Deirdre.net

The 2015 Awards Consideration Post

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2015-awards-consideration-post
Another year! And a post to let those of you who vote for Hugos, Nebulas and other science fiction/fantasy awards know what I’ve done in the last year for your award nomination consideration. Without further ado:

Best Fan Writer

Five Several of my best posts:

  1. After fifty years of it never being public, I broke the story about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s abuse of her daughter Moira. Thank you to Moira for choosing my blog to speak out in. My two most-viewed posts on this: Marion Zimmer Bradley Gave Us New Perspectives, All Right and Marion Zimmer Bradley: It’s Worse Than I Knew. Link to my other posts on this topic.

  2. How to Get to Helsinki from Pitcairn. All that odd travel knowledge comes in useful sometimes. Bonus picture from Pitcairn that I took last January.

  3. Delia Derbyshire, Overlooked Musician and Composer. A piece about the performer and co-composer of the famous Doctor Who theme.

  4. Vernacular & Literary Tricks. Commentary on the use of vernacular in fiction, specifically sf/f.

  5. Jay Lake, RIP, and a Few Memories. I’ve never been able to say before, on the day someone died, “I had a great time at his wake last year.” That’s the kind of person Jay was.

  6. Also, while my series of posts about Ellora’s Cave are more about the romance genre than science fiction/fantasy, EC also publishes some arguably SF/F/WTF works, including EC’s main owner’s own work. Review here. Eggs!
    Anyhow, getting to my writing on the subject, Proving Substantial Truth is an interesting post about the following hypothetical. Let’s say a blogger publishes an article that says “a set of authors” hasn’t been paid in quite a while? What does it take, size-of-data-set-wise, to prove that that’s not substantially true?
    And then there was the “Virtual Visit” to Romanticon, Ellora’s Cave’s own single-track convention, where single-track could be a double entendre. On the way back to Texas, Cavemen Axl and Taylor wound up sitting within three feet of Amber Vinson. They self-quarantined at first, then, when they entered the more likely active contagious time period, the quarantine was mandatory.

My other fan writing is tagged here.
Note: If you’re inclined to vote for me for Best Fan Writer (or, heaven help you, Best Fanzine), the canonical version of this site is deirdre.net. I compose there, and it pushes to Dreamwidth, Livejournal, Tumblr, Twitter, my Facebook timeline, my Facebook Author page, Google Plus, and, until it annoyed me by stripping my own links out, LinkedIn.

Best Fan Artist

  1. I’m best known for this t-shirt I designed for John Scalzi.

  2. I’m proudest of this set of products I designed around the Dihydrogen Monoxide theme.
    a. Approved Dihydrogen Monoxide Isolation Vessel (aka coffee cup)
    b. Stand Back Dihydrogen Monoxide Reaction Timer (aka clock)
    c. Stand Back Dihydrogen Monoxide Containment Shield (aka shower curtain)
    For what it’s worth, I sold exactly 0 items in this series last year, but I had a lot of fun making them anyway.

  3. What to Do With a Rusty Dumpster. Space art from common things.

  4. Mockup: 307 Ale Bottles. One night, Tom Smith’s song “307 Ale” would not leave me alone. Hence.

Best Short Story

I don’t think “The Duchess’s Dress” has a hope of actually winning anything, but I did publish it last year. It’s in the middle of flipping over to Amazon Select, meaning it should be available in Kindle Unlimited in a couple of days.
If you’re not a KU subscriber and don’t have a copy but are an eligible nominator, please email me and tell me your preferred format. (EPUB, MOBI, or PDF. If PDF, let me know if you need large print.)

Eligible Nominators

  • Nebula: SFWA Active and Associate members.
  • Hugo Awards: You’re a supporting or active member of either Loncon3 and/or Sasquan, and/or MidAmericon. Note that while nominations typically remain open until March-ish, you’d have to become a Sasquan member by January 31st.

What to Do With a Rusty Dumpster

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What-to-Do-With-a-Rusty-Dumpster
Note: this is a much simpler form of this tutorial from Spoongraphics.
The other night, a friend of mine and I were chatting, and she complimented something I’ve been working on (but haven’t yet posted). And I said, “ehh, it’s just a dumpster.”
She replied, “I would not have assumed dumpster.”
So, here’s my dumpster space scene mini-tutorial.

  1. Acquire a photo of a rusty dumpster. I used this one ($3), but many others are out there. Or—take your own! I used a blue (sea) + rust (land) combo, but there are many other combinations that work. Scratches, however, make it seem unrealistic (though you can mend those in Photoshop).

  2. Cut out a circular piece that you like the water/land shapes on. Spherize (in Photoshop: Filter > Distort > Spherize). Rotate it, if desired, to put the elements where you most like them. (I didn’t bother with this.)

  3. Create a black area the same size. Gaussian blur it with a big blur. Then blur it again. This is the most fiddly part, and you’ll need to fuss with it to make it look realistic.

  4. Expand the shadow region until it looks right.

  5. Add inner and outer glow to the planet so it has atmosphere.

  6. Find a good lens flare photo. I used one from Photography planet I had lying around and used it at 80% normal blend mode.

  7. A good background is black or near-black, and has stars. I happened to use one from here. You can use brushes to make star patterns, or use photos of sky or nebulae—whatever.

  8. I added a different layer above the lens flare, set it to lighten 70%, then filled in a few places (atmosphere, flare itself) with 50%, 70%, or 100% black to keep the stars from peeking through.

From there, the Spoon Graphics tutorial has lovely ideas on how to make the whole thing more realistic, including adding clouds and stuff.

Mockup: 307 Ale Bottles

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I found this beer bottle mockup last night, and thought I’d have fun with it.
Catch is, this particular product would probably be better vended in something stranger—like a Klein bottle. Oh well.
Click for full size:
Bottle-Beer-Mockups
It’s an homage to a Tom Smith song of the same title:

There’s many drinks you’ll drink, me lads, but this one beats them all.
One hundred fifty-three and one-half percent alcohol,
A beer brewed in a tesseract, it’ll shoot you through the roof,
And if you don’t believe me, I’ve got lots and lots of proof.

Graphic Element Credits

Font: Veneer by Yellow Design Studio I love this font, use it all the time.
Logo font: Trend Handmade by LatinoType
(Both of the above via Design Cuts, as usual.)
Beer Mockup: Original Mockups
Logo: 12 Sci-Fi Badges from VoxelFlux

Coming Monday: "Tool of the Matriarchy" T-Shirts

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Tool-of-the-Matriarchy-Print-mockup
“Tool of the Matriarchy” is an expression mentioned in the series of John Scalzi’s tweets that led to the “Traitor to the Mens” t-shirts.
I’ve been working on getting the right look to try to communicate the intended tone with something that’d print well. I just haven’t been feeling really well (yay fibro), so I’m going to take the weekend off and have it ready Monday morning.
I’m really enjoying this t-shirt thing. Back in the day, I used to do abstract screen prints in like 5-10 layers and print my own shirts, doing all the photo separations myself. I’ve always enjoyed screen printing, though I haven’t done any in ages.
Then, once upon a time, there was a very limited series of Deirdre’s Pet Geek t-shirts.
I’ve designed other t-shirts, including a convention t-shirt for BayCon one year, and a couple of commissions over the years.

Scalzi "Traitor to the Mens" T-Shirt & Prints

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Traitor-to-the-Mens-T-shirt-dark
Available now: dark background t-shirt, light background t-shirt, and prints, stickers, posters, and cards.
If you need a size bigger than 3x or don’t like American Apparel shirts, then I also put them on Zazzle, which is slightly more expensive than Redbubble. dark background t-shirt, light background t-shirt.
John Scalzi said: I think I’m going to make a t-shirt that says “TRAITOR TO THE MENS” on it.
I offered to do the design.
He replied: DO EEEET
So here we are. Here’s John Scalzi’s background story for the phrase.
I offered in part because the very night before I was on a graphics site and had skipped over a free mustache graphic element because, and I quote, “I’ll never use that.”
When Scalzi mentioned the t-shirt idea, of course, it was the first thing that came to mind. As it turns out, I didn’t use that one I’d seen, I used one in a font I had.
Plus, thanks to Design Cuts and their awesome graphics bundles, I had—no joke—twelve gigabytes of new graphics toys chomping at the bit waiting to be used. I really wasn’t kidding about collecting grunge textures.
I want to give credit to the designers for the elements I’ve used, top to bottom.

  1. Sunburst, from Outdoor Logos by Ian Barnard of Vintage Design Co. (Purchased as a part of a Design Cuts bundle.) Initially, I just wanted a sunburst as a design element, but then I realized the kind of people who think feminist men are traitors are just, well, puckery assholes. So there you have it.
  2. Fedora, from Shona Dutta’s Retro Hats collection. Hey, someone local to me!
  3. Veneer font, from Ryan Martinson of Yellow Design Studios. Purchased as a part of the Design Cuts Monster Creative Font Bundle which is a great deal. While it’s a past bundle, if you buy the current bundle, you can also buy this one if it floats your boat. I love this, so I’ll talk about it more below.
  4. Roverd font, from Dexsar Harry Fonts. (“to the”) Indonesia represent.
  5. Veneer Extras font, also from Yellow Design Studios. (This is the mustache.)
  6. Grunge texture is from Vintage Textures by Ghostly Pixels, used on the fedora and “to the.” (Purchased as a part of a Design Cuts bundle.)
  7. (paper goods only) See the chalkboard in there? No? That’s the beauty of textures. It doesn’t have to be obvious to add to the whole. From Bruno Maioral/BMachina.
  8. (paper goods only) The book-like texture is from Cruzine. (Purchased as a part of a Design Cuts bundle.) I tried a bunch of textures, but I liked the feel of this one.
  9. (paper goods only) The folded paper texture is from Simon Berkey Hartmann/The Shop. (Purchased as a part of a Design Cuts bundle.) Metaphorical nod to the well-worn arguments that follow only a few lines of thought.

Veneer and Why I Love This Kind of Font

veneer-demo
Bottom type layer: Veneer, color white.
Middle type layer: Veneer 2, color yellow.
Top type layer: Veneer 3, color red.
Cool effect, huh? That’s just three of the six variations. That said, I didn’t think multiple colors worked as well for the t-shirt. Usually, you’d use colors closer together, too, but I was illustrating the concept rather than using it in a larger design.