How to create and upload a Twitter background image using Gimp

Note: My computer's screen resolution is set at 1920 X 1080. Your screen's resolution may require you to resize or place your images at different markings than the ones I have listed here.

Gimp is a free image creating/editing program. My version is 2.8.2, so if you have a different version of Gimp, your commands may be slightly different from mine.

First, I created a new image background. Its size is 2560 x 1600. For my Twitter page, I made a simple starry background with a single nova focal point following a simple Gimp planet design tutorial.

Next, you need to choose which images you want to display on your background. My book covers were created using Gimp and were exported in jpg format. You can open many different image types in Gimp and use them in other projects as long as you either have permission to use them or created them yourself and own the copyrights to them. Go up to the menu and select Edit, then Copy. If you only wish to use part of your image, use the rectangle selection tool to outline the area of the image you wish to use in your background before going up to Edit, then Copy. Once the image is on your clipboard, go back to the page with the background image you've created. Go up to Edit, Paste As, and select New Layer. This pastes the image into the project page, while allowing you to move it around and manipulate it as a separate entity from the rest of your project. If you do a simple paste, the image will merge with your background, and you won't be able to resize or move it after you click outside the image's borders.

If your image does not appear on your background as anything other than a dotted outline, go up to menu, and click Layer, Stack, and Layer To Top. You should now see your image on top of your background.

Next, you need to resize your image. Go up to the menu and select Tools, Transform Tools, and Scale. Click on your image. A dialog box should appear. One of my gripes about this feature is that you can't just click in the size boxes, type the size you want, and then hit Scale. You must use the arrow keys on the sides of the numbers to enlarge or decrease your image size manually. For my book covers, I use a width of 193 and height of 265.

Note that this will make your images appear rather small on the background, but rest assured it will look plenty large on your Twitter page once it's uploaded.

Next, you will move your image to the position you want on the page. With the image size I selected, I can display 6 book covers to the left of Twitter's feed and 6 more covers to the right, so if you're a prolific writer like me, you have plenty of space to display your book covers.

Go to Tools, Transform Tools, Move. Your cursor should change to a cross image. Now, before you do anything else, you need to check that you will be moving the active image instead of the background! On the right hand side of Gimp's working page, I have a menu tab that was a default setting on the working view. There are tabs at the top of the menu tab, and the fourth one from the left in that window is labeled Tool Options, which changes with each tool you select, so you have to have the Move tool active in order to see the correct options for it. Click on the tab, and in the box underneath, you should see Pick a layer or guide and under that Move the active layer. Click on Move the active layer. Move your first image to the top left of your background, leaving only a little clear space showing background color to the top and left of it.

Repeat your actions to add one additional book cover to the right of your first image and up to two more rows of book cover images underneath that first row, lining the images up as best you can and leaving only a little space between the rows. This fills up the space to the left of your Twitter feed.

Now, to utilize the space to the right of your Twitter feed, you will repeat the actions above, but when positioning the images on the background, look above your project, and you'll see a ruler. Align your first right hand side image at the 1275 or 1280 mark on the ruler.

Note that you will have a lot of empty space on your background to the right of your right hand images and beneath all of your images when done. I'm not sure why, but I've found it necessary to have all this wasted space in my background in order for it to appear the correct size and in the correct position on Twitter.

Once you have all of your images sized and placed on the background, save it as a Gimp xcf file with the name of your background--I use the name Twitterbackground. Next, you will export the project as a jpg to your desktop. Go up to File, Export. A dialog box should open. In the Places column, select Desktop to export the image to your desktop. On the bottom of the dialog box, click on Select File Type (By Extension), and scroll down until you see JPEG image. Select that. Click the Export button. A second dialog box should pop up. Click the Export button. The image should now be available on your desktop.

To upload your new background to Twitter, go up to the round Settings And Help button on your Twitter page. Click Settings, and a menu pops up on the left hand side. Click on Design, and you will see Customize Your Own. The top item is Background image. Click on Change Background, and Choose Existing Image. When the dialog box pops up, scroll through until you find Desktop on the left hand side. Click on that, and then on the right hand side, click on your image's name, then hit open. Note that your background may or may not immediately update. Wait a few moments for the upload to complete, then on your Twitter page, scroll down to the bottom and click Save Changes. If your image didn't immediately update after uploading, it should update now.

A few words about writing action

After reading a few other self-published books and professionally published books put out by women, I can see why there's such a stigma against women writing in certain genres--most of the women whose work I've read lately are awful at writing action. I would like a female crime writer's work a lot more if she had more action in her books, but she seems to be completely against it. I would have better liked a pornographic "romance" novella if the action in that (and I'm not talking about the sex) had been better written. Instead, both of these women, pro and self-published, really dropped the ball IMO, giving women writers another black eye when it comes to writing action. A third self-published writer wrote action sequences, but she was repetitive and completely wooden in her depictions of action, describing some martial arts moves in one word "sentences". "Grab. Twist. Neutralize." That got old really quickly.

Since I like to write sci-fi, one thing I knew at the outset was that I could not shy away from action. Since my favorite characters to write are strong females, I need to keep in mind that not every five foot one hundred pound woman is going to be able to kick everyone's butt without getting a scratch every single time. In fact, I also tend to shy away from the "she's tiny, she's beautiful, and she kicks ass" stereotype altogether. I'd rather write about realistic women facing realistic challenges who don't always come out on top at first. I think it makes for more interesting reading.

So to any female who reads this and wants to try her hand at genres that expect action, in particular crime or sci-fi, I ask you to please learn how to write action and hire test readers if you need to so you can get honest feedback on how you are doing.

One of my favorite reviews of The Tourney is from a man who said he thought my action sequences were very well-written. I personally think there's a fine line between describing action too little or too much, and that's where practice comes into play as does listening carefully to honest feedback from your test readers.

If that doesn't convince you, consider which of the following action sequences you would rather see in a book:

1. "He knocked her to the floor and stood over her, gloating."

2. "Wham. His fist hit her in the stomach. 'Oof.' Her breath whooshed out of her. Pain lanced through her. Thump. She landed on the floor."

3. "His fist slammed into her stomach, driving her breath from her. She doubled over in pain, crumpling slowly to the floor. She peered up at him as he stood over her, gloating."

Personally, I think number three is the best. I think number one is too brief, cheating the reader out of more completely described action. I think number two is tedious, going into so much detail it reads like it's not happening in real time. I think number three walks the fine line between too little and too much. To me, it's a more graphic description of the action without being too detailed. I.e., it's the kind of action I like to read.

How to easily change the orientation of your writing

Since I found a way to create fonts for my fictional writing systems, I've been busy the past few weeks getting them done. Along the way, I've learned a few things. Most fictional alphabets are written left to right, because that's how it's done in the Western world. There are other ways of writing around the world, including right to left, and top to bottom, which usually is read from right to left. There is at least one writing system that switched between being read left to right and right to left--the direction switched every line. There are also rare occurrences of natural writing that proceeds from top to bottom and reading left to right, but so few that word processing programs are not set up to handle them with just a few clicks of the mouse. There is also no good way to make the word processors I work with write right to left without making a lot of changes to your computer, including an OS change to a language that requires one to write right to left, i.e. Hebrew. However, I found a way to force your word processor to write top to bottom with the lines moving from left to right, and I also figured out which programs to use and what to do to write right to left without changing your OS language to Hebrew or another language written right to left.

To write top to bottom and left to right, you first need a custom font because all your letters must be the same width. I was designing a vertical cursive font, so I automatically made all my letters the same width and kept track of the alignment of each because they needed to seamlessly run from one letter into the next. Next, you need Open Office Org's writer to create the document you will use. More recent versions of MS Word may work correctly now, but the version I'm required to use for work, while it says it can handle up to 45 columns on a page, will not allow me to create a page with that many columns on it! However, using OOO's writer you can create a document for Word that has that many columns on it, and Word can open and use it. I chose numerous narrow columns, because my goal was to make each column narrow enough that it forced the word processor to display a single character per line before moving down to the next line. Since columns are ordered left to right, this resulted in a document that writes from top to bottom and left to right. OOO will allow you to save your document in Word's format, so you can open and use it in Word.

My next challenge was to write from right to left without doing an OS language change. I found that simply activating Asian language support in OOO didn't work, for while it allowed me to specify writing right to left, it actually displayed the words from left to right and only moved everything from beginning each line at the left side of the page to the right.

However, I have experience with numerous other programs, including drawing programs that allow you to create what's called a text box. Since a text box is a drawing object, it can be manipulated to face any direction you want, and that coupled with another custom font provided my solution. First, you need to create a font with all the letters facing backwards. This is so your letters will face the correct direction so you can read them properly when the image is reversed. Once that's done, you can use either Windows Paint or OOO's drawing feature to write your message. In Paint, create a text box. Switch to your backwards facing font and write what you want to say in the correct order--if you want to say "correct", you will type "correct" and not "tcerroc". It will display every letter backwards because it's writing from left to right. Once your text is done being written, BEFORE YOU EXIT YOUR TEXT BOX, go to your Home tab, and to the left of your tools you will see orientation controls. Choose Rotate, and Flip Horizontal. Your text box will reverse itself, and since you used your backwards facing font, all your letters will now be facing the right direction, all without doing a global language change on your computer. To do the same thing in OOO's drawing, you will create your text box, write what you want it to say using your backwards facing font, and exit the text box. Select the text box (if it's the only thing on the page, press CTRL and A to select all), then find Modify on the top menu. Go to Convert, and convert your text box to a bitmap. Go to Modify on the top menu again, and choose Flip, Flip Horizontal, and your text box will reverse. In either program, if you are writing in several different fonts and orientations, you will create a separate text box for each.

Creating a true type font for your fictional writing system

You've put a lot of time and effort into your universe, and now are concentrating on the finer details, like providing a font for the writing system your characters use. Fans eat this stuff up, so for me, it was a must have.

There are a number of free and paid programs out there that can help you do it. The fastest way is to find a free "handwriting" font site, print their template, fill in your letters, numbers, and other symbols, and upload it. However, the downfall of using a free website is that while you end up with a useable font, any problems with the scan can end up showing in your letters, and your letters will be irregular in size, shape, and spacing. I found this out when using Paintfont.com. I also had a problem with uploading. My printed page wasn't dark enough, so I had to use my image handling software to darken the picture so that Paintfont could read it. I also tried the free online site Fontstruct.com. It has a simple grid based design platform you use in your browser, and while it has a number of different shapes and allows you to adjust the spacing of your font, it can be challenging to use to make a rounded font. I did design a font using Fontstruct.com, which for a free website gave me quite satisfying results. I then looked at free and paid font programs. I'm not a total computer geek, but I have studied computer science, and I don't find most font programs to be user friendly. I found the price on FontCreator had gone up considerably, and therefore tried two free programs, FontForge, and Birdfont. FontForge is no longer being updated, and it didn't work properly on my computer, though I had the most recent release that was supposed to work with my version of Windows. I then looked at Birdfont, which has very little documentation in English so far (it's a newer program and says on the web page that is seeking help translating to different languages, including English), and the tutorials I saw didn't show the info I needed.

Since I really wanted to program a cursive font, I realized I needed to use a free website that would convert my handwritten images into a font and after that a font program to modify it. I used Birdfont to modify the handwritten font so that it looked more cursive. All the tools in Birdfont are labeled, but instructions on how to perform simple actions are sparse as of my writing this. Here's what I figured out through trial and error: The first thing you need to do is save your file under a different name, so if you screw up, the original scanned font file is available for you to try again. You should hit save after every letter is edited, so if you mess up, you don't have to redo a lot of your work. You can move the baseline and top line around the letter, but you can't save the moves (bug report sent on this). To move your letter onto the bottom line, you need to use menu commands. First, you need to see what you're doing. On the right hand side are a bunch of buttons. About two thirds of the way down on the right, you'll see an F. Directly above that is a button that when highlighted says "show grid". Click on it. You should now see a grid in addition to the basic top, bottom, and side margin lines. Under Tools, select Move, then under Edit choose Select All. Once the entire letter is selected, you need to use the arrow keys to move the letter around. You can't go diagonally (unless you use the mouse, but I found moving letters with the mouse gave me unsatisfactory results) but I found movements with the arrow controls fine enough that I could move the letters around where I wanted them. You can adjust the width on both sides of the letters and save that, which is important because a cursive font needs its letters to be right against each other with no space between them. To get rid of unwanted marks generated by the scan, you need to left click on them, and when they are highlighted, press the delete button. Note that if there is a mark in an open area on the letter that it sits behind the open spot, trying to click on it to delete it won't work, and since I didn't want to move the letter and open space independently so that they weren't centered on each other to get to those tiny marks, and the marks aren't visible in the font at font size, I left those in place. If the mark is close to the letter, you also need to be careful--if the entire letter gets highlighted when trying to select a small mark to delete, you can accidentally delete the entire letter, and you can only use undo ONE time to change an edit and the letter back. All is not lost if you've been working carefully and saving regularly, so if you screw up and can't undo your changes, you need to exit the program without saving and restart it to bring your letter back. If your letters are too small and you want to resize them, on the upper right of the screen is a button that reads "resize and rotate paths". If you click on that button and then on your letter, an arrow will appear, and if you left click and hold down on the button and move it away from your letter it will enlarge, but it will NOT enlarge the entire letter--any open spaces in your letters, cursive or print, are considered separate pieces, and if not selected before you click on the arrow, they will stay the same size. To enlarge an entire letter, you need to click the "resize and rotate paths" button, click on the letter, then go to the menu on the top left, and under Edit, click Select All. A second arrow should appear in the middle of the letter. Once it is showing, put your mouse's pointer over the first arrow that appeared and drag it up and to the right to enlarge your letter. If your letter is too large, drag it towards the letter to make it smaller. Once all your editing is done, if you're not sure if you got all of the extra marks deleted, look on the right hand side, and about two thirds of the way down is an F. When highlighted, it says "show full glyph". Clicking on this will make the entire letter show up in your view. If there are any marks that got scanned in that didn't show up in the view when you displayed the letter to edit, they will now, and you can delete them. Once your font is edited to your satisfaction, go to the menu on the top left, hit File, and click on Name And Description. In the window that pops up, rename your font to the same as the saved file's name so that when it's exported in its edited form you can easily find it. Save that change, and then in the same menu area, under File, hit export. Find your new font and install it on your computer. Note that while I can use the true type fonts generated online with any program on my system, those edited with Birdfont only work in newer programs--so my cursive font doesn't work with my older version of Word (bug report sent on this as well). However, I only use Word to work, which is why I haven't upgraded my version, so it's an acceptable loss to me, and hopefully one that will be fixed in future versions of Birdfont.

See a screen shot of my fonts in use below.

The Tourney is now available in paperback.

The Tourney

Juliet Sem

$9.99

The Tourney will be printed in 6 x 9 format, a larger book, as it costs less to print, allowing me to keep the price reasonable. It's a full novel, and when printed in 6 x 9 format, is 255 pages.

Reader beware of these ripoffs.

I've discovered to my dismay lately that many writers are not interested in telling a good story for the sake of telling it, they feel to me like they are interested in telling a story in installment or neverendingstory formats, both of which seem like nothing more than a money-making proposition to me. 

The first example is the installment story.  You pay for your "book" and download it to your reader, only to find it's not even novella length, and that what should constitute a single book has been broken up into a "series" of three or more installments, wherein the author wants you to pay as much as you would for a single novel for every tiny segment of their book.  I've abandoned some good storylines and left negative reviews for authors who use this ploy on me.  I'm not cheap, but I do expect value for my money spent, and if I'm paying for a book, I want a book, not something I can read in less than an hour and which leaves many major plot points unresolved.  I've got nothing against cliff-hanger stories, but I prefer that a writer is up front that they want to tell you their story only a little bit at a time. 

The opposite end of the spectrum  is the neverendingstory.  I've seen some series that are beyond epic and into the realm of ridiculously long, where a single storyline that can and should be told in one to three books is drawn out over nine books or more with never a coherent stopping point seen.  IMO, it's nothing more than another rip-off, designed to get the reader to continually shell out more money in hopes of getting a resolution to plot points somewhere along the line.  I feel if your series is set in a coherent universe that ends up being popular with readers, then you can tell more stories in the same setting rather than dragging out a single plot line over multiple novels that have a lot of useless filler in them.  Granted, I can be wordy (The Tourney is a whopping 125,860 words long as of the latest version), but I can't see telling the same story over nine or more books. 

So my advice for today is that if you want to be taken seriously as a writer, then act like a serious writer and publish novel length books, especially when you use the word "book" in your title, and also you should make it clear if you're dragging out the main plot line over more than three books so that readers who do not like these formats can look elsewhere for entertainment.

Some random crafting thoughts

I've been invited to join a group of volunteer docents at a local museum who dress up in historical outfits and perform tasks appropriate to the people they would have been around the time of the Civil War. 

Most people don't know the history of textiles, but I've got a good understanding of the history of spinning, weaving, natural dyeing, and sewing of textiles.  I also have a good understanding of both knitting and crocheting.  The friend who works at the museum wants me to demonstrate spindle spinning, which was a common skill that everyone, male and female, learned from an early age.  "No idle hands" was a phrase I've heard was often told. 

That being said, while I don't have the time to volunteer, I can contribute for the sake of my friend--small handmade purses have been popular for centuries, but there are certain restrictions for the period of time I'm looking at.  Purses of the Civil War era were called "reticules", and were not nearly as substantial as they are today.  They were made of plain cotton or linen fabric, silk, satin, or velvet, and they could be plain, embellished with intricate embroidery, crocheted Irish lace, or even an all over beaded pattern that may have only randomly placed beads, regularly placed loops of beads, or an all over pattern that makes a picture--there are many surviving patterns and samples from that time. 

However, if you want a piece that's historically accurate, you need to know a few things.  Most patterns called for "bunches of beads", "purse twist", and if a needle or hook size was indicated, it's nothing like the needles we have today.  Most crochet patterns only say to use an appropriate size hook, which is no problem.  I'm experienced enough and have enough hooks that I can look at thread or yarn and make a fairly educated guess as to which size I'll need.  However, obtaining "purse twist" and "bunches of beads" and figuring out knitting needle size is needed took more research.  Purse twist was made of silk.  Some people are selling old stock of "purse twist" online, and in order to find the right size of silk thread, you have to know that "purse twist", a tightly spun and plied thread, was made of three plies and came 150 yards to a half-ounce spool.  Gudebrod sold silk beading thread for many years, but they stopped making it in recent years, though some spools are still available at some sellers, but there is at least one other supplier who sells silk thread on spools.  Theirs also comes in different sizes, and I picked the one that most closely matched my need, 140 yards to a half-ounce spool.  I also found a bead seller selling old stock of "bunches of beads" that listed one bunch of beads as containing 1200 beads.  I found an old conversion chart for knitting needles and found that size 20 steel needles are 0.875 mm in diameter, which is smaller than today's 5-0/1.0 mm steel needles and larger than the 6-0/0.75 mm and 8-0/0.5 mm.  However, since the thread I'm planning on using is slightly thicker than what was historically available, I figure 5-0 needles should work fine for a knitted project.  Knowing all this, I can now make a fairly accurate reproduction from an old pattern.

Meanwhile, until I find the time to start such an ambitious project as an all over beaded purse, I'm working on a much simpler Irish lace pattern using a 0.75 mm hook and very fine thread.

The cost of self-publishing

A friend recently asked me if it cost a lot of money to publish my first three books.  I said it wasn't much at all, but I didn't tell her exactly how much I spent. 

There are a number of sites that offer a lot of help to self-publishers.  Many also offer peripheral services for an extra cost.  However, by doing most of the work yourself, you can save a lot of money. 

For instance, for the original artwork I wanted for my first book's cover, I contracted with an artist friend to do an exchange of materials and work.  I'd make her dog a sweater with custom designed elements using materials I had on hand in exchange for the cover work I had in mind.  We did the exchange and I was thrilled with the art work, but unfortunately when it came time to publish, the art work would not work for the cover design no matter how hard I tried.  I ended up downloading the free program Gimp and put images together from NASA and the ESA for the background and used Gimp's tools to add the text.  However, I needed another design element to give more of a hint at what the material inside the book was all about.  I ended up looking at several sites and signing up for Dreamstime.  For $15.00, I purchased enough credits to download multiple royalty-free images for four books.  I could have stretched it further if I hadn't radically changed one book's cover after working on it for some time. 

Another program I used was the Paint program that comes with Windows.  I used it to modify a free image of the SR-71 stealth plane so that I could use it as a spaceship on several of my books' covers and more easily created several elements I wanted to use in Gimp than I could have had I used Gimp to make them. 

Note that images from NASA and the ESA as well as many other agencies are considered in the public domain and as long as you properly credit where you got the image from, you don't have to pay to use them.  This makes it easy for a sci-fi author to download images of planets, moons, and starry backgrounds galore.  Using Gimp to crop and custom rotate the images makes it really easy to vary the images, and of course you can resize them as well. 

As for everything else, I didn't pay for editing, but I did pay a test reader by providing her with a Kindle so she could more easily read my book, but I consider the Kindle more of a gift than a payment.  That and more of my time is all I have invested in my first four books.  I will need to buy more credits for Dreamstime in the future, but for now, the combination of pictures I've taken, free-to-use pictures others have taken, and free programs to work with them have kept my publishing costs to a bare minimum. 

So the total cost for publishing my first 4 books myself (as of this writing, 3 sci-fi books are out and 1 urban fantasy book is in the final stages of editing) was $15.00.  I've heard of people spending thousands with vanity publishers in the past, and it's possible to rack up similar charges now, but if you do your research and are good with a computer and camera, and aren't above doing some bartering, it's possible to keep your publishing costs to a minimum. Even if you aren't computer savvy you can purchase pre-made or template-based book covers from artists for less than $100.

Still editing

So while I'm taking a hiatus from writing while still editing a finished book, I thought I'd share a few random things: 

I designed a 4-piece Enterprise Christmas tree ornament for a friend's birthday since she's a fan, and her birthday is close to Christmas, and she was as excited to see it as I'd hoped she'd be.  It's a nice feeling to surprise someone who is super nice by doing something unexpected for them.  Try it, and you'll see :-).

When I posted pics of the party, including the Enterprise ornament, another friend requested one and that I also make him Millennium Falcon and X-Wing ornaments.  Since there is only one pattern for a plushie Falcon and it's huge, I designed a smaller one from scratch, and since there are no plushie X-Wing patterns that I found that I thought looked like an X-Wing, I designed one.  He requested them too close to Christmas for them to arrive in time for 2012, but in 2013, he should have a Merrier Geekmas with those to put on the tree or hang around the house.  I know other Star Wars and Star Trek fans, and I plan on making more ornaments for them as I find the time, hopefully well before next Christmas. 

For writing-related fun, I checked out several name generators, some for fantasy and other role playing games, and some create names related to a specific franchise (like Tolkien's elves and Star Wars' Jedi Knights), and I got some good results from several of them.  I also found a fantasy race generator, which randomly creates a description of elf, dwarf, and other races.  While the available societal details are limited, running the generator can make a good starting point for a fantasy race or even a sci-fi one.  You just have to ignore all the magic related suggestions, unless your sci-fi universe allows interaction with the magical world.

Hopefully, I'll have another book ready to publish soon.  I'm about halfway through with what I call the intense edit, where I read each line keeping not only the story in mind, but is the sentence necessary, and is it in active voice rather than passive?  I know that's an issue with my writing sometimes, and I work to correct everything I can before sending the books on to the publisher.  On a positive note, the cover is finished, and I really like it. 

I hope anyone who reads this had a great holiday season.

Contested Crown has been published.

Contested Crown has been published on Smashwords.  For only $3.99, you can read the conclusion to the Crown Princess Keestu Ranell trilogy.  I'm currently outlining the fourth book in the Union series, but Keestu will not be the protagonist.

Here's an excerpt from Contested Crown: 



General Pelka turned to back to Keestu suddenly, and the look in his eyes made her back up several steps, her chains rattling. 

"Time for you to die, sudi," he hissed at her, pulling out an energy pistol.  

"What are you doing, General?" 

General Pelka darted forward, grabbing the chain dangling from her manacles, yanking it down and forcing Keestu to her knees.  He stomped his foot on it to keep her kneeling as he stood over her, planting the muzzle of the pistol against her forehead. 

Stunned, Keestu went cross-eyed and didn't react to the unexpected attack.  Something was terribly wrong.