The Pre-Order

A lot of  people don't believe in the devil. The constant hindrances force me to. There's good news. There's bad news. There's news that makes me want to pull my hair out.

The good news is that the book has been submitted to Amazon for pre-order. The title is The Rise of Aethan Lightbringer. It should be available on their web site before 6:30am EDT March 14. The release date is the 19th. That gives me some time to overcome the bad news.

The other good news is that the cover art is done. I'm not completely happy with it, but it's what I could afford. :) Almost anything is better than the army field manual covers on the original series, right? The bad news is it needs to be professionally photographed for me in digital format, not a physical picture. I haven't been able to find someone to do that yet. My best hope was this guy. He's the only digital photographer listed in the phone book. Yes, I live in the middle of nowhere. As you can see, he was having health problems in 2012. Both of his numbers in the phone book are out of service. No one else I've been able to talk to can do it. I'm still waiting to hear back via email from the closest photographer to me.

Printers are "supposed" to be able to photograph artwork. It's part of what they do and is part of being a printer from what I understand. I talked to one who didn't know that. We have fewer printers than photographers here. Not to be sarcastic, but how else do they record images, of say a poster, of the things they print? Maybe I should call back and ask. Everyone can't possibly come in with a neat and tidy photo to work from. Do they send everyone to a photographer first? One photographer I tried to call has a fax machine answering the phone. It's the only number for them in the phone book or on their web site. I assume they don't get any calls. I wonder if they're baffled by that.

I should've been able to get this done Thursday afternoon. It didn't work out that way. Anyway, the cover on Amazon will be a generic until I can get the real cover photographed. After all the other delays, it makes me want to pull my hair out.

There's some kind of good news. If I can't get anyone local to do the photography, there's a medium-sized city just under an hour away. Another alternative is to buy something like this or this and do it myself. I'm not sure my camera's up to it, but I could try it and see. I already know enough about the technical quirks to be able to do it, although there's more to it than taking a picture. A real photographer would place a color chart beside the painting and use software to get the color correct. I'm not sure I could get the software for that. Nevertheless, doing it myself might be cheaper than a photographer.

And buying one of those kits would be a major part of building a small studio to make YouTube videos, an idea I've had for a while. I already have an HD camera and lapel microphone. The basic idea was to record a series of shows where I sit on a "set" and talk about things God's shown me. Nothing flashy, just nuggets from my own life.