Smoking!

Not really; I don't want to be stopped...

Crazy. Here I thought I'd never get going until this weather picked a non-Apocalyptic range. Physically, I'm still a hot mess but mentally, I'm insatiable.

I was supposed to take a break today, but yet again, I crept back to my passion projects. I want to share so bad but I'm waiting until I release the covers. I'll have a ton of progression screenshots to share too.

Surreal, really. Once I give into the curiosity and start poking at the paintings, I start feeling like they're part of the space around me. I'm flying through the toolbox without consciously choosing anything but somehow it's always the right tool. I'm connecting with the characters all over again, remembering why I fell in love with writing them to begin with. Beyond all the worries, I remember that I'm not a novice. That I've been at this my whole life, got two degrees in design, rocked an internship and paid my dues. I made the choice to design intuitively, to chose vision over what is most effective for the market. 

Let's face it-- the most distributed advice is to emulate success, that authors in your genre before you paved the way to give you the guidelines. Future writers are supposed to build on that. Bullshit. My favorites are my favorites because they followed their story. They were dedicated to their craft. Let's not forget that this IS a new age and self-publishing, for better or worse, ushered in the courage for polymaths to shine. We get to research cover design, formatting, the craft of writing and storytelling, all in a way that makes us agents, publishers and marketers on a new level. We get to blog from our tablets and put our computers, scanners, printers and social media to the test. It's a wonderful time indeed.

So as impatient as I am to share, I'm also in a workhorse state of achieving. Writing, drawing, formatting, editing, planning and, more importantly, doing. Imagining success but humbled to the task of just enjoying the process. It's both in my hands and completely out of them. I read my stories over and over and never get sick of them. Someday, I hope you will too.

Find your passion and revisit it whenever you can. Your story awaits.