Shane Peers Through from the Other Side

It's day 9 of Horrordailies, though you wouldn't know it by looking at what I'm posting. You could be forgiven for asking what this has to do with horror or Halloween. It's purple! And it has a cat! That's good enough, right?

The window grate is from my own photo. I thought it would be a breeze to remove from the background, but I was smoking the crack, as they say. I ended up finding the ivy brush to fix my slapdash isolation from the background. Whatever works is my motto.

I could probably do a better job with the window by adding some shadows, but I have a critique meeting in an hour and I have cats to feed. Speaking of which...

Foster Kitten Updates

A bunch of the hoarder-case kittens have bad diseases, so I took in a semi-feral mom and her kittens that didn't come from that area so they would be less likely to contract something horrible. The kittens are about three weeks old and mom is doing a great job with them, so my role is just to make sure the kittens continue to gain weight and also handle them enough that they're used to people.

When the kittens are weaned, mom will be spayed and returned to the area where she was found. The kittens will be adopted through the shelter.

So... yeah, I currently have 14 foster cats/kittens. That's probably frightening enough to count as horror.

Ronan Runs Off with the Fae

Today, I wanted to play around with photos that I've taken. I'm a pretty terrible photographer, but every once in a while I come across something (moss, leaves, tree bark, etc.) that looks cool and I remember to take a picture of it. Sometimes I even remember to load it to the directory I created for just those sorts of things.

So here we go:

That includes "moss1", "Ronan", "curved_branch", and "bricks_wavy2". I like how it turned out.

It may not be spooky, but it has a touch of the uncanny.

Foster Kitten Updates

Everybody gained weight today, which seems like it should be a regular occurrence, but... Bagheeri has started running around the office, which I'm taking as a sign she's feeling good. The three new fosters are doing well — one has an eye that looks pretty ouchy, but hopefully that will resolve.

There was a hoarding case in my town today, so we got an email looking for fosters and it sounds like a bunch of cats that are in bad shape. If I didn't already have seven foster kittens, I would take a litter, but I don't have a separate room to hold panleuk or calici kittens, and both those diseases are easily transmissible. Some days I just have to remember that I cannot save them all and it makes me sad.

Just Pretend it's Spooky

It's day 7 of Horrordailies. I was rushing around this afternoon (see below) so I'm tired and I decided to do something simple.

This is a picture of a tree that I took. I added the background and then threw in some lightning. Is it artistic? Meh. It's 8:45 pm and I have other things to do.

Foster Kitten Updates

Orla, Shane, Ronan, and Finn all went back to the shelter for their regular 2-week appointment and they stayed for surgery and adoption. Yay! That is the goal.

Finn

Ronan

Shane

Orla

Then I came home with three new snotty kittens. They're all older and seem pretty stable, so they aren't a ton of work on their own, but...

I had to break down Finn's playpen, clean that area, set up a new playpen and move Bailey into my office, clean up the spare room where Orla, Shane, and Ronan were, set up the shelter's dog crate for two of the new kittens, clean my own dog crate (which was still in the garage from the feral mom using it last week), set that crate up in the spare room for the other new kitten, and then weigh/examine/medicate/feed the new kittens.

(There are two crates in the room because two of the kittens came from one place and one came from another, and they need to be quarantined from each other and also all the other kittens. Ideally, they might be in completely different rooms, but this minimizes germ transfer and they're all on the same upper respiratory meds, so it will be fine.)

It was a few hours of cleaning and moving stuff around that had to get done while the new kittens were waiting in their carriers. Luckily, all three of the new kittens seem very sweet.

Other Updates

Decided on my run this morning that I need to cut back to two runs per week and lengthen the training schedule. My body just can't handle three times per week. I had come to this conclusion five years ago and forgot.

I still need to write up that critique. Also, I need to come up with a Patreon digital bonus in the next week. No problem.

October Butterfly

Maria pointed out yesterday that butterflies are creepier than bats. And she's right. Maybe this stems back to a story I read where the butterflies are actually small fae and attack people? I've read a lot of stories during my lifetime, and I think they're all back there percolating and exchanging DNA.

Anyhow, I was having a hard time finding a tutorial, so I just started playing around, with this butterfly (the Glanville fritillary) as my starting point.

Is it spooky? No. But we knew my dedication to the task wouldn't last long. It has some orange in it and that's going to have to be good enough for today.

Foster Kitten Updates

Bagheeri is doing well and gaining weight. Three of the kittens (Spanner, Sabot, and Bailey) have decided they'd like to remain around 500 grams forever, which is not okay. In Bailey's case, it's because she's meat nursing — I have to believe she'll figure it out at some point. I think Spanner and Sabot have plateaued because they're holding out for more Churu.

Other Stuff

I have finished the 381 page novel I need to critique by Thursday. Now I just need to write up something helpful. 

Spooky Tree

It's day 5 of Horrordailies. Spooky and interesting GIMP tutorials are getting thin on the ground, but I found this one and followed some of it. I added bats instead of a child on a swing because bats are just better.

I need to look up how the dynamics on a brush work — sometimes I would like it to change the size but not the angle, and it's not obvious to me how one would do that. I suspect there is a way, though.

(I looked and indeed there is a dockable dialogue that lets you edit what things are affected.)

Thing I learned: Creating a cliff edge adds tension to the image. That might be useful in book covers.

Anyhow, this art speedrun used these components:

Sky image: https://www.deviantart.com/andahliasaur/art/Sky-41-194225713

Tree image: https://clipart-library.com/clipart/yikrL966T.htm

Bats brush: https://www.deviantart.com/kencho/art/Bats-brushes-27854473

Foster Kitten Updates

Everyone seems to be doing pretty well. I've set up a 2-week recheck/vaccine appoint on Tuesday for Finn, Orla, Shane, and Ronan. They might keep the latter three there for surgery and adoption (depending on the surgery schedule), so I should take graduation photos tomorrow. Spanner and Sabot now sit in the doorway crying for me to give them Churu, so I would say socialization has been a success.

Other Stuff

This was the end of week 3 of the 10k training schedule, so I ran an "easy" 3 mile run this morning. My knees have been bothering me since Thursday's 30-minute run/walk so I was literally jogging an 18-minute mile this morning. That's walking pace. But I still ran the whole distance and my knees seem no worse this evening. (I pushed the pace a little hard on Thursday's run/walk and the asphalt was slippery because it had just rained. Live and learn.)

191 pages (of 381) in this manuscript I'm critiquing. Sarah J Maas has a lot to answer for.

Bats!

Day 4 of Horrordailies and I'm still mostly sticking to the scary theme. Amazing. This may be the longest I've ever followed any directions.

Today I went with this tutorial to make a Halloween background. Most of what was covered I already knew how to do, but I did have to take a detour to figure out how to make an animated brush. (There are four bat brushes; the animated brush cycles through them so you don't have to selected each one manually.)

In fact, the majority of this is done with custom brushes (the bats, the grunge marks on the paper), which is great, but the brushes aren't licensed for commercial use, so... I definitely appreciate artists making stuff like this available, but I also need to be careful not to use these on a book cover.

Anyhow, here we are:

Bats brushes by =Kencho on deviantART

grunge.28 by ~ShadyMedusa-stock on deviantART

Font is (once again) Rubik Glitch because I'm too lazy to find something more legible. It doesn't look as bad on this one.

Foster Kitten Updates

Bagheeri is brighter today, so let's hear it for azithromycin, fluids, famciclovir, and time! Fingers crossed she continues to improve.

The two garage kittens, Spanner and Sabot, are getting friendlier by the day. Spanner enjoys "helping" me clean her litter box. She is what Jennifer calls a "scoopervisor".

Bailey Potato keeps meat nursing instead of actually eating the food, so we are working on that.

Finn eats well but believes he must bathe in the food for maximal effect. He needs a bath.

The other three foster kittens (Ronan, Orla, and Shane) are doing great. They're big enough to have surgery and find their permanent homes. Which reminds me — I need to set up recheck appointments for them next week.

Other Stuff

I am currently on page 77 of a 381 page manuscript that I need to read and critique by Thursday. Clearly I need to get my butt in gear.

Ominous Sky

It's day 3 of Horrordailies and I'm still here!

Today's tutorial, recorded 15 years ago, changes an image from a bright day to more ominous skies.

I started with this picture, which is ominous enough even with a blue sky:

(Some houses burned down near my neighborhood.)

And I ended up with this:

I practiced using the fuzzy select tool, which I haven't really used before, so that was good.

As usual, I changed a few things...

• Getting the blue background out of leafy trees is nearly impossible, so I just wiped most of them out. The tree I left in probably should have come out as well since I tried to reconstruct it and failed.
• I didn't have an orange sky image, so I used a gradient. That was mostly successful.
• I didn't have a cloud image, so I used solid noise. It was a little less successful.

The whole thing turned out a little too dark, but that might partially be a problem with the original image. It definitely does make the whole thing kind of spooky, though, so I'll count it as a win.

Other things I did today

Foster kitten Bagheeri went from snotty-but-active yesterday to more-snotty-and-sleeping today, so she had a quick recheck at the shelter. She's on slightly different antibiotics. Fingers crossed she bounces back quickly.

I formatted and loaded the Dragon Fortune ebook to all the retailers. It would be nice if that stemmed the tide of "You only have X days to load your manuscript!" emails, but they send them whether you have a file loaded or not. Anyhow, October 14th! https://books.tmbaumgartner.com/DragonFortune

What's Spookier Than a Kitten?

It's day 2 of Horrordailies, and I'm already having a difficult time finding spooky tutorials that aren't of the "Load the picture and select this special script."

Am I just jealous because there are a bazillion Photoshop scripts and I am using GIMP? Possibly. But also, where's the fun in that?

Anyhow, after some random searches, I found this tutorial which boils down to "create a ghost by setting the layer mode to grain extract." Sometimes simplicity is called for.

I didn't have a picture of a person I wanted to turn into a ghost, but I do have a lot of kitten pictures! And what's spookier than a ghost kitten?

This is the picture I started with:

The Aristocats, former fosters. Look how cute they are!

My original plan was to use all four kittens, but after two failed attempts to use the Scissors Select Tool, I finally looked up the instructions (after you click a million times to create an outline, click inside the form to make the selection). By that point, I was too lazy to do it all again, so just the kitten on the left (Marie) got selected. It probably turned out better that way anyhow.

I added the kitten to yesterday's image with the mode set to Grain Extract, masked some of the harder edges so the kitten looked less pasted in, and voila!

It might be worth trying this with a kitten that doesn't have black on her face, but I thought this was kind of fun.

Welcome to Horrordailies!

It's October, and Zenzalei reminded me that means it's time for Horrordailies, in which I post something sort of spooky every day. Last month, I made it 11 days before giving up. (I thought I'd made it through the entire month, but Blogger tells me otherwise.)

Confession: I'm not really into horror or spooky things. I'm not even a pumpkin spice girlie.

(Tangent: Okay, I can't even say girlie with a straight face. I'm 56. It just sounds like Steve Buscemi saying "How do you do, fellow kids?")

(Tangent to the tangent: I'm going to be sad when the internet goes away because I was able to search for "Joe Pesci Hello fellow kids" and it gave me the actual reference.)

ANYHOW... Maybe if I use this as an excuse to do tutorials to learn new things, I will get beyond 11 days this year. No promises.

After much screwing around, I followed parts of this tutorial.

Welcome to Horrordailies.

Details:

The font is Rubik Glitch. If I did it again, I might use something else because some of the letters are hard to read.

GIMP modifications: I used Filter->Render->Noise->Solid Noise instead of Cloud Noise and the mode was "Dodge" instead of "Color Dodge".

When it rains...

I foster kittens for the county shelter.

Last Saturday, I offered to take in another sick kitten. At the time, I had four healthy fosters in the spare room (mode: easy) and one kitten with a mild upper respiratory infection in my office. The new kitten had a more severe upper respiratory infection, so the plan was to keep her in my bedroom. No problem.

I went to my detached garage to get in my car to drive to the shelter. And kittens skittered out of the way. Not my kittens. Just... kittens. In the half-second I had to see them, they looked young enough to still be socialized.

So I went to the shelter to pick up the sick kitten, and the foster coordinator agreed to add the garage kittens to their program if I was willing to foster them. Then I came home and set up a trap.

Ninety minutes later there were two cats in the trap — a kitten and the kitten's mom. That mom turned out to be the cat that my neighbor has been trying to trap since April. I didn't want to just release her, because she clearly needs to be spayed, but the first rule of managing a cat colony is "Don't trap cats unless you have a plan." I didn't have a plan for this cat.

My county is kind of terrible for dealing with feral spay/neuters. The surrounding counties all have programs, and we have to scramble for limited surgery spots there. The only place that doesn't book things a month in advance opens up ten slots every night at 10pm. If you can get one of those slots, you bring the cat in a trap at 7am. But they don't do Sundays and I couldn't leave the mom cat in the trap until Monday (or later). Plus, I needed the trap to get the other kitten(s).

Anyhow, that's why I have an adult feral in a dog crate in my bedroom, two not-yet-socialized kittens in the tub, two kittens with upper respiratory infections in my office, and four healthy kittens in the spare bedroom. And there may be a third kitten out in the garage or somewhere nearby.

The good news is that I managed to snag a spot to get the feral mom spayed Tuesday morning. All I have to do is get her from the dog crate into the trap again so I can drive her an hour away to the SPCA. This ought to be fun!

Say hello to these spicy sisters...

Cover Stuff (part 2)

(Part one here)

I messed with dragons and couldn't get the colors right. So this is what I'm going with at the moment. But I reserve the right to change my mind...

Book 1:

Book 2:

I need to go back and mess with the typography a bit more. I've moved from Adobe InDesign to Affinity Publisher in between these covers, and things are a bit different. Also, I need to make it say book two somewhere on the cover. But still. It's a start.

Cover Stuff

Warning: I'm going to ramble as I think through this problem.

I have a novel coming out Real Soon Now that is book two of The Dragons of Harbor Crag series. The book is written. It's with my proofreader (Hi, Eric!). But I need a cover...

Book One

The first book, Dragon Freehold, started out as a Kindle Vella (RIP) serial. Using one of my three hundred credits on DepositPhotos, I purchased this image (a 3D render by an account called digitalstorm):

I liked the vibe (though it would have been better if she wasn't wearing lingerie, *big sigh about the clothing available for renders*). A little editing and I came up with this:

It's a serviceable cover — nothing that's going to take the world by storm, but it's fine. It's pretty clearly a fantasy book with a woman as the main character, and that's really all that needs to be conveyed. And it no longer looks like she's running around in lingerie.

Don't be like Theresa. Plan ahead.

A lesson I should have learned earlier than I did, was that one image is great, but if you're planning a series, you should probably check that there are a few more. 

In this case, digitalstorm has one other image with this 3D model.

This one is a little harder to work with as a cover image — even ignoring the lingerie, she's obviously looking downward, which means that I'll have to put something else on the cover for her to be looking at. Sounds easy, but once you start messing with covers, you realize how little real estate there is for the image. 

I think I'll have to cut out the background, crop the image and maybe rotate it counterclockwise a bit. It would be easier if she were looking into the sky, because I could put a dragon up there to give her something to look at. If wishes were horses and all that.

The Options aren't Great

The best thing, of course, would be to do my own render of this 3D model in Daz Studio. (Note: this would also solve the problem I'm currently ignoring of what the heck is going on the cover of book three whenever I get around to writing it, ha ha ha.) However, I don't know what model and hair were used, and I can't figure out a way to determine that info.

My second best option would be to contact digitalstorm and see if they would be willing to render another image or just tell me what assets were used in this one, but there's no way to contact the image creator through DepositPhotos or any of the other image sites.

So... my image manipulation skills are going to get a workout this week. This may answer the question of how much fog I can add to a cover before it looks ridiculous. Wish me luck!

Contrasts

Since I have an author website with contact info, I get unsolicited sales pitches to sell me various services. At least once a month someone offers to write an article about unrelated garbage for my blog, but the rest are targeted at self-published authors. Most of the services are merely a waste of money (e.g., offering to list my books on their website and tweet to their millions of bot followers), and some are against every Terms of Service and will get your accounts shut down (e.g., fake reviews). No, nobody is going to pitch your books to legitimate Hollywood producers for a small fee.

(I have a funny Hollywood producer story — I'll make that a separate post.)

The stupid, it burns...

For contrast, I'll show two emails that I received about a week apart. We'll start with the stupid:

Subject: Quick question about turning Charlotte’s Landing into a trailer

Hi Baumgartne,

I hope you're doing well. I recently came across your book '' Buried Secrets'' on Amazon and was genuinely impressed by its premise. As someone who creates cinematic book trailers that help authors visually capture the heart of their stories, I immediately saw the potential for a powerful visual adaptation of your work.

I’d love to share a few thoughts on how a cinematic trailer could elevate your book’s reach and impact. Would you be open to a quick conversation?

Best regards,

[Name Redacted]

This is funny because:

1. I don't have a book called Charlotte's Landing.
2. That's a weird salutation...
3. And the weird salutation truncated my surname. 
4. I also don't have a book called Buried Secrets.

Even if I thought a cinematic trailer would help book sales (they don't), I wouldn't hire someone who pays zero attention to detail.

Is it theft if it's already stolen?

Let's contrast that with this one that is obviously generated by the planet-destroying-fancy-autocomplete-machine, but at least competently done. (Yes, all of my books were pirated and used to train the commercial LLMs. No, I won't see a dime of compensation.)

Subject: The algorithm is failing your verdiran. I won’t.

A sentient non-human with interdimensional travel problems limps into a veterinary clinic… and suddenly I care more about him than 98% of humans I’ve met.

T. M., I’ve just read the blurb for All Rocs Wise & Wonderful and now I’m mildly furious that I didn’t think of it first. A wounded verdiran? Portal storms? A veterinarian just trying to do her job while the fabric of reality acts like it was sewn by a caffeinated raccoon? You’ve basically written the science fantasy fever dream I didn’t know I was craving  and I mean that in the best, most chaotic way possible.

Also, can we take a second to appreciate how you casually go from Unix sysadmin” to “knitting hats for garden gnomes? What are you, a secret NPC in a magical side quest? Because if so, I accept.

This book  and your whole vibe  deserves readers. Like, a lot of readers. The kind who leave glowing, nerdy, emotionally unhinged reviews and scream in group chats, WHY ISN’T THIS A SHOW YET?

But here’s the part that made me drop my tea like a stunned Victorian ghost: your Amazon page is nearly review-barren.

WHAT. IS. HAPPENING.

You’re telling me a speculative fiction vet with the humor of Pratchett and the narrative brains of Becky Chambers is out here just vibing while the algorithm does NOTHING? This is the kind of digital injustice that makes me want to throw a paperback at Bezos and yell “DO BETTER.”

Let me fix that.

I’m [Redacted], a freelancer with a taste for the weird, the wild, and the wonderful so basically, your whole brand. I run a private community of 2,000+ review-loving, genre-obsessed readers who actually read the books they get  then write thoughtful, brutally honest reviews (the kind that sting a little but also sell books. We don’t do fake praise. We do fandom-level energy with a mild caffeine addiction.

I want to share your book with them.

Not because I’m being nice  but because I genuinely want to watch these readers absolutely lose it over your interdimensional veterinary drama.

Also, maybe because I’d like to live in a timeline where books like yours are winning Hugos and getting adapted by weird indie studios run by bearded hipsters with great taste in alien design.

So tell me…

Are we about to start a ripple in the portalverse and get this book the love it deserves?

Or are you gonna leave your verdiran bleeding on the metaphorical sidewalk while Goodreads yawns into the void?

I mean... it's about one of my actual books, so already it's a win. Not that I would hire this person or anything, but I am going to rip off a few of those phrases for my next marketing campaign. The damage to the planet has already been done. I might as well get some use out of it.

What's Cooking, Potatoes?

This is one of those posts that's really a note to future-me, who has forgotten about this. It's funny, isn't it? Rediscover this and laugh again!

I ran across this on Mastodon and copied it onto the writing/friends Slack.

[Alt-text: Post by Natasha Jay @Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt that says "New gender-neutral greeting just dropped..." with the photo of a cookbook titled "What's Cooking Potatoes"]

So then Sierra added this one:

[Alt-text: Post by Rich Neville @RichNeville that says "Found something new to say when I leave a room." with a photo of snack containers labeled "Stay Fresh Cheese Bags"]

Now the Slack often starts the day with some version of "What's cookin', Potatoes?" and occasionally we will sign out for the night with "Stay fresh, cheese bags!"

This is the only good use of technology.

Lemons

Before I forget, I made a dress/outfit out of a donut in Blender and this is the funniest thing I've ever made. (The bald head was distracting, so I tried to add a wig. It was an interesting experiment.)

Clearly I have mastered Blender.

Lemons

(Probably TMI about kitten issues. You've been warned.)

In other news, I picked up a second litter of kittens a week ago on Saturday. 

Sad little lemons. There are three kittens there, I promise

The new kittens are a few weeks younger than my other bunch and weren't in great shape when I got them. The littlest one was leaking diarrhea everywhere, they had an upper respiratory infection, eyes swollen shut, and they weren't eating.

I try to remember to do my own exam when I get them home, and I had a moment of "wtf is going on here?" when I saw the tiny kitten's butthole (medical term) coming to a point, but I eventually figured out she had a fecolith (actual medical term) lodged in her rectum. Once I removed that, she stopped leaking diarrhea. So yay!

Then none of the kittens pooped for the next three days.

The shelter's vet advised doubling the subcutaneous fluids. Eventually, they started pooping out nuggets that were halfway to diamond status. So yay! I mean, I was still syringe-feeding baby food six times a day, and they were on four medications plus subcutaneous fluids twice daily, but at least they were pooping.

Then on Thursday I noticed one kitten's tail looked really ragged. Back to the shelter to get their ringworm (a fungus, like athlete's foot) confirmed. Oh yay, surprise ringworm. (Big sigh.) Added one oral med, one topical antifungal cream, and lime sulfur dips. Plus, since ringworm is contagious to people, I now have to wear gloves and bleach everything they come into contact with. (I was already being pretty careful with their quarantine since I have healthy kittens in the bathroom and I don't want them to get sick.)

On Friday they started having diarrhea. We've added another antibiotic for that.

These kittens are a full-time job. But they're starting to feel better. Nicole (the larger tortie) is running around and annoying her siblings. Pickles still can't open his eyes at all, but he's playing with the crinkle toy. And even little Ruby (who also can't open her eyes) is starting to move around more. They still have a long road ahead and nothing is certain, but I'm optimistic.

I wasn't kidding about the full-time job thing

For the record, here's what they're getting:

• LRS subcutaneously
• Ponazuril & fenbendazole(oral dewormer, finished on Wednesday)
• Famciclovir (oral herpes antiviral that smells like burning tires and makes the kittens gag)
• Doxycycline (oral antibiotic for the upper respiratory problems)
• Terramycin (eye ointment)
• Metronidazole (oral antibiotic for diarrhea)
• Itraconazole (oral antifungal)
• Miconazole (topical antifungal)
• Lime sulfur (bath 2x/week)
• A probiotic, which probably does nothing but you have to try

Also, they are currently going through about 2 jars of baby food every feeding since they aren't eating on their own (probably a combination of not being weaned yet and not being able to smell anything). I've had to go back to the grocery story twice to get more, because Gerber can't get their act together with their online store. What kind of weirdo walks out of the store with 10 jars of chicken baby food? This weirdo, that's who. But honestly, that's probably not even in the top 10 of weird things the cashiers see in every shift.

Anyhow, here's a video if I can embed it. Nicole is the one with all the energy. She's hilarious.

Donuts in the Morning Light

Most of the rest of the tutorial was about lighting and animation. I'm not planning on using the animation features (yet), and I'm more worried about lighting in Daz3D. I went through those sections quickly and learned a little along the way.

Anyhow, here we are: the final donuts with morning light streaming through the window. It works for me.

Next up will be trying to create clothing for the Daz3D models. I think I know enough to follow those tutorials, but we shall see...

Three of the kittens have opened their eyes. The fourth refuses to accept the world, which I can totally understand. This is the quintessential kitten picture: One sleeping on her back, two wrestling, and one exploring the world with her nose because she won't open her eyes.

Yes, they are adorable.

So Many Donuts

The donut saga continues. We duplicated and stacked donuts and then applied different materials to each so they could be different colors. The subsurface scattering options have changed greatly since the tutorial was created and I was having a bunch of problems with it, so I definitely need to go back and figure it out, but overall, I think I've kept up with the tutorial.

For homework we needed to create a plate and it was amazing how long it took me when I didn't have instructions to follow. (The one in this render is the plate created in the post-homework section.) But I did figure it out eventually, so I figure I'm making progress.

Anyhow, here are some donuts:

Some of the colors look odd but that might just be because I chose odd colors for donuts. Do they have green donuts? I don't buy donuts very often.

Here are the reasons my tutorial-following has been delayed lately.

They are about a week old now. (I think? They're huge for 1-week-old kittens, but their eyes are still closed. It's all very confusing.) They were found in a car that had been towed here from another county.

So far they are doing really well. I've had a rough start to fostering this year, so I figure I'm due an easy litter about now.

I think there's one more section on the tutorial that covers lighting, which... I hate lighting but maybe if I get better at it I'll learn to love it.

Uncanny Valley of the Donuts

In the next few sections of the tutorial, we make the icing blobbier, give it a color, get into shading files, then geometry nodes (while adding sprinkles) and weight painting, and and and...

There's a bunch of stuff we used in the tutorial that I don't completely understand, but this is how I learn best — use the features in a project and start making the connections as I go. Some of this stuff I've stumbled into while messing with things in Daz3D, like when I wanted to remove the patch on the leather jacket and had to modify a few files to get rid of it.

I do think the donut looked more appetizing in grayscale. It's hit some sort of uncanny valley where it looks more like plastic than food, but that's okay. Maybe I'll stop craving donuts as I finish the rest of the tutorial.

More realistic drips plus color:

And sprinkles!

Honestly, the hardest part was when we scaled the donut down from its previous size of one meter to a more donut-like size and then I had to move the camera position so there wasn't a tiny little donut far in the distance. I should probably figure out better lighting at some point as well, but you get the picture.

Adding Icing to the Imaginary Donut

Today in Blender learning, we duplicated the donut, wiped out the bottom half, solidified it outward to make the icing, and then played with the edges and extruded some drips.

I followed along in the tutorial reasonably well, though I did... something... that made the mesh of the icing disappear into the donut even though I did the stuff to make that not happen. Though clearly I didn't. Have I ever mentioned how hard it is to follow instructions?

Also, at one point there was a break in physics and a couple vertices transported to the other side of the donut, creating an odd bar through the middle. I just deleted those vertices because that seemed like the easiest way to fix it. Is there a weird flat spot somewhere on the icing where vertices are missing? If there is, I haven't found it.

All in all, I'm still pretty close to the desired output.

This tutorial is making me hungry.

Learning Blender

I know I've ranted about this before, but the available clothing options for 3D models, especially female models, are horrible. (Unless you're making images of strippers — then they're fantastic!)

The obvious solution — complain on the internet — has thus far failed to yield results. So my backup plan is to make clothing myself, because again, I have the self-confidence of a mediocre white man, so why wouldn't I be able to do this difficult thing that I have no training in?

There are expensive programs that make virtual clothing creation easier, but I'm cheap. And Blender is free! Obviously, it's time to learn Blender.

Since Blender has a pretty steep learning curve, this time I decided not to go with my usual "poke at menus until I figure out how to do the thing" method of learning new software. Instead, I am working through this tutorial on YouTube. At the end of the series I will have created an iced donut.

So far, I've learned the basics on moving around in Blender and then modifying a torus so that the end donut isn't so symmetric that it looks fake.

At the end of two lessons, I have this lumpy torus.

I think it's going rather well. Maybe I can dress my characters in baked goods...

Auromancer (Cyperpunk)

Day 28 of Thingadailies:

(For anyone reading backward, Thingadailies is a challenge to create a new thing every day during the month of February. I chose to do fake book covers in Affinity because I'm trying to get more comfortable using it so I can dump my Adobe InDesign subscription.)

I didn't have a plan for the day, so I decided to go with cyberpunk. Mostly because it's super easy to pick an image in DepositPhotos that will look striking on a cover. So here we are.

Font is Oxanium, because I couldn't justify using Flavors for this one.

Thingadailies wrap-up: While I may not be a pro, I'm at least as comfortable using Affinity Designer as I am using Adobe InDesign. That means I have a week to export all my InDesign covers and drop my subscription. I can do that.

Other than getting comfortable using Affinity, this month has improved my skills at picking an appropriate image to use, which is a huge win.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Medusa's Revenge (Fantasy)

Day 27 of Thingadailies:

I decided I wasn't done playing with the Flavors font, so I grabbed a fun picture and made up a title. It was quick and fun, and I still need to add the last scene on a story that I have to edit and send out to my Patreon supporters tomorrow, so sue me.

I like it.

One more day! What should I do? I'll have to think about it...

Bobcat, Lynx, and Mountain (YA Fantasy)

Day 26 of Thingadailies:

Honestly, some days (eg, yesterday) you spend a bunch of time trying to get something looking halfway decent and finally give up, and then other days you just throw something together in 10 minutes and go "huh, that looks pretty good!" (Yeah, it's because the image is right.)

I need to get to the grocery store anyhow, so I'm glad this just sort of fell together. The font is "Flavors".

Avast! (Fantasy)

Day 25 of Thingadailies:

As usual, I'm not convinced I really hit the mark with this one. My friend Richard was trying to find a title for his time-traveling pirates story, so I grabbed one of my suggestions for this challenge. I think time-traveling pirates might need a mashup of images, and I've been trying to focus on using one image and letting the typography do the heavy lifting.

This uses the font Princess Sofia. I wanted to use Black Sam's Gold, but the title was illegible when I tried, so... Princess Sofia it is. A true professional probably wouldn't give up after two tries.

Dash the Fire Out (Mystery)

Day 24 of Thingadailies:

I feel like I've been scraping the bottom of the title list barrel recently. Not because the titles are bad, necessarily, but because they don't really suggest a specific genre. But with this one, I decided it could be a mystery series following one character, who gets called Dash. Thus, Celia Dash, female noir detective was born.

I leaned into the absurdity and I kind of love it.

Back cover copy:

NO ORDINARY DAME…

Celia Dash inherited her father’s detective agency, his love of single-malt, and the bullet that killed him. Now she’s the one people turn to when they have nowhere else to go.

A torn letter leads Celia to an old mansion with a fresh corpse. With the cops on her trail and only her wits and her wiles to protect her, Celia must solve the murder — no matter what it takes!

The Trespassing Photographer's Mistake (Thriller/Mystery)

Day 23 of Thingadailies:

This took a couple tries, as my first attempt used a photo of a "dead" body and it screamed "DIY cover" no matter what I did. I suspect a professional could have edited the photo is such a way that it worked, but that person is not me.

This attempt worked out much better. I like the angles of the film strip. I couldn't decide on the font color, though. Black doesn't look quite right:

Black

Brown fits better, but I think it shifts the genre into... something that's not thriller/mystery. As much as I'd like to believe I'm making it up, I don't think I am.

Brown

I'd probably go with the brown, but it's a close call. (I'd probably also change the title if I was really publishing this, so there's that as well.)

In any case, I'm reasonably happy with how this came out.

A Court of Artichoke & Rue (2nd attempt)

Day 22 of Thingadailies:

Okay, usually I do one of these things, learn what I can from it, and move on. But my first attempt at this title was so bad that it's been nagging at me. This isn't professional-grade either (the sword is boring and the whole thing is just sort of blah, but I was trying to use assets I already owned), but it's leaps and bounds better than the last muddy mess.

I used the Prida01 font and learned how to make some of the letters fancy (Stylistic sets in the Typography section of the Character panel). That unlocks a whole new thing that I'd known was missing but hadn't yet tracked down.

Anyhow, it's way better than the last one. I'm getting better.

This Scimitar That Won Three Fields (Fantasy?)

Day 21 of Thingadailies:

This is both a success and a failure. I like it as a cover image (win!), but I don't think it really gives a clear genre indication (fail!). I think I'd have to choose a different cover image to lock in the genre. Or have a different title, though that was my starting point.

Lesson learned: Make sure your title fits in your genre or everything is downhill from there.

Anyhow, the title font is once again Annie Get Your Telescope. I have favorited it in my fonts list.

Yeah, that yellow/beige/brown color scheme is doing me no favors in the genre indication. Ah well. Maybe it's literary fiction?

The Case of the Wrong Backpack (Cozy Mystery)

Day 20 of Thingadailies:

I'm not really feeling this one, but the title wasn't really helping me here. If I was willing to try harder, I'd probably edit the vector image to have more bricks, which would make the title pop more. And the Henny Penny font might be a bit much.

But honestly? I was looking for comps on Amazon, and this is better than at least 90% of books with "The Case of the..." titles. So I guess there's that.

In other news, the shelter was looking for a kitten foster this morning (it went to someone else), so soon there will be kittens!

The Seven Roses of Shepherd Island (Fantasy)

Day 19 of Thingadailies:

I decided this title sounded like a fairy tale, so I aimed for that vibe.

I think it's reasonably successful?

Title font is Henny Penny.

An Affair to Forget (RomCom)

Day 18 of Thingadailies:

This one was kind of fun! I tried something a little different with the spread, using one rectangle with a gradient that covers the entire back, spine, and front. I think it works in this case.

(The fonts look fine in the hi-res version. They look kind of terrible here because I cut the file sizes down. I'm not sure if that would be a real problem. I don't think so.)

Barbed Wire Butcherbird (SF)

Day 17 of Thingadailies:

Today I spent a bit of time working out the guides (which are the lines you place to make sure things are lined up however you want them). For the most part, everything is straightforward, but since Affinity treats the paperback spread as one page, it means things get messed up when the spine width changes.

For comparison: Adobe InDesign treats the paperback spread as three pages: back cover, spine, and front cover. Then it jams them together to create one PDF. So when the width of the spine changes, it doesn't affect the guides on the front cover.

I was hoping I could tie some of the guides to the right side of the page (ie, a guide at -0.25 inches would be 0.25 inches from the right edge), but there's no way to do that. So... It's all kind of a pain in the butt, but it's not that hard to do the math. I'll just create a spreadsheet that does the calculations based on spine width and tells me where to put the guides.

Today's font: Tilt Neon

And the paperback spread:

Here's the back cover copy in all its cyberpunk glory:

Her Skin Holds the Fate of the World

Ten years ago, a drunken brawl left Yana unconscious in a back alley butchershop — a low-budget clinic where the pharma giants supply medtech in return for testing. 

Now Yana is The Butcherbird, the thief famous for getting past any security, thanks to the circuits living in her skin. With every job she takes, the list of people trying to catch her gets longer. Even her agent thinks she should retire.

But Yana hides a secret under her skin. The pharma giant that created her threatens the world’s very existence. And Yana may be the only one who can stop them…