This week, I spent most of my spare time getting a book ready for my next round robin project. This is going to be a long one, because there are eight players in each group. It’s been a while since I’ve done a round robin with more than four or five people, which works best for my short attention span—but since I’m not hosting this one, I’m not responsible for the size of the groups.
So, this project is all about exploring dark work. I’ve done a dark round robin before, and I had a good time with it, but this sort of work does take a bit of a toll. Poking at uncomfortable feelings and dark thoughts is not something I want to do for long periods of time, so I tend to work in short, intense bursts. I started my book a month ago, settling on the theme, preparing the book for altering, and doing the cover all in one afternoon. Then I set the book aside until this week, and then did three layouts and the sign in page in a couple of days. I think I’m done, since the books go into the mail on Wednesday. Maybe I have one more layout to do, quickly, before it goes out. We’ll see.
My book is called Burn, and it was inspired by three things that passed into my view at about the same time: photos of the California wildfires, the original news story about the scheduled Koran burning in Florida, and this video by Eminem and Rihanna:
I’ve posted all the work I’ve done so far in this gallery. Due to the nature of this project, I’m not posting everything I do. It’s kinda personal, and in the case of the work I did this week, it’s touchy enough for me not to want to share beyond the round robin group.