She whom you see pictured to your right is not a real person. Sally Parker is the main character in my novel, Narchitect, about which you can read much more at the brand spanking new blog I set up to market it. In preparing introduce the world to Sally, it struck me that I wanted an image to accompany her bio. Since the technology doesn't exist (yet) to snap images of characters out of novels, I had to come up with an alternate way to show what she looks like. That's when it occurred to me to create an avatar for her, and I have to say, the result is a pretty decent approximation.Cool thing is -or eerie, depending on how you look at it -Sally resides now as a 3-D character on my desktop. She hangs out down by the toolbar with her polygon hair waving in a digital breeze. If Narchitect were a kitchen sink drama or Regency England Romance, it wouldn't make any sense to craft her appearance this way. Since it is a novel set in the 23rd century, where everybody has analog lives in a game realm, this was the logical way to go. Kind of fun, too.
There are many other characters in the book, and I enjoyed creating an avatar for Sally so much that I imagine I'll give them the same treatment. This will give me an excuse to research myriad social sites online, where 3-D avatars are de rigeur. Stop in at the Narchitect blog to see the results!
Which reminds me...
The final installment of my first serial over at Vault of Story is now up and you can read the complete tale of Danny Bates as he deals with the consequences of being late to school. Not everything is as it seems in Danny's world....It was fun transfering the short story to the blog in sections, transcribing it from my scrawl on college-lined pages and editing on the fly. The end result needs some work, I think, and it will be a while until I commit to another lengthy tale. After all, I should be devoting all my writing time to the manuscript, not short stories! They are such a nice break, even so, that I will not neglect to continue posting regularly. Already I've a slew of miniature, "flash" fictions to offer, which you'll be able to view presently.
Word to Entrecarders: Vault of Story is now droppable!
Stop by and check it out, everybody's welcome.
3 comments:
Hi wngl. I think your avatar is pretty cool. A great way to depict your character. I've messed around with creating one for my own image since my real photo is kind of scary!
Love your writing. I will definitely stop by the Vault of Story. Btw, I didn't realize you were wngl. Thanks for commenting at Think Spin earlier. Next time, bring duct tape to the movies. : )
David, it's been more fun than I anticipated concocting these analogs for fictional characters -and I'm nowhere near done, so I guess I have good time to look forward to. Thanks for reading!
Lauren, thank you for the reminder that duct tape cures all ills. I've been remiss of late using it, out of some misguided skepticism about homeland security. I've got to stop being so cynical and bring it with me wherever I go.
Post a Comment