This is my first post of 2012. I won't be able to provide photos to serve as visual aids since I am still figuring out the logistics of my new Acer computer.  Swagger Vasa covers consist of original drawings of the characters and then I add digital effects and backgrounds.  In book one, A Siruis Condition, he started out as a guy glancing up supposedly at the stars since he is in a field of stars with the constellation Orion featured, but he evolved into an entirely different person. I get input from Karen, the co-author and she didn't like the first draft of Swagger. On the cover are Flynn, the loveable yet deadly salvager and Colby Tamerlane, the military colonel, two people who become important cogs in Swagger's life.  Each book cover features one or more of the other central characters.

Karen and I found that if we write the books in sequence, it's like when they film a movie series.  You can maintain continuity and insert foreshadowing.  It works quite well. We don't go by outlines as I find them stifling, but we do take copious notes and bounce ideas off each other.

Karen is the more intuitive and logical side of the team, whereas I take off into flights of fancy and have to be reeled in.  I handle most of the fighting scenes since I have background in martial arts such as karate and kung fu.  We keep the martial arts as a sideline.  Swagger is a bounty hunter after all, but it is his personality and the people he influences and that influence him that make up most of the stories. Plus the trouble the man gets into no matter where he goes.

We try to create characters the readers care about and we can really mess with their heads by convoluting the plots in that people you might think are the bad guys aren't and people you think are on the good side turn out not to be.  We pride outselves on being tricksters when it comes to mixing plot ideas so that it never gets boring.

Good news!  Our first book is selling on amazon.com, a modest beginning, but we have a really good feeling it will take off this year.  When it does, one of the things I want to buy with my share of the royalties is Photoshop.  That will help me tremendously and also I want to take lessons on how to download photos.  I thought I had it worked out, but, alas, I still cannot provide photos.

Stay tuned for more about the creating process.  Oh...I feel the Muse returning and that means I need to go edit book three.