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Posts by Cedar Sanderson

Apr 4

8 Comments

Inktail: Preparing Art for Print

In this second part of my series where I am making mistakes in public, I’m getting a coloring book print-ready. I’m using the new-to-me program Affinity Publisher to lay it out, and I am using Affinity Photo to get the hand-drawn art ready for layout. Something I learned last time I did this, with Inktail & Friends, is that it’s not as simple as getting a good scan or photo of the art. What you need is just the black lines, saved with transparency (I’ve been saving to png files).

And again, last time I did this I made a lot of mistakes. I’m hoping to avoid those this time, and wind up with a cleaner product. I was dreading this process, to be honest. That’s part of why it took me four years to get back around to it. The last one was so much work (and honestly not a lot of profit, not like a novel). However, I have dedicated fans and that makes me happy. So again, this is a labor of love! Read more

Mar 28

13 Comments

Inktail: Preparing for Print

I’m doing something a little dangerous. I’m going to be making mistakes in public. I should probably wait, do all this privately, and then report back when I’m done, but… This is what I’m working on as a writer and an artist this weekend. You’re stuck with it. And, truthfully I’m going to give you more links to the resources I am pulling from than I am of my work itself this week. I’m simply not far enough along in this project to show my work. Although it shouldn’t take me long once I get plugging and playing with Affinity Publisher. Read more

Mar 21

22 Comments

Writing Slapstick

I’m venturing out of my comfort zone with this story I’ve been working on. You see, life has been… interesting this year. It’s not just that feeling that the Four Horsemen are breathing down the back of my neck (don’t turn around) with plagues and earthquakes (what’s next? I don’t want to know!). It’s that my family seems to be taking turns one after another having health crises and there is *nothing* I can do. I’m stuck, at the day job, and the world is slowly turning upside down around me. I dropped my daughter off at work in the dark of the morning and she was telling me how work has been this last week. “Someone deadass looked at me on Wednesday and told me thank you. They said ‘thank you for working.’ I was thinking ‘What the f*ck does that mean?!” (Sidenote: the Junior Mad Scientist has a mouth that would make a sailor blush. It was getting better, and then she started working in a kitchen. All hope is lost).

What it meant was that people are running scared. Read more

Mar 14

8 Comments

Feeding the Grinder

I’ve thought, more than once, about story ideation as feeding the sausage grinder. I’ve made sausage many times over the years. I can remember making caribou sausage in Alaska, and making sure we ground bacon into it, because otherwise there’s just not enough fat. And when you make your own sausage, you know what’s in it… although that is also a myth. The whole thing about being grossed out over sausage making? Because unless using every scrap from the animal and paying it due respect by not allowing it to go to waste bothers you… Upton Sinclair made up a bunch of what went into his ‘expose’ that was really fiction. Just like a lot of documentaries on Netflix, it’s all about the shock factor, not so much the actual data and science. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Mar 7

13 Comments

Melange a’ Trois

This post is going to be like a box of mixed sweets. Nothing to do with one another, but hopefully still of interest to the readers. Read more

Feb 29

69 Comments

Guilty Reads are Good Reads

Last week I wrote about two childhood favorite authors. This week, another of my longtime guilty-pleasure reads passed away. Clive Cussler wrote unabashedly men’s action-adventure books, although the last few years I’d stopped looking for his stuff – it just wasn’t ‘feeling’ right to me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. When I was a kid, though… I used to read everything I could get my hands on. Although my parents prioritized reading… actually, I’m going to stop there and go down a rabbit hole for a minute. Read more

Feb 22

26 Comments

Of Meadowlarks and Close Human Encounters

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