Elsie Jones and the AI debate!
Hey everyone! There is some new and mixed information about the publication of the first book and series. The first three books are written and nearly done being edited (in fact the first twelve books are written), and I’ve been playing around with artwork for a while now.
Because these first three books are going to be different than the originals (the first book will have a completely different plot, the second book will have minor changes, and the third book will be completely re-edited for content and be much longer), I originally wanted to get some new artwork for them so everyone would be able to tell the two different editions apart.
I reached out to a few people, but the price was either going to be too high, or the job was going to be too encompassing. Kind of like signing on to a Marvel character knowing that you have to be involved for the next ten years of your life, the series is 15 books long and each book will require three to four pictures plus a color cover which is quite a bit of work. I can understand where someone would look at that and turn it down.
I then reached out to a friend of mine who is a little more techy than I am, and we decided to work together to try and get some AI artwork together to make the books come to life. I was never really thrilled about this prospect (the discussion of AI art is for a different blog, and is a much longer conversation), because I loved the funky feel of my original artist Jesse Velasquez’s drawings, and how they brought Elsie to life.
The concession I made was that each of the books has a different theme and each one of the books takes place in a different time period and space, so I thought it might be kind of interesting to have each book change slightly in it’s artwork; for example “Elsie Jones and the Captain’s Guard” takes place in “The Three Musketeers” so having a Baroque style art for that book, but when she travels to “The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes” the artwork would be Victorian in style.
Ultimately I wasn’t super happy with the results that we were getting because Elsie Jones is a character in my head and the AI generators that we were working with made the character look a little too much like a public figure, or she looked different in every picture (All the examples are spread throughout this post).
I got very close to including these pictures, but ultimately I just couldn’t do it, but that put me at a loss. All of a sudden, I was back to no artwork, but a bunch of incredible books, so I made a decision. I reached out to Jesse (the original artist) and asked him if he would mind me using the original art again for the new books. It wasn’t something I wanted, because the books are new and they deserve something new.
Luckily Jesse agreed and said he would get the art over to me so we could move forward and hit that August 1st publication date.
The wrinkle came this past week as we were talking and he asked me if I had any interest in getting new artwork for the books since they were going to be different. We talked back and forth about it, and came to the conclusion that we were going to do it. We were going to change the art and make this the new project that it deserves to be, and completely different from the original publications, August first publication date be damned (I mean, I’m self publishing them, so it’s a self-imposed date, but still).
So that’s both the bad news and the good news. We’re going to have to wait a little longer to get the books, but they are going to have some incredible new art work, from an incredible artist. I CAN NOT State how absolutely happy I am that Jesse is willing to stay on board, because the world needs to both read these books and see an incredible artist and not some computer generated pictures.
Elsie Jones is Coming on 08/01
Hey everyone! I’m taking a week off from writing the Blind Read Blog and focusing on some extra editing, and I wanted to give everyone a special sneak peek of the upcoming Author’s editions of the New Elsie Jones Adventures, which will kick off with Elsie Jones and the Book Pirates on 08/01 of this year!
The Elsie Jones Adventures are a children’s chapter book series where Elsie Jones finds a mysterious secret room in her local library. In that room are fifteen books that, when she reads them, she is transported into their world and adventures with those characters.
Every book has action, humor, adventure, and fun little facts, so join me on this fun adventure!
Check out that special sneak peek below:
Beyond the door was an old wooden rickety staircase leading down. The walls on either side were brick, which was unlike the rest of the library. It looked so much older than everything else.
Elsie looked around to see if she could ask anyone if she was going in the right direction. When she didn’t see anyone, she considered returning to the main desk and getting her dad to accompany her.
“But I’m in the library,” she said to herself. “Nothing ever goes wrong in the library!”
“Shhhhh!” The person hissed again.
She took a deep breath and one more look around before walking down the steps. At the bottom of the staircase, she found another room filled with books. These books, however, were far older than any of the ones upstairs. Their covers were all shades of brown and red, and the titles faded on their spines. The other thing about this room was that the smell was different too. It smelled like old books. It reminded her of her grandfather’s office, and the memory made her smile.
She scanned the shelves, looking from history book to history book. She saw all kinds of interesting books. She ran her hand across the spines, enjoying the feeling of the old bindings when something odd happened. One of the books on the shelf had a red seven on the spine, just above the title, and when she touched the book, the red seven began to glow.
She pulled her hand back as if the book was hot and then looked at the title: Treasure Island by Robert Luis Stevenson.
“Why is there an adventure about Pirates in the history section?” Elsie asked.
She turned around, expecting the person to shush her again but didn’t hear anything. In fact, she thought she was alone down here in this old History section.
She paused just before touching the book again, but her curiosity got the better of her. It had a faded brown spine, the same as the ones next to it, but on the book’s cover, another bright shiny red seven glowed in the upper right corner.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed.
Excited, she flipped the cover open and saw an intricate drawing of a giant Pirate ship and a pirate with a pegleg and a large hat who held a sword in his hand.
The book was heavy, so she laid it on the ground for a better look. As she leaned over and flipped through it there were awesome color pictures of pirates fighting with swords, burying treasure, and sailing through storms. She also saw photos of a young boy doing all these things with the pirates.
“Oh, that would be so cool!” Elsie said.
“Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island,” She read.
Then something strange happened; the moment she spoke the pages started to turn on their own, flipping faster and faster until the pictures seemed to move. The pirates jumped on the ship and fought each other with their cutlasses. Elsie leaned back in surprise. One of the pirates turned to her and waved his hand, gesturing for her to join them.
Sean McBride 
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