Selina Fenech's Blog, page 23

Memory's Wake Cover Art

Our current cover art concept, illustrated, of course, by Selina Fenech (author and artist). What do you think? Would this grab your attention on a book shelf?

The resources that taught me how to write

I've been interested in writing for almost as long as I've been into drawing and visual art. As a kid I used to staple up wads of paper and write and illustrate my own stories in them. Exciting tales, such as Putrid Puffin (who ate peas and muffins, and wore a very fine hat), and tales of Rainbow Wings, a winged unicorn, and her sisters Sunset and Moonshine. As I got older, I started many longer stories, such as Kara and the Message Stone which made it to a full 86 pages. Between ages 6-12 I devoured books, both Middle Grade and Adult genres, almost always fantasy though and mainly seeking out stories with strong female leads. When I hit high school, the other kids taught me that reading wasn't cool. This is one of the saddest things that ever happened to my childhood (yes, I had an otherwise awesome upbringing). So, I almost entirely stopped reading, and writing. Thankfully, drawing didn't have as much stigma attached, so I kept at that, and found a new love in comic books which were also deemed not-TOO-geeky. I was actually a little obsessed. I wanted to be a comic author and artist, and during this time my skills as an artist increased dramatically from the effort I put in toward that goal. I authored and illustrated five or six single issue comics of different stories, from superhero to fantasy to symbolic. One of those comic books concepts was Memory's Wake. I played with character designs and page layouts, wrote and re-wrote scripts, but before I could start the actual work I hit university and ran out of time, and being close to adulthood, had to start thinking about adult things, like a career that might actually pay me. I decided I didn't have time to illustrate it, so I took the script I created and fleshed it out into a fairly poor Novella. It then got put away while I went about being an adult. But the story never left me. So cut to about 2009. Me and my (now) husband, David, are keen movie-goers. We love "story" in all it's forms and we spend ages discussing the finer aspects of storytelling in the movies we've seen. I start reading again, after almost ten years, and Memory's Wake starts haunting me.  I dig it up and read it and am horrified. It was full of the same sort of plot holes and lame character motivations that I love to pick apart in some other works. I almost put it away forever again, when David put me on the first step to learning how to write for reals when he pointed me to "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting" by Robert Mckee. "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting" by Robert Mckee. http://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance... While this is a screen writing book rather than about novel format writing, at it's heart what it is all about is "Story". What is...

What scares me most

Spoiler level: light As the concept of sharing my story with a wider audience becomes more real, I find myself getting nervous. I know there will be people who don't like my book, and people that will, just the same as with any book out there. I'm not the kind of writer who is so confident they can say "My book is better than this, this and this book!", or "If you like good books, read mine, you won't be disappointed!". Sometimes I feel good about my work. I know I've worked hard to craft a solid story. Other times I'm terrified that no matter how much I worked on it, it still isn't good enough, and maybe never will be. A lot of this might just be "performance anxiety". But the thing that scares me the very most, is that people won't like Memory (my main character) herself. And I could understand if they don't. Memory isn't your normal fantasy heroine. She's not always brave or righteous. She is violent, damaged, and her motives are generally toward self-preservation above all else. I worked hard to create characters that act logically based on their personalities and situations. They don't all just get together or stay together because they "just feel like an adventure" or because they feel some glorious moral responsibility to a stranger and their troubles. Each character has their own wants, their own goals, and sometimes those might not be at the best interest of the other characters. Memory doesn't know anything about herself or her past, but they have still shaped her personality. Her upbringing, although she can't remember it, was troubled to say the least. Her driving force is to find her way home, to find her family, and, if possible, regain her memories. And she'll do whatever she can to reach that goal. Memory is very special to me, but that is because I know everything about where she came from, and also where she's going. Memory grows and changes throughout the trilogy, from someone angry and tortured to… well, you'll see. Everything she was is stripped away, everything of her past life, and she's starting fresh. The past still haunts her, but even in the first book she's making choices about who she want's to become, regardless of who she was in the past. It's a very long and hard journey for her that will take her to the darkest possible places, but I can't wait for everyone to meet her when she's emerged from the other side. One of my favourite literary characters is Lyra from Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. And do you know what? I hated her in the first book, "The Golden Compass". She was a brat, a bully, she was selfish and she grated against me so much I almost didn't read the rest of the trilogy. I'm so glad I did. Lyra learns and grows into one of the most inspiring, selfless heroines I've ever known. I...

Illustrations completed

I just finished work on the final illustration for Memory's Wake. With it done, the total number of illustrations for the book is now forty-four. I didn't think I'd ever get finished. It had become a running joke around here, because I originally planned to do about thirty illustrations. As I drew them, I kept adding to the list. Every time I got to "the last one" I'd add two or three new illustrations to the to-do list. My husband told me he won't believe I'm finished until I've illustrated every individual word. I think I may have been adding more to the list as a procrastination method of avoiding "the last one", which was a very challenging artwork due to it's level of detail. It shows four major characters, rose vines, a detailed background and lots and lots and lots of lace. It took me at least 60 hours of painting to finally get it done. And now I really am done. I think forty-four is a good number, and I'm finally satisfied that I've illustrated the moments I wanted to. There are nine full page, very detailed artworks, and the rest are smaller sketch style illustrations. They are all in black and white for printing within a paperback format, and some are the most detailed work I've ever done. I'm really happy with them and can't wait for everyone to see them! I will be sharing some in the lead up to the launch, but obviously can't share them all. There are some that contain spoilers, and some I simply want to be exclusive to the book. Below you can see three of the smaller sketch style illustrations that will be appearing in the book- It's been such "hard work"- looking up reference photos of pretty Victorian dresses and shirtless male models (I think I enjoyed painting the mysterious forest-man character a little too much…). It's been great getting to know my characters in a whole new way, they are so much more alive for me now. In each illustration I can see their personality and the emotions they are feeling right at that point. There's still a huge to-do list for this book, but I'm sweeping through it now!  

Character Close-Ups

Because many of the illustrations for Memory's Wake will be printed at a size where some of the detail will be lost, I've decided to share close-up details from some of the illustrations. These little snippets show a face shot of each of the main characters, good guys and bad guys! Some you'll recognise from the characters page and others you'll have to get to know in the book. Click the image below of the male cast to view it at full size. Who is your favourite?