Cemetery Tales

The word came down from my editor -- thou shalt provide an author photograph for thy book cover. Cue squee of excitement at the thought of the book cover, followed by "Oh no!" I HATE getting photographed. My bangs have a will of their own and a camera's lens is never kind, adding even more pounds to my well-rounded frame.

However, when one's author photo is at least ten years (and umpty odd pounds lighter) than the real you, it's time to make amends. In my case it'd been six years, lots of pounds and the loss of the long red hair since my last sitting in 2003.

Amends were taken -- as in hauling my behind to my hair stylist, the ever talented Eli Boursarkis (Image Salon). Eli has been instrumental in helping me to go "silver" (as he puts it) and so he was delighted when I told him we could be completely funky this time around. He used semi-permanent color as I still want to gracefully go gray down the line, but kicked it up a notch. So now I'm this lovely chestnut brown with black chunky lowlights and a few blonde highlights on the tips. It rocks. Like. Totally. (Yes, I've been immersed in Y.A. fiction a little too long.) This is close to my original hair color before Nature decided to show me a lesson or two. And it will be perfect for Dragon*Con!!

Off to Oakland Cemetery with more wardrobe changes than Paris Hilton. Well, not quite -- a couple change o' shirts and a couple hats. Matt the Photographer (see above) from One Six Photography met us at the cemetery office and off we went. At six in the evening it's still really light and there was a breeze so we kept wandering around and shooting based on places that had interesting textures, shadows, you name it. I went back and forth between a denim jacket (yes it was hot) and an emerald green shirt. I figure between Matt's talent and Photoshop we'll end up with something that will work quite nicely. Unlike the last couple of weeks, it did not rain and the light wind made the temperature (87 degrees) bearable.

Pluses -- Matt's shot in the cemetery before so he knew cool places to go. There were No Mosquitoes. We're swarmed with the bloodsuckers in our neighborhood, but there were NONE down at the cemetery. The occasional gnat or butterfly, but that's it. I didn't even both to pull out the bug spray. And Matt and I talked cameras cuz, well, ya just got to! He made some recommendations on Canon digitals and I'm doing some serious pondering in that direction.

Now I wait and see what miracles Matt is able to perform. I had tons of fun and have promised myself that in a couple years, I'm doing it all over again. Yes, it was that painless.