So, funny story about releasing House of Massan.
I spent months drawing the illustrations for the chapters. People may look at them and wonder how they took months. When I started, I created a grid of 33 slots. I made a crude illustration of what I thought I wanted. The work began.
The first ten or so went quickly, all within a few days. These were like Chapters 1 and 2 of a sign and a box. Then, I had to start thinking about what the illustrations meant. I realized I couldn't get away with a pure abstraction of the chapter. I had to draw things like a dachshund, hands, and faces. So I started practicing. I spent 60 hours at least on faces and hands. Here an example of some of my practices:
I'm just going to say right now. Hands and faces are hard to draw for me. I must have drawn a hundred hands and faces to produce the few samples in the chapter art.
So, one by one, I knocked out the chapter art pieces. The difficulty increased with each completed illustration. In the end, I like to believe I caught the spirit of each chapter. If all readers did was look at the illustrations, they would paint a crude story outline. I think the illustrations added a great deal to the reading experience. I hope that when people read the chapters, they will go back to the illustration and discover what each piece captured from the chapter. That will give a slight sense of what I "saw" while writing the book.
The funny part of this story was this. I killed myself off to make the illustrations. Once they were done, they were in the print and ebook files. I uploaded the final documents to Amazon. The print version was clear on what to do. But when I put together the ebook version, it wasn't clear when I hit the publish button. If you ever get the chance to publish a book, you'll appreciate that there are many steps you must go through. The final step isn't that obvious. So I hit the next button for the ebook and realized I hit the publish button!!! I thought it would give me some warning or a second chance. NOPE! It was off, and there was no stopping it at that point!
Publishing turned out to be a reckless accident, though I have to say I was procrastinating at the end. The accident forced my hand. It was time, and I had to finish it.
The ending of The Edge of Time is a massive cliffhanger. I can't say for sure when Book 2 will be released. But if a bunch of people suddenly read the book, the synergy and interest in knowing what happens next will be at its peak. I'm afraid I might lose the audience if I take too long. I am going to press hard to get book 2 done.
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