Got news from my Scholastic editor today that THE RUBY KEY could be picked up for books fairs around the country. This would be a huge break for me—book fairs were where I was allowed to buy my own books for the first time when I was a kid. It could allow me to meet new readers I could never find otherwise. I won’t know for a while if this actually does happen, but I have my fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent the entire week working long hours on the Week Five lesson for How to Think Sideways. Got to do my second movie—way better than my first one, with good sounds. I bought a new microphone—a Blue Snowball—and I’m using Audio Hijack Pro instead of GarageBand for sound recording, and the differences are amazing. The Audio Hijack Pro interface is lightweight and simple, it offers a nice range of sound effects (but I haven’t used them) and it gets out of the way when you don’t need it—something no one will ever say about GarageBand. I’ll do a little mini-clip of the movie once I get the rest of the lesson finished (yeah, still working on it) and post it here as soon as I get a chance to let you see what I’ve been up to.
Oh. I moved from doing a lot of my artwork in Fireworks to using Keynote in Apple iWork. So far, I really like it. Have to see what my course beta testers and students think before I commit to heavy use with it, though. I will say that it cut movie creation time from around 40 hours down to about 20. That’s a big deal for me.
I’m having such fun putting this course together. It gives me an excuse to practice the guitar, draw, write, create short movies. I’m working longer hours than I do writing novels, but this is a joy to do, every single day.
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