Showing posts with label gimp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gimp. Show all posts

Monday, December 24, 2012

Attack of the Sugar Plum Fairies

Attack of the Sugar Plum Fairies

Just in time for Christmas, I wrote "Attack of the Sugar Plum Fairies, A Story for Demented Children", the fifth installment of the Stories for Demented Children.  It's a humorous adventure story featuring three pretty little sugar plum fairies and their quest for equal rights . . .




Stories for Demented Children

My first story for Demented Children, "The Emo Bunny that Should" has been wildly popular.  I then wrote Zachary Zombie and the Lost Boy, which is rated and reviewed higher than any other story I've written.  The series is becoming popular and probably creates the best chance of getting me noticed.

When I write these stories, I try to think of something or someone that wouldn't normally be a hero.  A common term is anti-hero.  Emo bunnies, rainbows, cows and zombies are definitely not the standard hero.  Then I put them in an odd situation and try to figure out what they would do.  Throw in a dash of humor and there you have it.

The snowflakes were added to the cover using a brushes pack for GIMP

The story

I decided a few months earlier that I wanted to do a Christmas story.  Various ideas came to mind, but some of them had been done and others just didn't really catch my imagination.  I honestly don't remember how I came up with this one, but it started with the title, "Attack of the Sugar Plum Fairies".

Next was figuring out the plot.  I had to have attacking Sugar Plum Fairies.  Why were they attacking?  How many of them?  It's not always easy to come up with something odd.  One of the biggest issues was that I had to limit how many characters I actually showcased.  In a short story, there is very little time to develop characters or a plot.  The key is to keep the characters to a minimum and the timeline of the plot to a single event.

I remembered in "The Emo Bunny that Should", I wrote about labor issues with the Easter Bunny and woodland creatures.  In it, I commented that elves had organized a labor union.  I decided to latch onto that idea and have it so that the Sugar Plum Fairies weren't treated fairly in the original contracts.  Then I came up with the concept that they always had to wear skimpy outfits and were being exploited.

At this point, I'd like to remind you that they are stories for "Demented Children", not normal children.  I gear them towards older kids too.  Plus, I think I have more adults reading these things than kids, so . . .

When I went to write it, I made up the three fairies that were the main characters.  Araedae is the leader of the group. She's brave and smart as any leader should be.  Sydae is the wise-cracking fairy and Zannae is an MIT graduate . . . because I needed a computer hacker . . . Remember, the title says "A Story for Demented Children".

I generally have little favorite parts of a story.  A lot of people may not notice them, or think they're all that great, but I find them enjoyable and fascinating to write.  In this book it was the descriptions of the fairies and how each had their own color.

An excerpt:   Her brilliant violet eyes sparkled in the light from the nearby streetlamp.  Every Sugar Plum Fairy in the world had different color eyes with wings and hair to match.



The tutorial I used to make the candy cane text.  It isn't the best tutorial, so I spent a lot of extra hours trying to get it right.

Description

The Sugar Plum Fairies are tired of dancing for nothing. To make matters worse, the North Pole is freezing, they have to wear skimpy outfits and their poor little legs get worn out quickly. When the Elvin Labor Union was formed, the poor little fairies were left out of any sort of fair bargaining agreement.

The time has come for all of that to change.

Everyone knows Christmas Eve is the best time to attack the North Pole. Santa’s getting ready to deliver toys, the elves are partying and the reindeer have finished playing their reindeer games. Can the legendary North Pole withstand yet another attack? Will Christmas come to a screeching halt?

Join three stealthy fairies: Sydae, Araedae and Zannae, as they try to make life easier for all Sugar Plum Fairies. Will they be able to succeed in their mission? What’s happened to Santa? Will the elves stop the fairies from their task? And what secret is Mrs. Claus hiding from the world?

This is a short story approximately 4600 words long.

Diesel

"Attack of the Sugar Plum Fairies" is also included in "A Collection of Stories for Demented Children", a compilation of all five of the Demented Children stories.  Each story can be had individually for free and I encourage you to download them.  I charge a token price of $2.99 for the collection in hopes of increasing my chances of becoming a self-supporting writer.  :)



Friday, July 20, 2012

Converting a book cover for Createspace from jpeg to pdf

Introduction

This is a step by step instruction of how to take a jpeg and convert it to a pdf file using Open Office.  I'm writing it for you, but I'm also writing it for me because I forgot how last time and there is a terrible lack of tutorials out there on how to do this.

First, I'd like to say that it's absolutely silly that Createspace won't just take jpegs *sigh*

I use GIMP to make my book covers.  The easiest way would be to use Adobe Photoshop, but that's assuming you can afford it. (I can't)  Adobe can save as pdf since they own the format or something like that.  GIMP can now save as pdf, but I like doing it this way better.  The image doesn't darken as much in print and i don't get an extra layer warning from Createspace. 

Createspace provided a template based on the size of my book.  I then made the cover, which was another insanely involved process that I'm not doing a walkthrough for.

The steps I'm taking are the best I was able to figure out by . . . guessing.  That's right.  I guessed.  However, the cover was accepted by Createspace, so it works.  I've done this multiple times by now and it's worked extremely well.

Note:  If you have a problem seeing the images, hold down 'crtl' and zoom in with your mouse wheel.  It'll make the page larger.  :)

Tutorial

So, this tutorial starts once the cover is completely done in GIMP.  You can get GIMP here:  http://www.gimp.org/

1.  Save it as a jpeg.
2.  If you don't have Open Office (freeware), download it.  I use Microsoft Office for all my normal files, so I was careful not to let Open Office take over all the files it wanted to.  Basically uncheck all the boxes that ask if you want to make it the default program for documents, worksheets, etc.
You can get Open Office here:  http://www.openoffice.org/download/
3.  Open Open Office. (No, I'm not stuttering. :p)
4.  Click on the folder image that says "open"




5.  Right click on the picture and select original size.




6.  Go to 'Format' at the top of Open Office.  It will bring down a box.  In that, choose 'Page'.

7.  Switch the orientation to 'Landscape'.  Then adjust all of the margins to 0. (Mine default to .39.  I don't know why) Open Office will complain about this being outside print range, but ignore it.  You don't want margins on your book cover.




8.  Next, you'll want to change your width and height.  At the bottom of the next picture, you can see the dimensions of your picture.  In this case, 12.83x9.27.  So change the width and height to those numbers.  When you're done with that, your cover should be exactly the right size.




9.  Right click on the picture again.  Choose 'Alignment'.  Choose 'Top'.  Then choose 'Left'.  That will put your image in the top left corner.




10.  Next, you're ready to export it to pdf.  This step is super simple.  Just click the pdf icon at the top.  Then make sure it's named as you like and click 'save'.




Finish
You're done!!!!  You now have a file that can be uploaded to Createspace. :)  Congratulations.  Hope it went well.

All my best,

John H. Carroll