Sedonia Guillone

My artist needed an image from me of Taro Suzuki, the bad guy in my White Tigers series. Well, I found him and he couldn’t be a more perfect likeness.
However, along with the photo, came an article of something you wouldn’t think of is happening.

Here’s a snippet:

Homeless yakuza terrorize Tokyo parks
MDN-Mainichi
…Japanese who associate the yakuza with wealth, even if it is the result of ill-gotten gains, the idea of a gangster living on the streets is close to unthinkable. But the number of homeless yakuza inhabiting parks and living under bridges is apparently skyrocketing, especially in central Tokyo….”There are two tent villages in the park where I live, each of which is controlled by a different homeless yakuza…When it comes to the flower-viewing season (in early spring), they have these huge battles over who’s going to have the right to get paid by people to save a space for their company parties. The brawls they have are like the fight scenes in the old yakuza movies.”…

My boyfriend who is the most wonderful guy in the world got this film out of the library the other day because he knows how much I adore samurai films. This one is incredible! And those of you who know me know I’m mad about Toshiro Mifune. To me, he was one of the handsomest men who ever lived! Here’s the description of the film:

Toshiro Mifune stars as Isaburo Sasahara, an aging swordsman living a quiet life until his clan lord orders that his son marry the lord’s mistress, who has recently displeased the ruler. Reluctantly, father and son take in the woman, and, to the family’s surprise, the young couple fall in love. But the lord soon reverses his decision and demands the mistress’s return. Against all expectations, Isaburo and his son refuse, risking the destruction of their entire family. Director Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion is the gripping story of a peaceful man who finally decides to take a stand against injustice.

Beautifully filmed and incredibly acted, this one was gripping and moving. Those of you who share my passion for vintage samurai films will understand this, but if you’ve never watched Toshiro Mifune, I completely recommend just about any film he’s been in. You are in for an experience. *sigh*

Lyn Taylor is the cover artist for my next White Tigers release, Men of Tokyo: Sudden Surrender. She did such a fabulous job on the cover and I marvelled at how she achieved the realistic effect of full body tatoos on a man who doesn’t have any tatoos. Well, a fellow author, Anika Hamilton (I’ll tell you more about her on a later post) read on Lyn Taylor’s blog the whole process of how she made my book cover. It’s really fascinating and almost did her in. lol. I’m glad she stuck with it because the effect is fabulous. I glommed her post about it so you could read the amazing process by which she made this cover.

This is the first cover I have done of this series and damn if it wasn’t a tricky one LOL! I honestly thought that body tattoo was going to be the end of me as a cover artist. Seriously!

Anyway, because I’m pretty chuffed with how it turned out, I thought I’d share with you how I managed to pull it together.

First things first. I needed to find the characters. In all honesty there’s not a lot of Asian/Oriental guys available out there. Well. I don’t think chubby business man is quite in the ‘Erotic Cover’ league, but someone might yet surprise me.

Anyway, so I managed to find some nice bods. The guy on the left worked perfectly for the Character he was to portray. The Guy in the middle though, looked like he’d sucked on a lemon so I decided to lop off his head and give him a new one. Oh, if only it were so easy in real life, eh?

The original head I chose was a bit too ‘cranky’ so we went for the guy on the right. Sweet!
Okay, so now with lots of cutting and pasting of heads we have our two characters ready to go. Now for the hard bit.

The character over on the right called for a full body Yakuza tattoo - white tigers and cherry blossoms. O.M.G.!

Now I’m pretty adept these days at adding a tattoo here and there and getting them to look relatively natural. BUT a whole body tattoo??So the search began. Firstly I trawled through the stock sites. There were a few things I could have thrown together but in all honesty the amount of stock required would have killed me. However, in my searches I managed to stumble across this image on the right.

It had the tiger AND the blossoms. Bingo!

Unfortunately the tiger was yellow, but thanks to the desaturate tool I was able to leach out the colour and produce a white tiger. Next, it was obvious that this image was not going to fit on the big guy’s body without looking a bit odd. Plus the larger I stretched the image, the poorer the quality became. So I was going to have to keep my images small.What I ended up doing was creating a new document and copying and pasting parts of the image around the tiger, gradually expanding outwards. I’d blend the edges of the image so there was no obvious seam by erasing with a large, soft brush.

This gave me a broader canvas to work with. Also ensuring that I would not notice the edges of the cut & pastes in amongst all that busy background.

So back to the big guy. Using the expanded tattoo design, I enlarged it enough to cover his chest. I had to dabble with the perspective so that the angles were correct. Then using a displacement map of his torso, I was able to distort the tattoo so it fit to his chest. I worked like this in sections all over his torso, upper & lower arms and shoulders. Cutting and pasting, blending and merging sections of the basic design until I was happy that his body was covered.As you can imagine there were quite a few layers. At least 20 just to cover his torso, arms and shoulders. Once I had him covered I copied those layers and then merged them into one. I changed the layer to Multiply and fiddled with the opacity until it looked more natural. Phew!

My next challenge, but obviously not so difficult was to try to find an image of the Kanji for Suzuki. I did manage to find one but it was of poor quality. So I had to recreate it in a new document. I hope to god it is correct LOL! This was just a ‘normal’ tattoo that needed to go on the background guy.

The hard bit out of the way all I needed to do now was bring the design over from the previous ones of the series. Pop the the guy’s together, blend them in, fiddle with contrasts, shadows, highlights, etc and then go and find myself a nice quite corner to huddle in. LOL!

Of course there was a lot more fiddling involved, but I don’t want to bore you all with the details. This is just to give people the gist of what goes on behind the scenes.

“Most handsome” man seeks fame
(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-02-16 18:14

Who is the most charming man in the world? David Beckham, Brad Pit or Tom Cruise? Neither of them, at least in the eyes of a salesman surnamed Lin who claims to be the most attractive guy on the globe.

Lin firmly believes he is the most handsome guy in the world.

“Many people say that I am far more charming than the movie stars, say, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tse Ting Fung and I know this. I look young and mature.”

“I believe no one can top me in appearance, ” Lin said, ” I am ten times more handsome than any one else.”

Tse Ting Fung

“Handsome guys seldom brag about their outlooks, while the braggers are anything but handsome, ” Lin responded to those who may doubt that he is exaggerating about his appearance.

Lin, 165cm (5.4 feet) tall, called the news hotline of the Southern China Metropolis Daily earlier this month, asking the paper to help promote him into a celebrity.

He offered to treat a dinner to anyone who can make him famous.

“I’ll be very grateful to my future patrons. They are ten times more important than my parents. I will pay back by inviting them to a meal,” Lin said.

Eager to become a star, Lin claimed that his face is more than enough to make him famous, though he was not gifted in arts and performing.

Takeshi Kaneshiro

When asked about the best-looking part on him, Lin alleged that each part is perfect and no defects can be found.

“It’s standard” was his reply to questions about his 165-cm stature.

Lin used to be a waiter and now working as a salesman at a market selling steel products. The 24-year-old man has never formally dated a girl though quite a number of women have shown interests in him, according to Lin.

Whenever he is idle, he just looks into the mirror to enjoy his handsome appearance or posing for pictures, according to Lin.

“His illusion originates from narcissism,” a psychologist in Hainan University said, adding that narcissism can often make people feel too good about themselves.

Name: Lukas Ridgeston (the one getting kissed)
Born: 1975 Czechoslovakia
Occupation: gay porn star (ya think?)
With those blue eyes and brown hair, he is basolutely…I mean absolutely (see what he does to me?) gorgeousssss!!!

Actually, yesterday was the day I declared this day. But, well, for me, every day is Man Appreciation Day

I’m declaring today Man Appreciation Day. (Which for me is every day). Let’s face it, where would erotic romance writers like myself be without guys? How would I spend all day fantasising about men and the many things they’re capable of doing with us and with other guys and then weaving all the scenarios into a delicious romance that other people will want to read? That is worth more than I can possibly express in one blog entry.

When I was younger, I had an idea in my head that as I got older, I would burn this man-crazy thing out, especially since I am lucky to be with a man I adore. But I’m about to turn 39 next month and the feeling just gets deeper. It’s not this satisfying-my-lust kind of thing more than a deep appreciation of the textures, smells, personality of a man, the way guys tease women (we love that, let’s face it!). The whole person. I hope I’m explaining this clearly.

The other day I went into Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee. There was a young girl and a young guy working behind the counter and the guy was teasing the girl - jostling her out of the way, taking the carfe from her as she was about to pour coffee and then using it himself. They caught me grinning at them and I could see the girl was loving it. I said to her, “It’s better that way.” She nodded and I could see she understood exactly what I meant.

All that said, the pics I’ve posted here are of men I especially appreciate. (Is it hot in here? Someone turned the fan off. Oh, it’s me.) Thanks for sharing Man Appreciation Day with me. Hugs, Sedonia

I just got hooked on this young adult series! I read the first book in one night and am waiting for the second one to come in the mail. I’ve always enjoyed young adult books and this one rocks! Carrie Asai is a talented writer who writes in a cinematic way - strong, descriptive, compelling characters, handsome guy. The works.

Samurai Girl tells the saga of Heaven Koji, a young Japanese woman in high society who was adopted as an infant (after miraculously suriving a place crash), by a millionaire mogul in Tokyo with sketchy business relations. The story opens at her wedding to the greasy son of her father’s business rivals. Well, I won’t put any spoilers in, but this was one hell of a scene and the story hits the ground running from there. It has a bit of everything, action, tension, a bit of romance and Heaven’s process of growing from a spoiled girl who can’t do anything but file her nails and buy shoes to a martial arts/samurai heroine. I love it!

Also currently reading:

The Tao of Love by Jade Lee (Harlequin Blaze) - DON’T MISS THIS ONE!!!
Hearts in the Highlands by Ruth Axtell Morren (Harlequin Steeple Lovespell) - yes, it’s an Inspirational, but Ruth is my friend and critique partner. I love her stories even though there’s no sex!

Just finished:

Kizuna: Bonds of Love - Book 8 (Yaoi from Be Beautiful Manga) - Another series with beautiful men, compelling personalities. I just can’t get enough of this one even though I’ve not been able to get my hands on Book 6. There’s legal stuff going on with that one and I have to wait until the smoke clears. Book 9 comes out in April (argh!) and Book 10 is already out but I don’t want to read that one until I’ve read Book 9. What’s a girl to do!

Last shows watched:

Torchwood - (BBC America) - I adore this show! Lots of yummy guy kisses with Captain Jack
Top Gear (Also BBC America) - I’m not into cars but these guys are hilarious and I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Nowadays so many of the guys on romance covers have waxed off their chest hair. Now, I’m not knocking them. They’re gorgeous too, but like the old saying goes, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I write plenty of heroes in my books who have nice silky swirls of chest hair a heroine (or hero, depending on the story) can rake their fingers through. Yum!

I love watching BJ Penn fight. I don’t know how many of you are into MMA (mixed martial arts) but Penn is exciting to watch. He’s incredibly fast and flexible - must be the Jiu Jitsu - he can wangle a guy into submission with his legs at any angle. It’s quite something. And well, as a female writer of erotic romance, there are other effects of watching this kind of fighting.

I know I’m not alone in loving this yaoi series. I’d never read yaoi until a couple of months ago and started with Kizuna. Needless to say I’m hooked! My favorite character is Enjiyoji although all the characters are certainly appealing! Masanori, wow!

I went so far as to get the first DVD. It was nice to see and hear the characters in action, but it’s only 30 minutes long! I was sooo disappointed. I thought it would be the whole first novel. Oh well. Love it anyway!