Hello friends and fans!
I know it has been a WHILE (all caps appropriate) since I have posted much of anything, and I sincerely apologize for my absence. But I can promise you, I have never stopped creating! And I am happy to report that I have revamped my website, and am about to publish my first novel, which will be part of a series that I am hoping will span about 9 books in all! Starting with The Dark Light.
I guess, in a sense, this is kind of a cover reveal – surprise! I am about 3 days from launch – that’s right, you heard correctly – set to launch on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited on Christmas Day 2020!!
I know this is kind of out o the blue for many that have subscribed to my site for so long, and that you are used to me posting about screenplays and filmmaking. I want to assure any that has stuck with me that I am still a screenwriter as well, and if it is God’s will, I will someday produce and direct my film, Coffee: a hitman story. But, until then, I decided to do something that I have always wanted to do – change one of my oldest scripts into a novel!
The Gate Key is one of the first screenplays I ever wrote, and the evolution of it is actually kinda fun.
It all started out with a short screenplay writing contest that I entered, as part of a film festival. the guidelines were simple: the hosts provided us with an object, genre, and we had to write a script of at least 10 pages long overnight. I was given an egg and the genre fantasy.
I ended up penning a story about a young boy who meets a new girl in school after the summer break, gets to know her, and discovers that she has a mysterious egg that she claims to be the key to another world. The story was simple, and inspired by The Wizard of Oz if I am being honest – but I wouldn’t want to tell you what I mean by that and spoil the book, so shh. In case you are wondering, I only placed in the semifinals with my script – which I thought was not too shabby for my first competition!
After the initial story was on paper, I found that I actually quite liked it, so I took it further, penning the feature screenplay version of The Gate Key, which would go on to win a Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas International Film Festival, for Excellence in writing, as well as earn me an overall score of 85% at the annual Nevada IFF! So, I began to think there may be something to this story.
I rewrote and rewrote the story over the years, adding characters and fleshing them out to give the story and characters some depth. I even worked with a couple of artists, developing key art and whatnot while trying to promote the film.
The concept to the left started as a movie poster concept, which I was able to get with the help of my good friend and film producer, Tony Mendoza. I took it and ran with it when I began posting chapters on Wattpad – I don’t really post on Wattpad anymore, but I do have some scripts and my own personal testimony novel up there if you’d like to check it out: JGBLODGETT/WATTPAD.
I also worked with artists on Fiverr from time to time, to create other pieces of key art, such as the scene below (which is only a minor spoiler, don’t worry).
Pretty cool progression, huh?!
And speaking of progression, that is kind of why I wanted to post today, to show the progression of the book cover art, which eventually led to the final cover you will see below! First, some initial concepts:
Pretty good, huh? Not bad, in my opinion. But it needed more. The border needed t really represent the maleficent character known as the Dark Light. And so, several more concepts and drafts were crafted, eventually leading to this:
Pretty fun process, not gonna lie!
I do hope you all enjoyed this post, I just thought it would be fun. Keep me out of your spam folder so you can receive blog posts and updates on my upcoming novels! See you next time!
Happy reading!