Is it called fan art when it's for your own stories?

In my slack and idle wanderings today, I decided to practice my digital painting. To that end, I decided to see if I could paint a scene from CALLED, the book I'm currently writing. This is my sad attempt to do so, as the hero Slan rides his dapple war horse into the wild lands of Gunsail Nam, and he and his companions that I was too incompetent to paint see a trio of giants walking on the horizon. This is shortly before one of the heroes does something dumb and the giants decide to thump them.

This used no references, so for that at least, I'm quite pleased with it.

Restoring Faith in Humanity

This page gave me a wonderful feeling of "Aww...."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity

This page made my giggle purely because I wrote it (It's one of my husband's favourite sites. I didn't tell him I submitted anything and the reaction when he read it was priceless. Apparently I'm 'evil'.  :p

http://notalwaysromantic.com/losing-the-name-game/22063

What's your favourite book title?

Titles can make or break a book. Well, I think they certainly help. And they are quite often hard to come up with. I mean it. Oy, that can sometimes be harder than writing the book!  At least for me.

The reason I'm rambling about this is because I'm working on my latest novel (I shelved the Cuckoo series because it's still being evil to me and am 20k into this one in a week. Gah). Its title is CALLED, which I rather like, but I don't know if it really grabs at you and makes you want to look at the book. 

It has got me thinking about books I've read in the past where the title really hooked me. ONCE UPON A GARDEN HOSE is a kids' book with a great title, it really is. My favourite title though, so much so that I remember it decades later, is a book titled OUTNUMBERING THE DEAD. I don't remember who wrote it or what it was about, but I remember that title. I wish I'd thought of it. I'd have written a book around that title.

So what is your all time favourite book title? I'd love to get a list going in the comments.

My kingdom for a tax expert!!

Well, maybe not my kingdom, but certainly my eternal gratitude.

I'm trying to figure out the IRS tax forms to basically set myself up so that I don't have to pay US taxes on the income I get for anything I publish through Smashwords. Canada will be sucking enough tax out of me all by itself, thanks.

So, I've got the pretty letter from Smashwords that I'm supposed to attach to my W-7 form thing. Unfortunately, my brain blew up in my skull and is currently leaking out my ears and over my keyboard.

I'm not actually expecting help, but it would be really nice if I had a reader who's maybe a USA tax expert that can tell me if I screwed this up as badly as I think I have. Winces of sympathy would also be good.

Okay, whining over. Thanks for listening.  :p

*goes back to trying to figure out what a treaty article number is...*

An Interview with Lazy Literature

Hi, everyone. I just want to tell all of you about an interview I did with the wonderful owner of the site Lazy Literature. She's running a contest where the prize is THE SHATTERED SYLPH in German. Woot!  I had fun answering the questions.

The site itself is German, but I'll put the link here to the English version of the interview. The contest runs from today until the end of the month. Check it out!

http://www.lazyliterature.de/interview-with-l-j-mcdonald-2012-english/

I really want to show this off! Come see!

When I went to the Ottawa Comicon in May, I met a wonderful artist by the name of Mike Rooth. We got to talking and I commissioned him to draw a picture of one of my characters.

For those of you who've read "The Lord of Winter", here's Del in his armour. Del's one of the characters in the story and I won't say anything about him for those who haven't read the story yet. However, I love Mike's version of him. He is utterly gorgeous. My plan is, when I put something else on Smashwords, Mike will be doing the cover.

Check out Mike's site at mikerooth.com

The Joy that is Goodreads

I have eighty-two fans on Goodreads. This is awesome and slightly confusing since I only have fifty-three fans on my blog, thirty-five on Twitter, and I have no idea how many on Facebook (I can't figure out the interface). So I'm less than totally unknown! Woot!

I like Goodreads. It's a highly dangerous place to be with all its recommendations and the easy ability to spend way too much money instantly downloading them all. Periodically I like to go randomly through people's lists and go "Hey, I read this" *rate*. Makes for better recommendations from the site, though there are some books I don't want to publicly admit I like and have read multiple times *CoughKimDare'sDuckCough*. Plus, I often just slap stars on a book because I don't always feel like writing actual reviews. I'm lazy that way. I have also decided that I'm not going to write any bad reviews or put less than three stars on a book. If I didn't like it, I just won't rate it. I get all sad when people write bad reviews on my work, so I won't do that to anyone else. I'll just rant about them to my husband like I usually do. He's used to it. ;p

The reason I bring all of this up, other than my attempt to have more content on this site and the fact that I've been meaning to plug Goodreads for a while now, is the fact that in the last couple of days I've received some invites to join certain author groups on Goodreads. This is all flattering and nice, but so far, I've been invited to groups for authors I haven't actually heard of before.

I don't want anyone who sends me these to think I'm snubbing them or anything for not joining, but I haven't heard of these authors before. That said, I am checking them out. So yay, more to read!

BTW, if anyone felt like making a Goodreads Group for me, I wouldn't mind. >.>

In writing news, still plugging away at THE OMEGA and working on a short called Coyote Paper. Mostly I'm just lazing around. It's been a long week.

I have a new hobby and other excuses that slow down my writing

Apparently the knitting, drawing, painting, reading, and gaming isn't enough. I have a new hobby! (I guess I can't really call the writing a hobby anymore since I periodically get paid for it).

Now that I pretty much exclusively read all books electronically on my kindle, I've taken up bookbinding. I quite enjoy it and the books are useful since I write shorter pieces by hand and they do serve as a handy sort of 'Crap, I need a present to give to (insert name).'

This is my latest book. I'm actually making it for a coworker's eight year old daughter, hence the massive amounts of pink. It's scrapbook paper glued around a board cover with canvas I painted pink for the spine. The inside paper is just plain white paper that I sewed together. I actually like the way it turned out, even with all the pink. If she doesn't like it, I'm taking it back.  ;p

This is the inside front cover of the same book. I always glue something in to cover the board and the edges of the cover and I just rather liked this soft pink. The colours were all picked by the father, by the way.

This one I made for me and will write a story in once I think of a plot. I glued the doodads on the cover to it. They've only fallen off twice. Apparently the solution to that is 'more glue'. This one is lined. It's just high smoothness photocopier paper that I can run through a printer. The spine is this lovely velvet paper that makes fantastic spines since it doesn't tear or wrinkle.

Here are the other books I made since I don't want to inflict them all on you one at a time. The top one and the purple one are made from this gorgeous Japanese paper that I can't remember the name of. Makes fantastic covers. 

I've been wondering if people would like to have one of these. I'm pondering running a contest where the prize is a handmade book with something in it. Maybe some writing or poetry or both, I dunno. I don't know if anyone would want it. It'd be a contest prize, but that makes me wonder what sort of contest to even run.

In writing news, I've passed the 41k word count mark in THE OMEGA, which is still crawling along as glacial speed. I haven't heard anything about Dorchester yet.

Life is good and the muse has earned a cookie

My muse is apparently in a good mood.

I woke up this morning and the entire plot for a brand new novel dropped in my head. I've spent a lovely hour typing out plot ideas for it, which is an utterly wonderful feeling, it really is.

The working title for the book is CALLED and once I finish writing THE OMEGA (which is still being a resistant bastard), it's likely next on the list. I won't say much about it, but it's playing with the concept of nature versus nurture, a father's love for his young son, and massive heaps of magic and the threat of total destruction to the universe and everything in it. You know, the usual.

Good muse. Keep it coming *offers muse a cookie*

The truth about writers

I saw this on the inter webs and giggled unsanely until I thought that it was hitting way too close to home. Hee!