Friday, January 16, 2015

Well, finally, after about 25 years of my saying I'd write it, Collin O'Daurc was written in little over 3 weeks. It's a shortie for me, 314 pages total, and a quick-read. You can plow through it in a couple of sittings. It's for sale as a paperback at Amazon, and the Kindle book is $2.99; you can get ePub at Smashwords.com, and the fully illustrated/formatted PDF from me.

Collin predates DOPS by at least 8 years in concept, but I couldn't come up with a plot until I decided to make it short, silly, and funny. Whether it's also good is another matter; it's a definite departure from DOPS, but then, all my non-DOPS books are.

Here's the jacket for the paperback:

We'll see about a sequel; I did start one, Island Water, but no guarantees on a release date since March of the Spiny Lobsters, part of the same collection of children's picture books as Sally Lightfoot's Journey, has been underway illustration-wise for some time (the text, in verse like Sally, has been finished for some time). Also underway, of course, is D6 (aka DOPS VI, Nightingale) , which has a measly 168 pages so far...not a whole lot when you consider it's likely to become another whopper like D4 (Espiridion).

Well, that's all for now...I can't remember now if I've posted the tentative cover front cover design for Spiny; if I did, well, here it is again!


Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Well, here it is the new year, and I've not done a thing on D6 (DOPS VI/NIGHTINGALE) for months now, I guess. In a way I'm sorry about that, because I know people are anxious to hear how it goes with Cass & Lawrie, and find out who the 6 folks are who get married.

But, the good new is that Collin O'Daurc is only a few chapters away from completion, and that it is a fantasy and a quick-read that will be little over 300 pages (for me, extremely short!). COD actually predates DOPS, by about ten years; but I never did anything about it except to decide that the main character was based on a hairstylist I used to know, who was from England. Why? Dunno. Just is. Other main characters include artist Paul Gauguin and Tully, a giant drill. What's a drill? It's the largest of the Old World monkeys, weighing over 100 pounds, and frequently mistaken for being in the baboon family. They look quite a bit like the mandrill, another huge primate famous for its red and blue face and equally colorful rump, but drills are black and white with touches of russet, and stockier. They also have the scariest teeth of anything capable of going on two legs.

What's next? That, I'm afraid I don't know--perhaps back to DOPS, perhaps on to other things! In any case, I wish all of you a very happy new year, and thank you for your visit!