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52 Book Covers (+2) – Interview with Aurora Cacciapuoti

Aurora Cacciapuoti is a Sardinian illustrator currently based in Cambridge.  She splits her time between running art workshops and working as a freelance illustrator.  Whilst I was writing 12 books last year (or 1,667 words a day) she was drawing 365 faces (or 1 face a day).  You can see them all on her tumblr page.

This year Aurora has a new project, to create 52+2 book covers. I asked her a few questions about what she finds inspiring about books.

Continue reading “52 Book Covers (+2) – Interview with Aurora Cacciapuoti” →

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Twins

Look, a twelve books twin!  It’s like when you go to a foreign country and there’s a town that has the same name as yours…

Canadian writerer Sandra O’Driscoll started her 12 books project last June.  The more mathematically minded of you will be able to work out that means she is still going.  And that means as I tail off and start blethering about other things, there is still someone on the internet whose brain is slowly melting from all the words they have to do.  Hooray!

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Lessons Learned

I have downloaded the WordPress app to my phone for the express purpose of blogging some lessons I learned writing 12 books in 12 months, even though I’m not in Edinburgh or anything. Isn’t technology wonderful?

Lesson One
You cannot stay up all night writing. No matter how much coffee and Easter egg you ingest, you will still find yourself falling asleep on the sofa at 4.30am.

Lesson Two
The best way to increase blog traffic is to interview John Allison.

Lesson Three
You didn’t hear this from me, right, but you don’t actually need to read all the time to keep coming up with ideas. It does however affect the way you execute them.

Lesson Four
People on the Internet are very supportive of hare brained schemes. This is probably because following the exploits of fools is a useful tool for procrastination.

Lesson Five
Everyone has advice to give you, but none of it matches. All you can do is piece something together that works for you.

Lesson Six
Once you start obsessively checking blog stats, it’s very hard to stop. Just say no, kids…

Sorry to anyone hoping for something more profound, that’s not really how I roll. And now if you’ll excuse me I have to contribute to a conversation about the hotly tipped vampire squid romance genre. It’s what everyone will be doing for NaNoWriMo 2012.

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Time for Reflection

“How do you feel, now that it’s nearly over?”

Fraudulent, I think, but I don’t say that.  I smile sheepishly and go with something vague like “oh, I haven’t really got that far yet… Ask me in January.”

Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that it’s January now, so I suppose I’ll have a go at answering that question from the perspective of four days hindsight.

I still feel a little bit fraudulent.

Continue reading “Time for Reflection” →

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Finished

At 2.29am this morning I finished the 13 page comic which serves as December’s book.  The plot is a bit thin, but some of the drawings are nice.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF HERE!

I am still a bit shell shocked, but happy.  I’ll be back in the New Year with some reflections and the like, and some information on stage two of the 12 books project.  See you then!

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The Psychedelic Lady

As December finishes, it is time for another entry to The Pictonaut Challenge.

For those who don’t know what that is – every month The Rogue Verbumancer (also known on the Twitter as @Glempy) posts a different picture on his blog and invites people to write a short (around 1,000 words) story around it.  Entrants post their attempts on their own sites, or can send them to TRV if they don’t have one, and at the end of the month he does a post linking to them all.  It’s a nice way to flex your writing muscles, particularly if you are working on something that is doing your head in or if you are stuck for ideas and would like a fixed exercise to get you thinking.  It’s also really interesting to read the different ideas people take from the same image.

I began writing my December entry during breaks at work, but when I went to finish it today realised I didn’t actually email it to myself.  So I wrote a different one, in about an hour (using my favourite app, Write or Die, to get to 1000 words in just over 20 minutes and then revising it in the remaining 40), which I have posted below.  It is really not my best work, but such is the nature of the first draft, and hopefully the rawness will help you understand why the fact I have drafted all these books does not mean they are ready to read yet… Continue reading “The Psychedelic Lady” →

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