Shaking Up the Old Inspiration Board

/ Marcia Meara

As I complete Chapter 5 of Harbinger, Book 3 in my Wake-Robin Ridge series, I’ve shuffled the images on my cork Inspiration Board to reflect what I’m working on. Namely, the Appalachian version of the Celtic legend of the Black Dog, known in our mountains, as Ol’ Shuck. If you see him, it means someone is going to die. So, my working environment now  exhibits less this:

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Or this:

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And more this,

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this, or

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even this! (Notice the footprints. Eeep.)

black-dog

Out with these guys,

thosepainterboys1

…and IN with THESE!

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Black_Dog_ghost

black_dog_by_warnick

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Whaddya think? Is this a Bad Trade, or WHAT? 😯

12 thoughts on “Shaking Up the Old Inspiration Board”

    • Thanks, CTC. But I’m afraid I misled you. I’ve posted many times about my personal Inspiration Board, here at my desk, but as a new visitor, you wouldn’t know that. Sorry! I have the entire area on each side of my desk and across the back, behind my computer, covered in corkboard. I’m a big believer in having photos of settings, animals, and people who look like I picture my characters arrayed all over it. Most of the time, since I write Romantic Suspense, primarily, I have some pretty good looking folks pinned on it, in addition to houses, mountain ranges, and Florida rivers. For instance, the first picture in this post is my inspiration for MacKenzie Cole, the hero in my first novel, Wake-Robin Ridge. The second pic is Chris Hemsworth (a/k/a Thor), who was in the inspiration for my big Vikingly hero, Gunnar Wolfe, from my second book, Swamp Ghosts.

      Now, I’ve got tons of creepy looking artist renderings of the Black Dog everywhere. I wuz robbed!!! 😀 😀 😀

      You’ve given me a good idea, though. I have boards set up for each of my books on Pinterest (though I’m always posting to my OTHER boards, for some reason), but I’ve never set up one as simply “These People and Things Inspire Me.” I just might have to fix that oversight.

      Pinterest is my favorite thing about social media, other than my blogs, because everything you ever wanted to know or learn about or view is on there, somewhere. Alas, it is also the Mother of All Time Sucks, so you have to be VERY stern with yourself when you visit. Otherwise, your ten-minute excursion will end up being a four-hour one!!! It’s like going through a rift in the Space/Time Continuum!!!

      😀

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      • Don’t I know it. The best possibilities lay within Pinterest, but I haven’t had the time to ‘play’ yet. Starting in something new is even more time consuming. 😦
        Glad if I did something good today. You are welcome. ❤ ❤

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    • Sorry for the problem, Deb. Who knows what it is. I do think it’s trickier for folks who use more than one email address, so maybe that factors in somewhere. I’m not sure. But at least you can post, and retweet. (You DID retweet, right????) 😀

      And don’t worry. I’ve learned the therapeutic value of plenty of eye candy, whether it’s photos representing the men in my books, or scenes of my beloved mountains, providing a momentary escape from the often sweltering heat of central Florida. I like my inspiration. 😀

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    • Aww, sorry you’re having trouble. My tablet doesn’t work like my PC at all, so I can identify with some of your frustration. Good luck using Chrome. I wish I could use either it, or FireFox, but my PC won’t allow me to. 😦 They are both better browsers than IE.

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    • Hi, Evelyn!

      There’s a big difference in photos I would use (legally) for my book covers, and photos I pin all over my inspiration board. I don’t need permission to post a photo of a celebrity on my personal bulletin board, for instance, or to chat about on a blog. Most of the time, that’s fair game. And when I know the attribution of any photo, I always include it. (Leaving watermarks intact goes without saying.)

      Photos for my book covers are a whole different matter. For my first 2 books, my graphic designer, Nicki Forde, found images from some of her sites where she can obtain royalty free ones, but by the time I got to Finding Hunter, I knew I had to have a better source. Enter my friend, Doug Little, the wildlife photographer who gave me the idea for Gunnar Wolfe in Swamp Ghosts. He’s a very accomplished photographer, and he did the photos for the cover of Finding Hunter.

      The Tiffany lamp on the cover, which wraps around to the back, is his, and Hunter’s journal is mine, with my handwritten poem in it (which we deliberately obscured so it’s impossible to read very much of, but which my daughter still recognized as being my handwriting).

      I plan to use Doug’s work as often as possible, especially on the Riverbend series. He’s got tons of great Florida images to choose from already, and is always taking more. But I’ll probably create my image of the Black Dog myself, for Harbinger. (None of the pictures above are for anything other than inspiration while I’m writing.)But I’ve painted all my life, and I’m pretty sure I can do a creepy, red-eyed silhouette that will work. The bottom images on it will then be the same as for the first 2 books, and it will have a generic black & white scenery shot behind it all. That won’t be hard to find on the royalty-free sites out there.

      So there you have it. I’ve been blessed to have creative people in my life to help me with professional looking covers…because, after all, I AM a professional, now. 🙂 I SOLD some books, dadblast it, and that makes me one! Seriously, I’ve seen some covers out there that can’t be believed, and I was adamant going in that mine would be the very best I could afford. Nicki immediately wanted to be involved, and has done all the cover designs, and as I say, Doug’s on board now with photos, when the subject matter is something he can find. Can’t get much luckier than that. (If I believed in such things, I’d say it’s almost like it was meant to be. Oh, wait! I DO believe in such things. Therefore, I’m convinced that it’s all working out exactly as intended.)

      If you need links to royalty-free sites, I can ask Nicki about them. However, you do have to read the fine print. Some will let you buy images to use, but not on anything you want to SELL. But others will work fine for book covers, if you can find what you’re looking for. (Of course, the best of all worlds would be to do your own photos and design your covers from those.)

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