Links for 2012-01-13

Exit, pursued by a [actual, live, polar] bear.

As mentioned yesterday, I took some inspiration from Jim C Hines's Striking A Pose blog entry and figured I'd do some experimentation on my own. And hey, while I was at it, why not take things one step further and contrast the female poses with some male poses? So I wrapped my bad knee and grabbed my husband, some props, and a camera, and we spent the evening doing a rather ridiculous photoshoot. That man has an incredible depth of patience and not only took the photos, but helped me refine my poses to make them a little more accurate. He also made the foam swords I used (although not the lightsaber).

A while back, we had a discussion on the blog about the cover art for my princess novels. For the most part, I really like these covers, but they're not perfect. Now I could talk about the way women are posed in cover art ... or I could show you. I opted for the latter, in part because it helped me to understand it better. I expected posing like Danielle to feel a little weird and unnatural. I did not expect immediate, physical pain from trying (rather unsuccessfully) to do the hip thing she's got going on. I recruited my wife to take the pictures, which she kindly did with a minimum of laughter.