Expanding into Art

So, I've been taking an art class that has really expanded my artistic abilities.  It was a one day a week class that is 8 weeks long and ends tomorrow night.  

I will likely be re-doing the artwork for the next book that I published on my previous blog post.  I think I'll be sticking to pencils for a while before expanding back into acrylics etc.

Here's my last drawing for the class:

And the one from the week prior:

Here's what my faces looked like from the first class:

New Approaches

First, if you haven't read my post on how to best support your favorite independent author, do so now.  Then go support them as best you can.  I'll wait.

OK, thanks.  They'll appreciate it (BTW, the advice will also work for new/lesser known authors with mainstream publishers, too.

So what's happening in the writing world of T. Allan Bishop lately?  Well, the muse story stepped back and hasn't cried out for more to be written lately, so I have it set slightly aside.  The zombie story has reshaped itself, and I've written several sections for it over the past week.  It looks now like it'll be formed mostly of "newspaper articles," "police report" excerpts, "medical and lab report" excerpts, personal letters, etc.  I don't know if that will be just one section that talks about the outbreak and part II might change POV to be first or third person yet or not.  the story hasn't revealed details from that far ahead yet.  I do know that some of the personal notes will be from at least one zombie.  I know that this isn't the first time an approach like this has been used (Stephen King's Carrie comes to mind), but it's a new approach for me.

The Josef Mengele vampire story has been popping into my head a little lately, too.  So, it might just turn out that I start juggling stories based on which one is yelling at me the loudest that day.

I got tired of having to constantly reboot my phone, have apps stop responding, the previously awesome battery life suddenly being non-existent, and the phone not even give me the option to answer it.  I was planning on buying it later this summer when I hoped a sale would be happening (though it was going to be painful waiting that long when it was basically a paper weight).  When I did a search for rumored sales of the phone I had decided I wanted, I found that it was $130 cheaper from Amazon than from Verizon, so I went ahead and got it and will be putting the money I was going to be setting aside for it to the credit card bill to pay for it.  We'll keep the Amazon route in mind when we go to upgrade Candice's phone eventually, too.  If it saves us $$, why not?

I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.  The primary reason was because I have large clumsy fingers and figured (correctly) that it would be easier for me to type, etc on it.  The secondary reasons was that it has handwriting recognition and I figured that could help me as a writer, and that it has good battery life.  It turns out the handwriting recognition is AMAZING (but slow).  It recognized my handwriting even when I wrote in my crappiest form and EVEN when I wrote in cursive.  I have to write a little slower to get the handwriting recognition to work and convert to typed text, but I'll be able to use it when waiting in waiting rooms, or lying in bed and getting inspired, etc.  So, as a writer, this is the first time that writing using technology has excited me instead of simply handwriting on paper with a pencil, this is another new approach for me to writing.  Granted, when I really get in the groove, I will still probably use a pad and pencil for now, but eventually this might be the way I go.  (This phone will also allow me to change the battery if/when this one starts to die, too).

That's all I have for this post.  Thanks for reading.