Catch a Falling Star

I am worried about many things right now. I am finishing up an autobiographical book of artworks depicting the many different kinds of nudes I have drawn over the past fifty years. Some are updated to look almost real with AI Mirror assistance and editing with my touchscreen phone and electronic stylus. It is a book that is not pornographic but shows both male and female full-frontal nudity. It is a risky time to publish a book like that with the general book-banning fury going on in Texas, Florida, and other Bible-thumping Inquisitions going on in MAGA-conservative hotbeds.

The news from my KDP author’s dashboard has been surprising for the last two weeks. A couple of people at least have chosen to read some of my books on Kindle Unlimited. It is not the way things have happened in the past where books were only being read one at a time separated by empty weeks. In the last two weeks, more than 1,200 pages have been read, sometimes with three different books being read the same day. Total coincidence? Probably.

As you can see, I’ve also been spending considerable time making pictures. I have been using digital tools mostly on my old colored-pencil art, but also on pictures collected from the internet over the years in my picture file. It is refreshing to be able to draw again without having to work around permanent splotches and flubs caused by arthritis in my hands.

So, October is a spooky month, for Halloween reasons… And I bought a 14-inch doll’s skeletal remains in a local store. I decided to use this particular photo to make some creepy experimental stuff.

The fairy posing for me in the original photo began complaining as I operated on the image with both my computer stylus and my AI editing program called AI Mirror.

I thought maybe this was a little better. It still made Melodyhopper the Butterfly Child cry fairy tears.

Mel found this one better. “But it still makes me feel like Frankenstein’s Monster,” she said with a tear still in her eye. “Well, I like how it makes me look funny,” said Red Skeleton.

So, I finally settled on another portrait of my imaginary granddaughter, Susu.

So, I decided to update my portrait of Red Skelton from colored pencil to digital. Before I finished I happened to notice my Amazon sales report for October. One day old and a large number of pages read from about four different books. And all last week I had at least two somebodies reading from three different books every day. I apparently sold one e-book and had over a thousand pages read in a week for the first time ever on Kindle Unlimited. Has something suddenly broken my way? Or is the world still irredeemably broken?

Okay, the first one is more like him since it is more cross-eyed. I can goof up even in digital.

This picture was created from my porcelain doll made for me by my mother from the pattern and mold called, “Tom Sawyer.” I used my digital art tools to trace the photo and color it in on top of an AI background.

This doll, made by my mother also, I call “Nicole” after my niece whom she resembles.

You can judge for yourself how well I did recreating this photo of Nicole and the Grey Stuffed Dog.