Holidays non-break

Hope you all had a great Christmas. Me, I just spent it at home, apart from the obligatory visits to mum's (24th evening and 25th lunch) – also because I ate too much (or too differently) and was sick on the 25th afternoon!

So I spent this long weekend as usual, reading, drawing and watching movies. Oh, and because Dear Techie Bro gave me a brand new laptop for Xmas, I experimented on it a little. It has Linux installed instead of Windows, so I have to get used to some stuff. It has Firefox and Open Office exactly like the old PC, but no Photoshop yet – I'll have to wait until he moves all the data from the old one to the new one.

Where I'll have to download the Linux versions of Skype and Calibre to continue my experiments with e-pub books – not sure if I can copy Kindle for PC or just use my Kindle from now on either. Ah, well, I have time to learn (don't listen to the little whine of Technophobe Me, I'll get over it! ).

As I couldn't find any equivalent of Windows Movie Maker (I'm sure there is one), I decided to do all the book trailer changes I needed to do before switching computers. So new and extended  SKYBAND trailer, same with author trailer and the one and only Italian trailer for the only Italian novel I've put out so far.

I don't think I'll waste any more time on book trailers, I've never bought a book because of the book trailer (OK, I've sold one copy of SKYBAND thanks to the book trailer! ), so I'd rather be off writing or drawing the actual story or more covers instead of doing book trailers. It was fun, but that's 2011!

So, I'm inking SKYBAND 10 – I happened to be doing #5 last Holiday Season. So 5 chapters a year means next year I'll finish it! OK, hopefully before the Holiday Season… and then I'll decide what to do next. I might keep drawing covers and stop the graphic novels altogether (which might leave me time to do some pencil drawings, if I have less digital art! ). I have an idea, but maybe I'll just write the prose version. We'll see.

And as I wasn't happy with the first cover of 2012, I re-did it – twice. I think I'll stick with the last version, and will work on the second cover soon – again, I'm not happy with the first try. I'll leave you with a gallery of the characters you'll meet next year, the drawings for the Chronicles of the Varian Empire were done before I started translating and I'm not using them for covers, so enjoy them here.

Click to view slideshow.