Crazy Croatians

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Has my book finally found it's publisher?

I checked my email today and was happy to see an email response to a query of my first book like none I'd seen before -- they asked to see more! So I happily replied to Dreaming Dragon Publishing with the first 3 chapters of "Andy Brighton and the Dragons of Wyrme book one The Forsaken Orb" as their guidelines specified. Within a month or so they say that I should hear back as to yay or nay. I'll be crossing my fingers!
http://www.dreamingdragonpublishing.com/

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

March Madness Has Taken Over

Spring is here and along with it is the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. This is a very special time of year, for it also brings the bracket challenges - contests where, for the most part, people choose teams competing against one another in the tournament with bracket selections. 63 correct picks are needed for a perfect bracket - which has I think never been accomplished (though some have come close).
Because I just couldn't resist, and because of the huge prizes, I entered a bunch of the contests this year - more than I ever have before in fact. Here is a list of the higher value contests I've entered:
(The first six or so have $1,000,000+ prizes)
Yahoo              = http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1
Sportsco           = https://www.sportsco.com/ncaa/ncaatestm.htm
ALLive           = http://www.al.com/marchbrackets/
then theres a couple contests I can enter daily:

A good web resource I found, which has links to many of the above contests, is here:
Of the bracket contests I've entered, every one I chose different outcomes. Last year I entered about 6 contests and chose all the same teams to win. I know now that that was stupid. Because to have any chance to get one right you need to have as many entries as you can-not just the same entry multiple times. Anyways, maybe I'll win something (cross your fingers for a million bucks!)


 

Friday, March 9, 2012

Book Two Cover

I had today off work and spent it working on my book 2 cover. It's in the same theme as book 1, with the trilogy name across the top (Andy Brighton and the dragons of Wyrme) and my name across the bottom. In the center I put the volume name: Book Two - The Magic of Dragons. The first book was in a forest green, this one I chose to use a golden orange. (the 3rd I think will be in a dark red - though I haven't thought up a name for the 3rd book volume as yet). I'm pretty happy with it at the moment, of course the more I look at it the more likely that I'll find something wrong with it that needs tweeking. Have a look: (the idea behind the image is of Andy in his tower-room in Tyme practicing magic while the Rysouri girl Fay looks on.)

I'm still waiting on one of the 20 literary agents to respond favorably to my query of book one. If I don't hear anything by the end of March I might send out more queries.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Touched Up Book 1 Cover

Book 1 needed a touch up to its cover art, so I did some work on it. I changed the green moon a bit, but the main change was adding the briar vines around Andy Brighton (I wanted it to look like he and Gratoly were on top of Marble Mountain & near the prickle-thorn trees). Check it out:

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Last game of the year

Yesterday evening, on Feb. 29, 2012, UAB held its last home game for the men's basketball team at Bartow Arena. I graduated from UAB in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in computer science and frequently attend UAB sporting events like basketball/baseball/tennis etc. with friends like Rick Beason (who also graduated UAB & Samford). UAB won the game against a fiesty Tulsa team. UAB lead for most of the game, and only in the last few minutes did Tulsa finally gain a lead (going ahead 52 to 51 I think at the time with a couple minutes to go). From then on it was neck and neck with either team having their opportunities to win. Successful shots by UAB and misses by Tulsa sealed the outcome however, and UAB went on to a 68-64 victory. I love games like that-games where the outcome is not known until it ends because it is such a close fight. (I hate blowouts). UAB has one more game in their season before the conference tourney and needs a win for a good seeding/possible first round bye. Every team in the conference gets in so I'm told, so getting a bye would help greatly. The teams record this year is only like 14/14, which is not as good as in past years where they won at least 20 games and was "on the bubble" for getting into the NCAA tourney. This year their only chance at it would be to win the conference tourney, with such an average season. I took a photo with my camera phone of the dragon sculpture outside the arena before we entered. It's a cool looking dragon:
BLAZE THE DRAGON

on youtube.com is a video of the making of this sculture and the placing of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQu4vMN2Wgk