Stone angel

I got tired of fighting with the skin tones, so ended up, instead, finishing this cemetery angel painting I had started several weeks ago. But I’ll keep playing with that more colorful painting too. I still think I can make it work, but I need to go slowly with it. I have this bad tendency to start messing things up if I get impatient with failing to get something exactly the way I’d want it, that is if I keep on going after things start to go wrong. But if I have a break and then try again, well, then I have a much better chance of getting it right, or at least getting something good enough.

I have one story for which this might be suitable as a cover. I’m not sure how good fit this would be, but I don’t particularly like the cover it has now so maybe I’ll try using this instead. Have to say that one thing I love about self-publishing is this – I can fix things and I can try different covers. I have no intention of trying for traditional channels anymore, I’ll stick to indie/self-publishing. You put the stories out there, and maybe sometimes fiddle with them a bit afterwards, but otherwise, well, they are there, and there is no worrying whether they sell or not or how much or when – selling or not would be a concern, at least for me, with traditional because that dictates whether you can get anything else out, now it’s just money which isn’t that big a concern for me right now. Not that it wouldn’t be nice, I am living on a wage which falls under poverty line now, but  it’s still a wage I can live on so no hysteria over things like not being able to pay bills if I don’t get money from the stories. I can concentrate on writing, and painting, and putting things out, and if something happens then it does, if not I’m still enjoying the writing and painting. Perhaps that does not count as a professional attitude, I don’t know, but it’s suitably stress free for me. I’m afraid I don’t handle stress all that well. I worry a bit, perhaps, about how good, or not, what I produce is, but even that is, at least to some extent, a matter of opinion. There have been several bestsellers I was unable to finish, and some stories and writers I loved which seem to have sunk without a ripple during the years I have been reading, so I guess I pretty much do go by the adage ‘ there is no accounting for taste’ nowadays. If I get enough readers there will be people who love my stories, people who hate them and everything in between. And if enough fall into ‘love them’ end, or close enough, who knows, perhaps I might even, some day, get some money from it.