhat is mocking some mystical pronouncement by Mama Hog. Maybe he is chiding Evis for putting out the cheap beer. Or perhaps Markhat is tweaking some gangster's nose, hoping to goad him into doing something unwise.

Whatever the conversation, this is Markhat, brought to you by a man with an amazing talent and a skill perfected over years of dedicated attention to his craft. I give you Markhat, Engaged in Inadvisable Witticism!

Feast your eyes, friends. Favor the fantastic. Eagerly enjoy the enlightened effort. I love this image.

Obviously, this is post-Darla Markhat, because his suit is neat and pressed, his tie is on straight, and that's not Jed Clampett's battered old hat. No, this is Markhat at his best -- clean, sober, and not afraid for people to know it.

If I had to pick a scene to go with this image, I think I'd choose the time in The Broken Bell when Markhat bluffs his way into the Lethway mansion and winds up in an upstairs kitchen, eating with the domestic staff as he pretends to be a mining consultant. Now, the full extent of Markhat's knowledge of mining is that the practice seems to involve holes in the ground, but that doesn't stop him from delivering a long, detailed explanation of something he calls a Morris mining ram, which he makes up on the spot.

It works. The staff accepts him as just another tradesman, and he's able to glean a few important clues during his brief stay at the house.

That's Markhat, in a nutshell. He doesn't know anything about mining, but he understands people and how they work quite well indeed. Become the long-winded gasbag of a Morris ram salesman, and you'll be ignored. Avoided, even. Free to nose about.

As Markhat notes, more than once, his profession has risks, but at least it doesn't involve the rigors of honest work.

Look at that image again. That's exactly what the piece conveys -- a man not just pulling the wool over someone's eyes, but tugging their ears and tweaking their noses as he pulls.

Next we have Markhat in full standing profile, in a piece I like to call Markhat Redistributes Wealth:

Here we see an immaculately-dressed Markhat plying his trade in a swank dining club. Now, Markhat is not exactly a regular patron of any of Rannit's swank dining clubs, although, he asks me to add, 'he has been forcibly ejected from all the best ones.' But since many of his cases involve Rannit's wealthy plutocrats, Markhat finds himself inside the refined eateries and bars frequently. Here, Markhat is pointing out his dining companion to a suspicious headwaiter. Note Markhat's left hand, which is reaching into his pocket for the pair of Old Kingdom gold crowns he will accidentally press into the headwaiter's hand, which will in turn cause the headwaiter to conveniently look away long enough for Markhat to seat himself despite his lifetime banning from the somewhat stodgy establishment.

Now that's what I call art. I can see the stories in these pictures. And if you think I said to Raevyn 'I want one sitting smirk with a finger upraised and one standing while bribing a waiter in a fancy night club,' you'd be dead wrong. The man came up with these on his own.

I hope you ladies and gentlemen have enjoyed these two pieces as much as I have. I'm going to have both printed and framed and hung on my study wall.

I believe the artist would get a HUGE kick out of hearing how much you like these, too. You can email me and I'll forward your comments, or you can browse on over to Raevyn's FB page at http://www.facebook.com/raevyn.tws and tell him yourself. Honestly, the man is a walking miracle -- who else does portraits like these in magic marker?

So thank you, Raevyn Tws, for bringing a character I've been writing about for years to life.  I will treasure these images forever!

Markhat Revealed, Part Two

Last week, I posed a question to you, my vast army of loyal readers. The question was this -- what actors should be chosen to portray Markhat and Darla in the rumored movie adaptation of The Broken Bell?

Yes, there is a rumor that The Broken Bell is under consideration by several top Hollywood film producers. I know, because I just started the rumor. Do your part and help spread it! Remember, loose lips sink ships. I know that's not entirely applicable in this instance, but I like saying it fast.

Your responses were swift and insightful. I'm going to list them all below, and each will be linked to a Wikipedia photo of the actor or actress named, so if you don't know the face, click and it shall be shown unto you. I won't send you to any long-loading movie or unsavory fan sites, so click without worry or undue apprehension.

Markhat:

Todd Lowe  Currently starring in HBO's True Blood. He looks tough, and a bit haunted.

Joe Manganiello - You've seen him in ER and Spiderman (the 2002 release). He could do Markhat perfectly.

Michael McMillian - He's got a younger everyman quality I like too.

Richard Armitage - May be my favorite Markhat suggestion thus far. Good-looking but can carry a smirk.


Darla:

Winona Ryder - You know Wynona! A great choice for Darla.

Ashley Judd - I admit I never thought of Ashley Judd as Darla, but now that I do think about it, yes, she could pull it off.

Sandra Bullock - Wow. Sandra Bullock would make a wonderful Darla. Her eyes and hair are perfect.

Lacey Chabert - A fellow Mississippian, born in the little town of Purvis, not far from here. She's had many roles in live-action and as a voice actress in numerous animated films as well.

Essie Davis - Australian actress with big eyes. Blonde, but hair dye technology improves every day!

Putting aside for a moment my own idea that actor Timothy Hutton should portray Markhat, I think my favorite pairing for from the lists above comes down to this --

INSERT DRUMROLL HERE

Richard Armitage as Markhat, and Winona Ryder as Darla!

We also have a suggestion for the actress best suited to play Mama Hog. Phyllis Diller would have been perfect for the role, yes, but as she is sadly passed, Cloris Leachman would be wonderful for the role. Especially shrunk down digitally, as were the actors who portrayed the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings.

I know, I know, most of you hate that pairing. But take it up with Universal Studios; they are the ones rumored to be doing the rumored casting. I have nothing to do with it. Complain to them, in writing, and remember to send thousands of registered letters each day for at least a month.

Let me offer a very special thanks to everyone who suggested a name. That would be Maria and JWB and Merrian and Kellie and April!

I'll make sure your monickers show up in a later book, so watch for them.

Now for the big news -- in next Sunday's entry, I hope to release, for the first time anywhere, a pair of absolutely brilliant hand-drawn portrayals of Markhat, done by a real artist. No computer enhancements, either -- he does all his work strictly by hand, with pens, on paper.

I've seen the sketches already, and I'm floored. You will be too, so stop back by next Sunday!

Markhat Revealed!

People are always asking me questions. Usually these questions are "Why aren't you wearing pants?" or "Is that your car up there in the tree?"

First of all, I am seldom without trousers. And second, most of these voices are in my head, and most of the time they just want me to panic so they can laugh and say 'Made you look!'

And yes, I have suffered numerous concussions. But that's really beside the point.

Lately, though, I have been asked more than once how I picture my fictional detective Markhat when I'm writing him.

That's easy. Markhat sprang to life with his face complete, and now, for the first time anywhere, I reveal it here, to you:

Yep. My fictional detective Markhat is a dead ringer for actor Timothy Hutton. Specifically, Timothy Hutton as he (brilliantly) portrayed fictional detective Archie Goodwin in A&E's 'Nero Wolfe' TV series.

Strange how these things work out, isn't it?

Here's another shot, of Markhat loitering with two women who are not Darla:

Speaking of Darla, I have an image in my head of her too. But I've not been able to match it exactly with anyone I can name. Darla is tall, slender, brown-eyed, black-haired, and just a touch pale. She wears her hair in a bob cut reminiscent of a Roaring Twenties flapper. She tends to be a conservative dresser, but favors purples and browns and umbers. She might wear a pillbox hat with a tiny bit of veil on it.

Any ideas?

Gina Bellman has been suggested. She works with Mr. Hutton now, on the TNT's show Leverage (which I love). She has a great look, and I think she'd be a wonderful Darla, given the right hairstyle. Here she is, below:

Darla is smart, brave, and nobody's shrinking violet. Bellman certainly has the look!

What do you guys think? Tell you what. Reply in the comments section, or email me at  franktuttle@franktuttle.com with your picks for actors to portray Markhat and Darla. The winner gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the set of the Markhat motion picture, OR I name a character after them in the new Markhat book, whichever event takes place first (I leave it to your judgment to determine the likelihood of that particular scenario).

So Timothy Hutton and Gina Bellman are taken. Who else should play Markhat and Darla? Contest starts...NOW! And runs until next Sunday, when I do another blog entry.


And for the benefit of anyone out there scratching their head and asking "Who is this Markhat character anyway?" I offer this, a complete listing of the Markhat books, in the order they are best read.

Dead Man's Rain

The Cadaver Client

The Mister Trophy

Hold the Dark

The Banshee's Walk

The Broken Bell

Don't have a Kindle? No worries, they're available in print too. Here's a link to all formats:

Frank's books on Amazon, including print!

So let's see who YOU think should play Markhat and Darla!

The Ghosts in the Camera

If you're a Lord of the Rings fan -- and I hope you are -- you've probably heard of the (in)famous parody of the epic series done by the Harvard Lampoon back in 1969.

The parody is called Bored of the Rings, and if you haven't read it yet, you should. Few books have moved me to laughter so many times. It's irreverent, crude, and often obscene, but as the polar opposite of the grandeur and dignity of the real Lord of the Rings it had to be.

Yes, I found the paperback, which appears to have been abducted by wolves, subjected to fires, and possibly passed between drunken tornadoes in the decades since '69.

But while looking, I found something else.

That, my friends, is a very old camera.

It was owned my my maternal grandfather, Harold Gean. Grandpaw Gean (hey, this is Mississippi, no one says 'grandfather' unless they're talking about a clock) was what we'd probably call a hoarder today. He got things. He kept things.

When he died, I wound up with this camera. I put it away, in a drawer, because I didn't want to sell it, and I've always had a fascination for anything optical.

Fast-forward through a few decades, to today. I found a sealed bag, vaguely remembered what was inside, and pulled it out.

A little research with my friend Google revealed this to be a German-made Agfa PB-20, probably manufactured in 1934. It used 120 mm film that came in a 9 exposure roll. It's a far cry from the whiz-bang zip-zap digital rigs of today. The photographer did all the work -- set the F-stop, set the focus, lined up the image with the twin pop-up framing sights. Checked his own lighting, heck, probably kicked wolves and badgers out of the way while he did all that. It was 1935. Rough and tumble was the order of the day.

Black and white film only, of course. Color for the average Joe was still a World War and a few years away. The Agfa PB-20 was a pretty popular camera, even though it cost a whopping seven bucks and change. And it took great photographs, too.

Granted, this particular specimen has seen better days. The leather is cracked and decaying. The bellows still expand and contract, but I doubt they're still light-tight. The lenses need a good cleaning. I think the shutter still works, but it needs a lot of TLC and some carefully-applied lubricant.

On the whole, though, the Agfa is in decent shape. The mechanics are still basically sound. Turns out the differences between the 1934 Agfa and my 1967 Pentax K1000 aren't that vast. Just for fun, I tried rewinding the film, sure the old camera was empty.

I felt resistance. Felt movement inside.

That's right -- it felt like there was a roll of Kodak Verichrome 120 mm B&W film still inside the camera. 

I completed the rewind process, telling myself the whole time I was just feeling eight decades of grime and decay acting against the rewind wheel, and nothing else. No need to get my hopes up. Even if there was film inside, what are the odds it might still be viable after all this time?

Still, I very carefully rewound it, and after a few more minutes on Google, I opened the Agfar for the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt was President.

And there it was -- a roll of Kodak Verichrome, just like the Web predicted. Largely intact.

For all I know, it was last used to take photos sometime between the Great Depression and World War II.

Photos of people who might well be my grandparents or other relatives.

From seventy years ago.

The reality is that the film is probably so degraded it can't be developed at all. Or that if it can, I get five images of old shoes or blurry thumbs.

But what if, against all odds, a few snapshots of a long-gone place and time are preserved therein?

I put the film roll in a light-tight bag. I'm checking around now, to see if anyone I know has any darkroom equipment. If I ever do wind up with images, believe me, I'll post them here.

But even if I don't, for a moment I felt a unique connection with the man who loaded film in the Agfar, so many years ago. I'm sure he meant to have the photos developed. I'm sure he had no idea, no idea whatsoever, that his grandson would be posting pictures of the camera on something called the Net and talking about him in something called a blog. The words themselves would have held little or no meaning to him.

But the pictures, if they have survived, will transcend all that time, all those years. Even if I don't recognize any of the faces. We'll be looking at each other, through this tiny lens, across a gulf of years.

So maybe this weatherbeaten old camera served its purpose after all, seventy plus years after its day.

UPDATE!

It's the University of Mississippi Art Department to the rescue! An intrepid art instructor who specializes in photography has graciously agreed to take a stab at developing the film. I should know whether there are images there by the first of next week! Thanks Ashley! Will of course post an update then.

Out on the Patio Number Four!

You ever have one of those days?

Sure you have. Every cord you try to move is tangled. Every battery you try to use is dead. Every door you approach while bearing an armful of delicate items is inexplicably and implacably locked.

If you reach for a glass, it breaks. If you race through the house, barking more shins than any biped actually possesses to reach a ringing phone, it goes dead as soon as you pick it up, and it was a wrong number anyway.

I'm having one of those days.

It all started innocently enough. It's Sunday, and I always blog on Sundays. Today I decided to include an audio segment -- and that's when the Chaos Demons came out to play.

First, I took all my audio gear out on the patio. Laptop. Microphone. Pop filter. Cables. Book to read from. Frosty beverage with which to refresh myself. Handy multi-tool with which to open aforementioned frosty beverage.

I set everything up. Windows insisted on some sort of upgrade before loading. Clouds gathered, threatening a shower, while Windows loaded my netbook's tiny processor down with a few million no doubt urgent operations.

I kept an anxious eye on the weather. Meanwhile, Thor saw a book he hadn't read, and made off with my print copy of THE BANSHEE'S WALK. I took off in pursuit, the other dogs joined in the game, and we had a merry romp in the backyard while my poor copy of BANSHEE went from excellent to extremely dogged condition.

I get back to the makeshift recording studio, damp, bedraggled book in hand. I sit down, I start to speak, and the netbook's power light begins to flash, while the ominous Battery is low, connect to AC adapter message appears.

I just charged the blinkin' battery. But hey, arguing with electronics does no good, so I dart inside the study, grab the netbook's AC thingy, and race back out to the patio, arriving just in time to see the netbook shut itself down.

Yay. I run an extension cord out there, hook the netbook back up, wait while it boots. I observe the dogs at carefree play. I look down, and realize my pop filter is missing.

Yes, the dogs are at carefree play with my handmade microphone pop filter.

I make a lot of my own gear. The pop filter is just some weird steel foot-thing from who knows where, some steel pipe clamps, part of an industrial air filter, and some acoustic foam. You could probably drop it out of an airplane and pick it up and use it -- but four dogs? Four happy carefree big dogs?

Once again, hilarity ensues. The pop filter, which is pretty much made of steel, survives (the foam pop filter itself is sandwiched between two sheets of steel mesh). I turn my ankle chasing the dogs, but it's not a bad turn so I soldier on.

Finally, I start recording. You won't hear the segment in which I manage to overturn my frosty beverage nearly on top of my decidedly not-waterproof netbook, because neither I nor the dogs approve of that sort of language. The netbook survives, by the way. Barely.

The dogs decide to insist on air time of their own by holding the Annual Yocona Mississippi Loud Barking For No Apparent Reason Finals two meters from my mic. Finally, I finish, and head back inside, dropping everything at least once.

Once back in the study, I check the audio file before transferring it from my netbook to this big rig. Here's what the audio filed sounded like:

PPPPHT.

That's right. One brief raspberry.

I checked the filename, the filesize, the date, the whole bit. It simply would not play.

Okay. This has happened before. Sometimes big files just throw the netbook into a funk. It's an Atom processor trying to choke down twelve minutes of uncompressed audio, right? Can't blame it for choking. So I move the audio files to my big machine, and voila! It works.

Well, half of it works. Right about the time I start reading from my Thor-savaged book, the file simply ends, and no amount of coaxing can restore it.

So I bite my tongue and decide to finish the Out on the Patio segment right here, behind my desk.

I go to shut off the big fan that sits behind me and blows on my back. When I do that, I manage to knock a book over on Lou Ann. This startles her, and she jumps, and I step back, and I twist the ankle I just twisted again, achieving the rare double-twisted torture joint score.

So it's been one of those days.

But the audio is out there! Here it is, the latest installment of Out on the Patio!

New Out on the Patio!

The Dog Days of Pear Summer

Today's blog entry is brought to you by dogs. And pears. And maybe a cloud or two.

But we'll start with Lou Ann, who is neither pear nor cloud, but all dog and proud of it.

That's Lou -- Lou Ann Tuttle, in full. She came to us from a shelter in Olive Branch, Mississippi four years ago, I think it was. I just took this picture, out on the patio.

Lou is part Shepherd and all Alpha Female. She's even got Thor under control, and Thor is easily twice her size. Maybe three times. But when Lou Ann lifts those ears and gives him that look, Thor sort of nods and accedes. Which is good, because (don't tell him I said this) Lou Ann is far more suited to be pack leader than Thor, who is still in goofy-puppy mode.

It's still hard for me to understand why someone put Lou in a shelter. Her time (and her number) were nearly up when we got her. She's a loving, well-behaved dog who is genuinely eager to please. Yeah, she's not a full-blooded anything, but for that matter, neither am I.

Next up in the non-sequitur parade are pears. Specifically, the pears produced by a scraggly five-dollar pear tree I bought on a whim at a big-box store years ago. It was a little more than chest high, hardly more than a weed, really. But now it is a pear-producing machine, people. Seriously. There are hundreds of not particularly beautiful but certainly very tasty pears hanging from this determined little tree right now. Here's a shot of just one branch:

Yes, I was after a pear when I took the photo of Lou Ann. Do I always take my camera when I go outside for a pear?

Yes, because if Bigfoot is at the tree again I want proof. 

Finally, a cloud. Or a bunch of clouds, doesn't matter, just take a good look at this, and tell me what you see!

I see a dog, running. Playing. Happy.

That was the cloud, over the pear tree, being watched by Lou Ann.

What does any of that mean?

Everything. Nothing. Sometimes a dog is just a dog, and a cloud is just a cloud.

And sometimes they're all a part of something far bigger.

I suppose that's up to you to decide.

Me, I'm going to eat a pear and rub Lou Ann's head and watch that dog romp across the sky.

Art For Each of Your 29 Eyes

I've been on an art spree for the last couple of weeks.

Maybe it's because I've gotten hooked on a couple of comics -- er, graphic novels. That's one huge advantage the Kindle Fire has over the e-ink models; I can download and read graphic novels that I just cannot find anywhere in Oxford.

Naturally, I've enjoyed The Walking Dead series, as well as a few other works. Sure, I still love books, but seeing characters come to life on the page as art is a pleasure all its own.

I even took a stab at designing my own cover. The result, which I'm still proud of, is below:

One characters I've wanted to see an image of for a long time is Mug. Mug, as you may know, is a character from my YA fantasy series (which includes the novel All the Paths of Shadow and the novella Saving the Sammi). Mug isn't a human, or even a biped. He is a snarky, sarcastic enchanted houseplant with 29 mobile eyes and a dead-seated fear of aphids.

Even armed with a modest array of powerful graphics manipulation programs, my attempts to create a passable image of Mug were, shall we say less than successful. Less than successful as in so embarrassing I won't post them here.

So I shelved the 'Let's draw Mug!' project. Sure, I could hire an artist, but I'm on a tight budget, and the derisive laughter of artists is hurtful.

As it happens, though, I did find an artist who I could afford. Her name is Laura LaRoche, and she works with an outfit called Hercules Editing and Consulting. Hercules did my book trailer last week, and when I mentioned I'd always wanted to see Mug, Laura agreed to take on the project.

So, I am happy to present to you, for the first time anywhere, Mugglesworth Verity Ovis, Tirlin's foremost authority on theoretical mathematics and problematic beetles:

I know. Ms LaRoche did a fantastic job. That's Mug, single yellow eye, five red eyes, assorted other hues looking on, bemused by all the attention.

That's not the only image of Mug, either. I've added a new area to my webpage, which contains a variety of images (Mug and others) which I've resized and made available as posters and downloadable desktop images.

They're all free. You can grab any or all of them, and use them as you wish. I am particularly fond of the posters.

So head on over to my new art gallery page and take anything you like! Here are a few small samples...

Like I said, all free, just click and save! Oh, and if anyone wants a desktop sized for a particular screen, just email me the dimensions and I'll cobble one together for you.

New Mug & Meralda novella! Book trailer release! Dancing elephants! S'mores!

It's a busy day today here at Casa Tuttle!

In just a few sentences, I'm going to announce the publication of a new Mug and Meralda novella. And I'm going to put up a link to the book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. I'll even talk a bit about the new novel now in progress.

But first, a few words of thanks.

No matter how careful I am, typos rceep in two everY man-ewe-screept. And no number of thorough editing passes ever quite catches them all. In fact, I hereby propose a new Law of the Universe, which shall hereafter be known as Tuttle's Truthful Ratio of Typos to Effort, expressed thusly:

The number of undetected typographical errors in any manuscript is equal to the number of editing passes plus 1. Or maybe plus 3, or 6, or 16, depending on how ornery the Universe is feeling on any given day. 

In simpler terms, I suppose one could say of typos 'You never correct them all.'

Which is where beta readers come in. The purpose of a beta reader is threefold. The beta reader sees the complete and uncensored ineptitude of a writer, takes steps to point out the writer's errors, and then keeps this dreadful knowledge a secret, lest the writer be revealed for the quasi-literate poser they are.

So many thanks to my faithful beta reader Kellie, and now her husband Stephon and daughter Ava, who helped stamp out the scourge of missing letters and doubled quotation marks (and that is all I will admit to).

So, without further ado, I present to you the world premiere of the new Mug and Meralda novella, Saving the Sammi!

You can pick it up now at Amazon for a mere buck and a half. I'm working on a Nook version, and should have that ready later this week. I will of course let you know!

I enjoyed writing Saving the Sammi. Without giving away too much, it's a very straightforward adventure story, involving the rescue of the family trapped aboard a storm-stricken airship trapped in a deadly ascent. Market testing even among eight-year-olds (okay, a market of one, but still) placed it just below Harry Potter and possibly even with Warrior Cats, which I consider high praise indeed. Adults will enjoy it too!

So go grab a copy. It's a quick read, and you'll never look at a rowboat quite the same way again.

Now, for book trailer news! That's right, I have a book trailer, which is to a book what those ads before the movie starts are to motion pictures. My book trailer is for All the Paths of Shadow, and it was created by the fine people at Hercules Editing and Consulting. I heard about Hercules through a fellow author (thanks Elyse!), who said they did excellent work at prices authors can afford.

The phrase 'at prices authors can afford' is understood to mean 'whatever loose change you can shake out of the couch,' so I did some checking, liked what I saw, and hired Hercules to produce a short book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. The result is lovely -- but hey, see for yourself!

Click here for the book trailer!

I love the trailer. So a huge thanks to Beth and Syd at Hercules!

I hope you enjoy Saving the Sammi and the book trailer for All the Paths of Shadow. Both represent a lot of work -- not so much by me on the book trailer, since my skills in that arena are limited to spelling the words 'book trailer,' but I know just enough to know putting it together wasn't easy. Writing Saving the Sammi was fun, and I learned a lot about airships and the early days of flight in the process. Mostly what I learned was you have to be a special kind of crazy to climb aboard a huge cloth envelope filled with hydrogen (the word hydrogen comes from the Greek hydro, which means 'wants to explode,' and gen, 'very very badly'). But climb aboard they did, usually while smoking big cigars, and for that, I salute them albeit from a safe distance.

So now it's time to get back to work on the new Meralda and Mug novel, All the Turns of Light. There may be another short story (or two, or three) released in the near future, depending on how work on the novel goes. Look for more airships in Turns of Light. Because darn it, I like airships.

I'd love to hear what any of you think about the story or the trailer! My email inbox is always open, so drop me a line at franktuttle@franktuttle.com.

A Book by Its Cover

If you've heard those rumors I started a couple of weeks ago, I'm here to tell you they are indeed true.

A new Meralda and Mug short will be out soon. Soon as in 'as soon as I can get it formatted, converted, uploaded, and out there.' It's written, so all it needs is the conversion into e-reader ready formats.

This one is a novella, which means it's about 11,000 words long. So it's not a full-blown novel. No, this is just a short piece as a sort of thank-you to the fans. Something to read and enjoy while I work on the next novel, which will be considerably longer than 11K.

Even novellas need covers, though. And since I've decided to just put this short piece out there myself, I'm acting as my own cover artist.

Now, given that I have the artistic skills of a mollusk, making a book cover represents quite a challenge. Let's face it -- you put a book out there with a lousy cover, and you might as well emblazon the words THIS BOOK BLOWS right below it, in flashing red letters.

I won't buy a book with an ugly or amateurish cover. Call me shallow, go ahead, but I figure if they can't make a good first impression with the art the words inside are even worse.

I suppose there have been a few times when I bought a book despite seeing what I thought was a lousy cover.  Thud, by the brilliant and infallible Terry Pratchett, leaps to mind. Here's the cover:

I hate that book cover. Love the book. But for reasons I can't even express, the cover absolutely makes my skin crawl, and that's no easy feat.

So, when I set out to design the cover for the new Meralda and Mug novella (still trying to decide if I'm going to reveal the title yet), I knew a couple of things I didn't want to do.

1) No depictions of clubs bearing the title of the work about to strike armed heads.

2) My name should probably not take up a fifth of the cover. Terry Pratchett can and should take up that much space. Frank Tuttle should not. Such is the way of the world..

With those points out of the way, I had to ask myself what elements I did want to include on the cover. Here's what I came up with:

1) Meralda. She's the heroine, so she needs to be the primary figure on the cover. 

2) Mug should probably be there two. Wait, did I really just write Mug as an enchanted houseplant with mobile, gripping vines and twenty-nine eyes of various colors? I did, didn't I? And now I'm supposed to draw that?

3) An airship. The story centers around the unlikely rescue of a stricken airship, so putting a dirigible-like craft up in the sky is a must.

4) The title, the author byline (that's me!), all that jazz.

So, armed with this list and the finest in modern drawing implements, I laid out my supplies, put some Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, naturally) on the turntable, and unleashed my Muse Artistic.

Minutes crept by. Hours. Then days. Victuals were brought to my garret, and hurled down in contempt, such was my fevered determination to bring forth Art.

I drew. I imagined. I erased, I crumpled, I despaired, I started anew. In a corner of the room, a passing wind blew the pages of a by-day calendar up and over. Calendar pages were ripped away, one at a time.  Seasons changed. My beard grew long, and housed a den of foxes.

In the end, I looked wearily down upon the hard-won fruits of my labor, and I cried out in a great voice, 'How much does Photoshop cost again?"

First, you'll notice two things about this image. One, I slipped and revealed the title of the new novella, which is Saving the Sammi.

Second, the cover really stinks. Although I think I really nailed the magical effluent around Meralda's wand. That is some Impressionist masterwork there, people. Each dot a masterpiece.

After long and careful consideration, I decided against drawing my own cover art. Which sent me scurrying back to the net, in hopes of finding legal, suitable images I could use.

It was the legal aspect of this I found most daunting, originally. I'm no Intellectual Property lawyer, but I know you can't just snag any old image that catches your eye and make your own book cover out of it. That would make me as bad a book pirate, and I hate those guys.

So I did a little research, and was glad to find a number of sites which sell royalty-free images that are licensed for use on book covers. And the prices aren't always the hundreds or thousands of dollars I was afraid of finding, either. Many were well within my budget.

The legal hurdle crossed, I settled on www.dreamstime.com and began my search for suitable cover images.

Now, I knew I wasn't going to find a ready-made image which depicted the scene I had in mind. But I have Corel Paint Shop Pro X4, which makes it easy to edit and combine multiple images and which offers a vast array of effects and graphics features. I've seen it called the 'poor man's Photoshop,' and at $75 I concur.

So what I was looking for turned out to be three images -- one of Meralda, one background image, and one of a steampunkish airship.

Searching on 'steampunk female' or the like inside Dreamstime pulled up a wealth of images. Some were drawn. Some were photos. Some were....

Well, let's just say that wardrobe malfunctions must be common among steampunk females. Not quite what I was looking for, since Meralda is adamant about remaining clothed. 

Finally, I found what I was looking for -- a young woman wearing flying goggles, black gloves, and a scarf. 

And she's got a smirk. I liked it, so into the cart it went. 

Now I needed a background. Something stormy and ominous. I found plenty of photos of storm-fronts, but they tended to include cityscapes, and modern-day Chicago doesn't really work for depicting steampunk Tirlin. 

But then I stumbled across this:

That had it all. Some clouds, an airship, a steampunk porthole and vintage maps.  

I was set.

All that remained was to resize and combine the two images. 

The optimum size for an Amazon catalog image is 1562 pixels wide by 2500 tall. So I resized my background -- no problem. Then I did a rough insert of Meralda, and quickly found she was facing the wrong way, which covered up the airship.

No big deal. Paint Shop let me mirror her, and also extract her from the dark background in her image. Then I resized her extracted image, over and over, until I found one that fit.

Then, just for fun, I added a title and a byline, and voila! A rough draft of a book cover, all done by a guy who has yet to manage stick figures on paper...

No, this isn't the final image. I'm still messing with a few things.  But I thought a few of you might be interested in a behind-the-scenes walkthrough  of how book covers are born here at Casa Tuttle.

Oh, and yeah, no Mug. I suppose the demand upon artists for depictions of many-eyed houseplants is still relatively small. I'd have drawn one myself, but -- you saw how that went.

So if you're a fan of All the Paths of Shadow, keep a lookout for the new Meralda & Mug novella, coming any day now. I'll announce it here, on Twitter, on Facebook, from my cell at the Lafayette County Detention Center, all my usual haunts.

And if you like the cover, now you know its story!

Snug Nugget Open for Business!

As a long-time resident (some would say nuisance) of the Amazon Kindle discussion boards, one of the complaints posted most frequently is that e-books cost too much.

I'm not one of the people posting these price complaints. E-books are almost always cheaper than their paper counterparts, and if they aren't, factors such as portability, accessibility, and zero-shelf-space more than make up for a few pennies in cost.

But if you do feel that e-books cost too much, I'm happy to announce you now have the chance to set your price! A new publishing venture opened this morning, which means when you buy from Snug Nugget, you pay whatever you feel is fair.

Better still, Snug Nugget sells e-books by the bundle, and a generous portion (nearly 15 percent) of each purchase price is donated to Book Aid International, which supports literacy, education, and development in sub-Saharan Africa.

So you get good books at a good price and you do good. Which is good. And a blatant over-use of the word 'good.'

If you're curious as to why I'm touting Snug Nugget's new business model and you decided Frank is enthused over this pay-as-you-want strategy because Frank is a forward-thinking philanthropist, well, I'm afraid you're dead wrong. Frank has a small role in this enterprise, in that the three Wistril stories included in Wistril Compleat are a part of the bundle.

So you get Wistril Besieged, Wistril Afloat, and Wistril Betrothed as part of the bundle.

The other four entries are novels in genres ranging from mystery to SF to fantasy, which allows you to visit the Mars of the future (Mankind's Worst Fear, by David L. Erickson), confront a saber-tooth cat on the loose in the present (Smilodon, by Alan Nayes), solve a mystery in Florence (Intrigue in Italics, by Gayle Wigglesworth), and visit an alternate Earth during a very different Renaissance (The Plight of Angels, by Ian Hodge).

All for the low, low price of whatever the heck you wish to pay.


So browse on over to snugnugget.com and grab a bunch of e-books. And remember a portion of the purchase price goes to some genuinely deserving people in a hard-hit part of Africa, so pat yourself on the back as you click that buy button.

http://www.snugnugget.com/