So, Anybody Need...

As mentioned previously, I have four fine unused vintage bags of red volcanic landscape rock free to anyone who would like to come get them.

I also have a perfectly good full-size wooden pallet and a perfectly good half-size wooden pallet, both of which could be happily hauled away before going out with the trash. Got water in your basement? These will keep something above a bit of water on the floor...

And yes, I am up way too late. :)

So, Anybody Need...

As mentioned previously, I have four fine unused vintage bags of red volcanic landscape rock free to anyone who would like to come get them.

I also have a perfectly good full-size wooden pallet and a perfectly good half-size wooden pallet, both of which could be happily hauled away before going out with the trash. Got water in your basement? These will keep something above a bit of water on the floor...

And yes, I am up way too late. :)

I Live In Interesting Times

Oh, this is being one of those days that's so interesting, I could just scream.

On the other hand, the latest development had me splitting my sides laughing, so I'm thinking that's an improvement. :)

I Live In Interesting Times

Oh, this is being one of those days that's so interesting, I could just scream.

On the other hand, the latest development had me splitting my sides laughing, so I'm thinking that's an improvement. :)

Not the Assassins Cover

The upcoming ISFiC Press book for Windycon is "Assassins and Other Stories" by Steven Barnes, our Author Guest of Honor. shsilver, our editor, saw this lovely shot of Mount Alamut, one of the major locations in the novel, and thought that it might make a good basis for a cover. Unfortunately, it was shot by an Iranian photographer and there's that whole nasty embargo thing going on which would make licensing potentially entertaining.

At one point during the process, I went out looking for licensable images that might be used to pull a cover together. I found this for an image of the mountain and this for a skyscape. And when you pull it all together and work it over in Photoshop, you get something that looks like this:
( Big old picture inside )

Unfortunately, it turns out that the chances of this turning into mud in the printing process are something on the order of a hundred percent, so we're going to be doing something else. (It's amazing how much brighter things are on the screen than they are when you print them out. I loaded new cartridges into the color laser printer last night, because I really needed to see if this was going to look ok in print. It won't.)

On the other hand, I had fun doing it and I kind of like it, so I figured I'd let you all look at it.

We paid for the licenses, so somebody should. :)

Not the Assassins Cover

The upcoming ISFiC Press book for Windycon is "Assassins and Other Stories" by Steven Barnes, our Author Guest of Honor. shsilver, our editor, saw this lovely shot of Mount Alamut, one of the major locations in the novel, and thought that it might make a good basis for a cover. Unfortunately, it was shot by an Iranian photographer and there's that whole nasty embargo thing going on which would make licensing potentially entertaining.

At one point during the process, I went out looking for licensable images that might be used to pull a cover together. I found this for an image of the mountain and this for a skyscape. And when you pull it all together and work it over in Photoshop, you get something that looks like this:
( Big old picture inside )

Unfortunately, it turns out that the chances of this turning into mud in the printing process are something on the order of a hundred percent, so we're going to be doing something else. (It's amazing how much brighter things are on the screen than they are when you print them out. I loaded new cartridges into the color laser printer last night, because I really needed to see if this was going to look ok in print. It won't.)

On the other hand, I had fun doing it and I kind of like it, so I figured I'd let you all look at it.

We paid for the licenses, so somebody should. :)