Category: Random Ramblings

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Sketches

I was looking through some files on my computer and I found a lot of book-related sketches. Some of them are really cool and I thought it was a waste just having them lying around on my hard drive!

Here’s a few of them:

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Alassane Skeleton

This was the very first drawing ever made for the Angel’s Voice series! And yes, it’s a smoking skeleton…

This came into being when I asked my good friend Hans Christian(aka Qulr) for ideas for the book I was going to write. Of course, people who have read Resounding Echo can guess which character this ended up being, but at the time I really didn’t know how I was going to fit a smoking skeleton into the story!

Sketch Cloaked Woman

This one should be easy to recognize! It is, of course, the first sketch for the cover art of Resounding Echo! It was also the first drawing made of the main character, Selissa.

I remember nearly squealing with joy when the artist sent me this. I’m really not a squealy kind of person, but this was just so much better than anything I had pictured in my head and I still love it to this day.

As much as I like the finished version, I think the sketch captures the character even better. She just have that look in her eyes…

Sketch Angel

Let’s continue with the cover artwork! This is the first sketch of Silent Sound’s cover art and also the first drawing of Seymour. I don’t know why the artist initially gave him long hair, but it is rather fetching on him, isn’t it?

Huntress Sketch

Last but not least, the sketch of the Huntress artwork!

For this one, I asked the artist ZKROX to try out a new style, instead of the manga-like style he used for my other covers. The result turned out really well, even though it ended up looking a lot different from the original sketch!

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I think I will stop here for now, but I have lots of sketches laying around. I might post some of them later!

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To My Beloved Brother

Cross

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Today was the release day for my new book Silent Sound and as happy as I am to see my second book on the market, there’s a personal reason for choosing this exact date.

I have known from the beginning that this book would be dedicated to my older brother Michael. So when May came around and I got ready to publish it, I realized that this would be the perfect day to do it.

Exactly 10 years ago, my brother died after having been hit by a car the day before. It was a huge blow to family and we nearly didn’t make it through it. But we did, and here all these years later, I have made my peace with it. But I still miss him and seeing how my life turned out, I thought this was the perfect way to mark this day.

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Silent Sound’s Dedication 

To my beloved brother, who I know is watching over me from wherever he is now.

I’m sorry for not appreciating you while you were with me.

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Twitter Trends and Grotesque Ignorance

Twitter TrendsI decided to swing by Twitter to waste a bit of time during my break today. I looked briefly at the Trends panel (something I usually never do) and had to shake my head when #rapedbyaslothanditwasamazing was the first thing that met my eyes. Seriously, what’s wrong with people?!

But that wasn’t the worst thing. To my big surprise, I saw København(Copenhagen) and Danish among the trending words, and it puzzled me, since Denmark normally isn’t of much interest to the international world. And that’s when I saw, to my great horror, the words ‘Marie Krarup’ among the trends.

To anyone unaware of this, Marie Krarup is a Danish MP who visited New Zealand and offended the Maoris quite harshly with a bunch of ignorant and racist comments about their culture. You can read The Daily Mail’s article about it.

I read the article in the Danish news a couple of days ago and actually discussed it with some friends, but I honestly thought that it was the kind of blatant ignorance some politicians spurt out every once in a while, and would just be forgotten in a day or two. Which is why I was very surprised to see it laid out on Twitter, and as a trending topic, no less!

Marie Krarup is a member of the Danish People Party, which is widely known in Denmark as sometimes being borderline racist, but this is stupid even for them. And I can’t express how embarassed I am that this is the view the world gets of the Danish these days! Fortunately, I can tell you that the Danish people are raging against her as well. But still, she refuses to apologize, even though I doubt anyone is on her side.

Krarup says that some of her comments were ‘lost in translation’… I’m not sure exactly what the translation changed in her mind, but the Danish article was pretty bad already.

All in all, a bad day to be Danish on Twitter!

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Huntress Cover Art Revealed!

Though it suffered much delay, I can finally show off the cover art for my upcoming short story Huntress!

The cover art was once again painted by the talented ZKROX. Someone should give the poor guy a medal for putting up with me…

Huntress will be out in November, and remember to participate in the Giveaway in order to win a free Kindle ebook!

Huntress - Cover Art

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My Makeshift Typewriter

I love gadgets.

And though I have a perfectly good netbook (With teeth-mark on the lid from where my dog tried to eat it), I rarely bother to bring it with me or actually turn it on. So with a little imagination and the wonders of eBay, I put together something that I could always bring with me along with my notebook in order to type up stories and chapters without the distraction of my laptop.

You need:

1xSmartphone (Type doesn’t matter, but I use a Xperia Arc S from Sony Ericsson)

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1xAdapter – USB mini to regular

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1xUSB keyboard (Preferably small enough to comfortably carry in a handbag)

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Plug it all up, download a writing app like Google Drive and you have yourself a makeshift typewriter! An smartphone is awful to do internet surfing on and only carry minor games, so the 100031 distractions  provided by a normal computer are gone, leaving you able to concentrate on writing.

It might not be as comfortable as a laptop, but it works and I can carry it with me everywhere. It also means that I can sit down and type in the middle of the archery range (I would not recommend that unless you’re alone…) if I want to.

I have talked about how writing by hand gives me a way to write without distractions. Now I have a way of typing what I write up without getting caught up in the evilness of Spider Solitaire as well(Nearly choked on air when the game count showed 15200… And that’s despite it resetting everytime my computer breaks down!).

Next up, I will tell you about the wonders of mixing exercise in the gym with ebook reading (Again, would not recommend it if you get so caught up in a book that you fly off the treadmill…)!

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