Creative Pursuits

Are you creative in other ways besides writing – i.e. photography, painting, music, widget making, any other creative pursuits that you might have? Tell us about them and why you pursued writing as a career instead of one of them.

From Jim

I’ve always felt I was a creative sort. From a young age I liked to draw and write. I also played piano (poorly) and guitar (poorly). I even wrote a couple of bad folksy songs in college. But soon enough, I decided that writing fiction was a better creative outlet for me. 

I continued to draw, though, throughout my studies, doodling in class instead of taking notes or paying attention. That went double in grad school. I even drew political cartoons for my college newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. (I’m moving right now and can’t get my hands on any of those at the moment. Maybe I’ll post them later.) 

I was a pencil-and-paper guy until I discovered Windows 3.0. I started drawing with the mouse in Paint. Just rough pixels. Think pointillism on a computer screen. 

Here’s an example, drawn entirely in Paint with a mouse.

And another (unfinished).

But the realism was lacking. I discovered Corel Draw and learned to blend the pixels and make more interesting drawings. 

The result wasn’t bad. 

But my favorite was Flash. (Rest In Peace.) More cartoonish pictures followed and they actually moved. Not here, because Flash is dead and no browsers support it today.  

My characters tended to be quite ghoulish. Like this basketball player.

Later, I drew all my business presentations in Flash and animated them. They provided a refreshing change from Death by PowerPoint, I can tell you that.

Writing proved to be the creative outlet I loved most, however, and my drawing these days is limited to maps for books. Here are two I did for HEART OF STONE and A STONE’S THROW, two recent books of mine. Nothing fancy, but a map is always a nice touch in a book. 

I also did one of Paris for Mark Pryor’s next book, THE BOOK ARTIST, due out in January 2019. I’m working on an ambitious one of Florence, Italy, for my next book, TURN TO STONE, coming June 4, 2019.