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I finally finished working on the design for the new cover for Kendra Kandlestar and the Box of Whispers. It’s my plan to use this cover for the electronic editions of the book.
Who knows? I may also use this for a future print edition. But for now I just plan to use it for the ebooks.
You can see how this cover came to be by viewing stage 1 and stage 2 of my process. I hope you like this final result!
. . . and not an actor. All the proof you’ll ever need is in the movie that I “starred” in, along with my fellow authors James McCann and Kallie George.
We made this fantastic piece of cinema last year to help celebrate our writing camp based on the theme of time travel—but I finally just obtained the final version (the “director’s cut,” if you will), so thought I would post it. All the credit for special effects, writing, producing, directing goes to my friend Luke Spence Byrd. All the credit for bad acting goes to me!
I’ve been focusing more on the words than pictures lately for Kendra Kandlestar V, but here is a sketch I’ve produced of one of the scoundrels that will appear in the book. You can see some candidate names for him, but I believe the final name will be Iro Vex.
I have to give credit for this character’s design to my class. They’re a bit Star Wars crazy and decided that there should be a bounty hunter in the world of Kendra Kandlestar. So a bounty hunter they shall have (though you might be a little surprised to find out who this nasty rogue is chasing).
Earlier this week I shared the sketch and black and white version of the new alternate cover I’m designing for Kendra Kandlestar and the Box of Whispers. Here’s the colourized version of the artwork:
I hope you like it! I coloured it digitally, but tried some new techniques. The next step is to plunk this illustration into a layout format along with the title and byline. Coming soon!
One of my goals for this year is to release The Chronicles of Kendra Kandlestar in electronic format. I had wanted to this last year, but one of the reasons for the delay is that I want to add a few features, plus do some alternate covers.
Here is my sketch for The Box of Whispers cover.
Here is my final black and white rendering of the same illustration.
My next job will be to colourize it and then combine it with the other parts of the cover design. As I complete these stages, I’ll be sure to show you!
For the last few weeks I’ve been devoting lots of time to writing the fifth and final Kendra Kandlestar book. This means getting up early every morning and writing for at least an hour before I do anything else.
Now to answer your questions:
NO, I don’t have a title yet.
NO, I don’t know what colour the cover will be (though I’m grateful that you keep making suggestions; yellow seems to be in the lead).
NO, I’m not finished (I just started!).
What I do know is that Kendra is finally going to have a new hairdo—which means, after four books of drawing her with all seven of her braids that I finally get a chance to do something a bit different!
Here’s a snapshot of my sketchbook showing some of the ideas for how she will look.
Last week I had a chance to visit one of my favourite places in the world: the outdoor skating loop on Apex Mountain in the Okanagan Valley.
The loop meanders through the forest for about a kilometer. I always feel like I’ve entered an enchanted realm where I just have to skate my way through the world. This magical feeling usually comes to an abrupt end when I hit the slope on the way down, as I always inevitably crash into the snowbank (I’m quite good at skating; it’s the stopping that’s the problem).
But when the sun sets and the coloured lights begin to glimmer on the snow along the truth, well this truly is a magical place. So, for those of you who keep asking me how to find the Land of Een, this might be the next best thing!
CWC just wrapped up its annual winter camp with myself, James McCann, Kallie George, and Dan Bar-el. I concentrated my classes on world-building, helping the students to fashion their own enchanted containers to help them bring their own fantasy lands to life.
The creations were absolutely amazing! Over fifty different boxes were created; here’s just a few photos from the past two days . . .
An early Auld Meryn’s gift arrived today in the form of a new review for Kendra Kandlestar and the Crack in Kazah, which you can read at Charlotte’s Library.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a fabulous review, mostly because she comments on how my plot hangs together. Anyone who has talked to me about my process on this book knows that getting all of the details of the time travel correct caused me weeks upon weeks of angst. Ah, if only I could go back in time to tell myself that it would all turn our all right!
And what’s Auld Meryn’s Eve, you ask? Oh—well, that’s a holiday that the Eens celebrate on the Winter Solstice. It’s rather like their version of Christmas.
If you want to get the full scoop on Auld Meryn’s Eve, I refer you to the Eencyclopedia!
