Winnie Jean Howard

Fatso Progress

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Took the entire weekend off last week for the first time in months to enjoy Mother’s Day and play with real paints and digital drawings. Here’s a digital drawing start of Fatso, one of the obnoxious ghosts from the Casper movie. Remember it? I watch it every Halloween month, mostly because I’m a huge Christina Ricci fan. Such a fun movie. This is from a hilarious scene where he becomes the deceased mother of Christina Ricci to kiss her father.

Fatso’s part of my Ladies of Horror series where I take a well known female horror character and turn her into a Patrick Nagel painting. I’m getting kinda bored with the tracings, so this has been extra fun to do. Taking me a bit of time to work on because I’m not the greatest with gradients yet. The character just works so much better with depth. Took me forever to get the hair the way I like it, and as a critical artist, I could five you a list of things I still hate about it. Hoping to get it done before next week’s status.

Big news on Angels Dark and Dumb. I’ve changed the name of the third book based on some critique advice I got from a writer friend. Originally the title was Cause for Redemption. The title goes well with Call for Obstruction and Warrant for Damnation, it following a similar pattern of words. But, again, it kinda has a lack of comedy feel. So, I’m changing the title to something I came up with a while back. Are you ready for it? Big reveal…

On the Corner of Hell and Second Chances

What do you think? It actually goes well with the titles for the three next books in the series. Yes, I’ve gotten as far in naming and detailing the ideas for them. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another 10 years to see them published.

This Blog is Almost 20 Years Old

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Can you believe it? Almost 20? WOW! I had to go look up how long blogs have been around and found they started in 1994. That’s 10 years before I started this one. It was originally on the free WordPress site and then I created my own website. I tried a few other sites like Blogger, but WordPress has been my choice of website/blog tools most years.

Now that I’ve completely and totally bored you with technology talk, let me introduce this week’s artwork. This is called Drifting In or Floating In. Done for my Drawing I class, so it’s a photo of an old school piece that was done with ink and black watercolor. I don’t remember the exact assignment though. I think it had to do with foreground and background landscapes.

Unfortunately, there is a delay on the release of the new editions of Angels Dark and Dumb. Going day-to-day at the moment, still working on the new, improved covers. Until further notice, Warrant for Damnation will remain free upon request. While it is more than worth the wait for the new covers, I’m starting to feel like a kid at Christmas. LOL! At my age, I guess it’s a good thing.

The only other big news is that I finished the blog post I mentioned a few weeks ago about remaking the Angels Dark and Dumb. The Remaking of a Fiction Series and Why You Should Consider Remaking Yours is live on the ArmLin House blog, which is my media company’s website. You will find it particularly interesting if you are also a fiction writer.

That is all this week…talk to ya next week…

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Zombies

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Yep, I got zombies on the brain. That’ll tell you how much I love them. Could also be because I started reading Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?: A Neuroscientific View of the Zombie Brain by Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek. So far it’s blowing my mind on how the brain works. I also did the collage to the right recently. Lots of fun and one of my favorites so far.

Very exciting news on my Amazon followers. I have 44. Okay, not so impressive, but if you had asked me before they added the number to Author Central, I’d have said I likely have only 3. I guess they added it a while back, but I just learned about it. Forced me to also spend some time there, updating my author profile. I’m not a huge fan of the new look and feel of the author pages though. Oh well.

And speaking of being an author, book covers are still in the works for the first 3 books. Everything else is ready to go. Trying to make sure I meet a May 15th release date. Still giving out Warrant for Damnation for free if you want it. Go to the Contact page to make a request.

Have a great week!

Run the Gauntlet

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This is all I got for ya this week. It’s an old perspective assignment from my Drawing I class. Also happens to be the hallway to my bathroom, minus the holes and knives of course. My favorite part of doing this drawing was finding the mix of handles for the assorted sharp objects.

Next week I should have book covers. Hopefully all the books in Angels Dark and Dumb will also be published/republished. I’m also writing an informative blog post for the ArmLin House Production blog on the remaking of a book series. So far, I’ve acquired the experience of changing my author name from W. J. Howard to Winnie Jean Howard along with changing the series name, two things that kinda make it time consuming to publish. It’s also taken me way too long to write each of the books. Oh yeah, and my experience with way too many publishers for book 1. Blah blah blah…forever complaining about this series. Truth is I like to do things the hard way.

Saw the new Evil Dead Rise this week too. I give it an average review. As I would, I really wanted more comedic moments. Thing I liked most about the movie was the dark and dreary atmosphere and setting. High budget, so of course the special effects were done well. Not gross or shocking enough for me, but good mainstream horror movie.

Enjoy your week!

Lydia Deetz is Done

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She’s done! Lydia Deetz was fun and a little challenging, which is a good thing. I had the most fun with her hair. She is one of my favorite characters in horror comedy movies because I can relate to my favorite quote by her in Beetlejuice…

“I, myself, and strange and unusual.”

Not much else other than the freebie running for Angels Dark & Dumb in the previous blog post. Again, Call for Obstruction will be off of the KindleUnlimited program going forward. I want it available in more stores. Fall for Freedom will remain on the program. Boring news I’m dumping on you twice.

Otherwise, I won’t drone on about my recent bout with the flu and the worst sore throat ever. Oops! I just did. Anyway, have a great week!