That Link I Promised for the Sold Book Cover.

If you were curious about that cover that I sold on SelfPubBookCovers.com, here's a link to an image they posted on Facebook. There are nine covers pictured; mine is the one in the lower right corner, with the white background and silhouettes.

I sold a cover!

I sold a cover on SelfPubBookCovers.com! Yay! I had posted two covers there, and sort of stopped thinking about them because I had too many other things to do to make new generic covers to submit to the site. And today, I got an email saying the cover sold! I'm not sure whether I can post it here, but as soon as they add it to the published covers page I'll update with a link to it.

Another New Cover Design

I've been working with an author on his cover design, and gave him a couple of options. This cover, to the left, is one he didn't select, so I've added it to the "Need a Book Cover?" page. I would submit it to SPBC, but they don't allow you to customize the title the way it would be here. They have a set list of fonts to choose from and I wouldn't be allowed to do the drips or anything. So it qualifies for the page on this blog, instead.

You may have noticed that the image of the wall has watermarks--I haven't purchased the stock photos yet, and wouldn't be doing that until someone actually buys the cover. That's another advantage of not putting it on SPBC. They require that you purchase the stock photos in advance.

It would, of course, be possible to alter the cover in different ways--changing the shape of the framing shadow, for instance.

What do you think of this design? Do you like it as it is, or would you change something?

The Gamble and the Grave, Veronica book 4, is available for Pre-Order!

It's coming out on July 19! I will have at least one giveaway of the other three novels in the series before then... stay tuned (as they say) for the announcement(s) here. I'd like to thank Rick and Kathryn for their help, by the way. You two. You're the best.

It has been a challenge, getting any writing done, what with the two pipsqueaks in the mix now. But it's so exciting to have another book coming out. If you want, you can see it here on Amazon, and even go ahead and order it. :)

I have ideas for books 5 and 6 already, and even a vague one for book 7, so with some luck (and the continued support of my husband, family, and friends) the series is going to keep chugging along.

Right now I'm working on the second draft of The City Smolders, the second book in the Raud Grima series. I'm enjoying that. I'd forgotten how much I liked Ginna. I didn't get much done today (though it's next on the list after this blog post), as I've been focused on promoting the Veronica series in anticipation of Gamble coming out.

Book Cover Design FTW!

I've been working on my own covers for a couple of months now. I recently finished the new cover for The City Darkens, pictured to the left. It took a while, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. I need to update the Kindle file associated to it, though, because when you open the file on Amazon for the preview, it still has the old cover in it. No big deal; the old cover wasn't bad, it just didn't quite capture what I wanted. Plus, since the time when the old cover was designed, I've caved as to the content of the blurb that goes with the book. For a long time I wanted to hide the fact that Myadar becomes Raud Grima--I originally intended that to be a very big surprise. But I struggled over that blurb and consulted a lot of people, and they eventually convinced me that I should include that as part of the description. I may revisit it.  

TCD has not been selling much. I haven't tried free promotions for it on Amazon yet. I enrolled it and all the Veronica books save Veronica in Paris in Kindle Select, but I decided to try countdown promotions with TCD and free promos with the Veronica books, to compare results. Well, clearly you shouldn't bother with countdown deals until your books are already selling regularly, because nada with TCD. The free promotions have been very successful with the Veronica books, though. My only complaint there is that I wish that of the 800 or so people who've "bought" the free Veronica books, more than one would post a review (and do it on Amazon, not just Goodreads). I'm not unrealistic. I'd be happy with a 1% return. Eight new reviews. But I'm still waiting.

Anyway, all this to say that I have to wait for the first 90 day period to end in mid July, and then I plan to offer TCD for free five times over the next 90 days, and I hope that'll get it noticed. I also need to go back to editing The City Smoulders and actually publish it.

I'm nervous about designing a cover for TCS, honestly, because while it's the same city, it's very changed. I'm not sure how to go about designing it--ruined by bombs, etc. But the only way to figure it out is to start working on it, so maybe that needs to be my next design project.

Going back to the issue of cover design, I also stumbled across SelfPubBookCovers.com, which sells covers to authors and is fairly easy to submit designs to as an artist. You can see the two I've gotten approved here. I don't know if they'll still be there once they're sold, though. I guess we'll find out.

SelfPubBookCovers rejected this design:

Because of the way the woman sort of blends in to the skyline. I'm going to tweak it a bit and put it on a page here with any other covers I decide not to submit to SPBC, or that they reject but I still think are good. If someone reading is interested in buying one, let me know. I am also more than happy to do a custom design, so if you know someone looking for a cover artist, point them this way.

New Covers! I'm learning to use GIMP.

Well, after years of being only partly satisfied with most of my book covers, I finally got tired of talking about learning to use a design program like GIMP, and actually started watching youtube videos and teaching myself. In case you don't know, GIMP is a a free downloadable program a bit like Photoshop. The main cover I fret over is for The City Darkens, as I have yet to be really satisfied with any of the covers I've had. But I also had issues with my Veronica Barry covers. This mainly had to do with the titling, which has always been hard to read. Using Paint to make these covers was just short of adequate, in that I got the general look I wanted, but there just wasn't much I could do to really make the fonts stand out the way I wanted them to. So now that I am using GIMP, I've redone them all, and I'm still working on The City Darkens. Here's the original version of The River and the Roses:

And here's the new version:

Here's the old one for The Fire and the Veil:

And the new:

The Plane and the Parade:

And the new:

Veronica in Paris:

And the new:

 

And here's what I've got so far for The City Darkens:

There's still a lot to be done for it--I don't want the dress to actually look white, for one thing (I was going for light gray, and I'll probably add blue to it) and then I have ideas for other elements in a kind of montage.

The main thing with the Veronica covers, other than making the titles more legible, was to standardize them so they really look like a professionally done series. In honor of my new covers for these, all three novels in the series (Veronica in Paris is a novella and a prequel, and I don't have it enrolled in Kindle Select) will be available for free tomorrow. I'm not planning to offer all three like this again until I launch The Gamble and the Grave (book 4).

What do you think of the covers? Have you worked with GIMP? Have you got any cool tips to share?

Hello People Who Haven't Quite Given Up on this Blog

Yes, I've been totally MIA blog-wise since June. What can I say, it was a rough summer with little or no writing and fall wasn't much better. There were family issues, there was a move... nothing all that interesting though it effectively brought my blogging and fiction writing to a grinding halt nevertheless. I'm going to reformat The City Darkens today for release as a full novel (no more serialization--I've decided that since no one seemed to think that was as fun as I did, I'm done with it), and I have a new cover (queue excited clapping) done by professional artist Dolly Georgieva-Gode. You get to see it here first:

Also, if you read one or more of the installments of The City Darkens, like the first one, Myadar's Snare, for instance, please comment below with your email and I'll send you a complimentary copy of the full novel. I'll be formatting it so you can skip forward to whichever section you choose, so you don't have to reread the first parts if you don't want to. I would, of course, deeply appreciate your giving the book an honest review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads.

Wondering if you'd like the book and what it's about?

Here's the blurb:
For ten years Myadar has accepted her life as the estranged wife of a nobleman, running his estate and raising their young son. Everything changes when Myadar is summoned to the capital to begin a new life as a courtier in the decadent, scheming royal court. In a land on the cusp of a new age of modernity, Myadar must decide whether to oppose the rising tyranny that threatens to destroy everything she loves, and risk her own life in doing so.

And here are links to the Goodreads pages of the first three installments from back when it was a serial. You can read reviews there.

Myadar's Snare
Myadar's Betrayal
Myadar's Flight

Myadar's Flight is out!

Myadar's Flight, the third episode in The City Darkens, is now available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Like the other episodes, it is priced at $0.99.

Here's my description (SPOILERS if you haven't yet read Myadar's Snare--which you can download for free here--and Myadar's Betrayal):

Myadar has struck a blow against Reister, but she still hasn't found Bersi or figured out a way to escape Helésey. After the success of her first foray into the city disguised as Raud Gríma, she determines to don the costume of the legendary highway robber again. This time, however, things will not go as planned.

So far April has been great for sales. I've sold over three times as many books as in any prior month (although since that number was never very high, it's still not like I can quit my day job). It's super exciting, though. I love knowing that people are reading my books! I just hope they enjoy them, too.

What do you think of the cover? Do you have a favorite of the covers for the parts of The City Darkens, yet?

Cover for Myadar's Revelry (part 2 of The City Darkens)

So just to have all my new covers in one place, I figure I'll post a blog article for each.

This one is for part two of The City Darkens, which I'm hoping to publish tomorrow, depending on whether I get the final edits done and whether my homework for the MA program gets in the way. In any case, it should be up by the end of the day Monday.

My concept for the covers is to keep the background mostly the same (although I'm smudging and shading each individually, and unless I find a way to cut that corner, that means each will still have a slightly different background). The portrait of Myadar, the main character, in the foreground, will change with each episode, and have something to do with the story in that episode. In Myadar's Revelry, for instance, it's the first time Myadar's look gets "updated" to reflect the court's fashion (basically flapper, art deco, etc.).

So here it is:

What do you think of it?

COVER! OF! PART! ONE!

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I was really fretting over the creation of my covers for the decopunk serial novel I've been working on, The City Darkens. I wanted a deco feel, and the closer I could get to a tribute to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the better. Since part one is almost ready to be published (maybe tomorrow!) the time had really come to confront my fears and get to work on the cover. So I collected some images on Pinterest and sat down at my dining room table with all of my boxes of art supplies, none of which I have touched in over a year, and this is the result:

I'm really pleased with it. If you are familiar with the posters for Metropolis, you might recognize the one I like the best:

I realize my font is a bit hard to read, but I figure the title will be all typed out nicely at the top of the page next to the cover, so it's really more about catching the eye and also communicating the Lang inspiration and deco quality.

My husband asked whether I'll get in trouble for the similarities. My understanding is that as long as an image is 75% altered from the original, you're okay. Now, I can't claim that I ran any sort of algorithm, but I did change a lot in the picture. I think I'm okay. Would you agree?

Anyway, be on the look out for the soon to be published first episode of my novel, The City Darkens: Myadar's Snare. Yay!

First Draft Finito!

Yes, folks, I have just finished the first draft of The Plane and the Parade, the third book in the Veronica Barry series (unless you count Veronica in Paris, which is book "zero" and takes place about 13 years before The River and the Roses). I'm doing a first read-through and then I'll be sending The Plane and the Parade to my most wonderful beta-reader, Kathryn. And while she's slogging through that, I'll be working on a cover. Although I have been searching through images, and so far I haven't found any parade ones I'm particularly taken with.

It's always so wonderful to finish the first draft. The revisions are much less fun. Yes, yes, I know they are a necessary evil, and I'm going to do my best to nail every typo and fill every plot hole. I'm just not going to particularly enjoy it.

I've been giving a lot of thought to what to write next, and I just finished reading a GLBT fantasy novel that I'll be reviewing here soon that I absolutely loved, and it made me want to write a GLBT fantasy novel. Or maybe just a fantasy novel, with or without GLBT characters. I've got a fantasy world I spend month building many many years ago that I'd love to actually set a novel in.

Trouble is, I'm really not sure what my characters or story would be like. I have odds and ends in terms of ideas, but nothing that hangs together. I know I like an old-fashioned quest, of course.

But then there's the whole idea I had about trying my hand at writing a romance, and I'm really not sure I'd want to combine the two. QUEST + ROMANCE = CHEESY. Not always, of course, but it just seems like if the point is to find the MacGuffin before the world ends or whatever, then splitting your attention to moon over some hottie is a little bit counterproductive. And I do realize the hottie can be the MacGuffin, but then it just really becomes a book about a character who is obsessed with someone else and needs to develop a stronger sense of self. Although I suppose the Myadar serial I've been working on has some elements of this--in her case it's a child, not a hottie, though. I like writing female main characters, though, and if I'm going to write a romance, I don't want my mc to be so smitten with the love interest that they pursue them like a MacGuffin. And as for a scenario where the mc of my fantasy novel dutifully pursues the (non-character) MacGuffin and falls in love with some other character who is somehow tangentially involved, while I have no problem with this sort of story, it's not really a romance. It's a fantasy story with an element of romance. And so it doesn't satisfy the "I should try writing a romance" urge.

No, I have a couple of specific needs when it comes to my mc, and these vary by genre. For one thing, if I do write a fantasy novel, I want my mc to be powerful. I often write mcs that are fairly ordinary or at least inexperienced, and as such, apt to get their butts whipped. It would be nice, for a change, to have an mc who does the butt-whipping. If I write a romance, I suppose my mc could still be a butt-whipper, (ahem--this is straying into unintended territory--keep your minds out of the gutter, people) but it's really not so essential.

There was the whole Edwardian romance idea, but I am, shall we say, a perfectionist when it comes to research, and would probably drown in any effort to write a historical romance even of the shallowest kind. I've considered possibly creating a fantasy setting that somewhat emulates the Edwardian England of Jane Austen, thereby releasing myself from the need for accuracy of depiction, but then we stray back into FANTASY + ROMANCE = CHEESY again.

Welcome to the merry-go-round that is my mind when I try to tease out a new story. :P

How about you, do you ever find yourself going around in circles when you're trying to nail down a new story?

New book out! The Fire and the Veil

I decided to devote last week to finishing the revisions on The Fire and the Veil, the sequel to The River and the Roses, which I'd been neglecting since last year. I created my cover and published it on Amazon! I'll need to find some more time soon to get it up on Smashwords, too. I'm so pleased to have finally got it out, though.

Here's the summary:
French teacher and reluctant psychic Veronica Barry is under pressure. Her best friend's daughter, Angie, still traumatized from the assault she survived, has transferred to Veronica's school. Veronica's new boyfriend, Detective Daniel Seong, already wants her to meet his family. And fellow French teacher, Khalilah Jadeed, asks for Veronica's help to locate a missing woman. Add some disturbing dreams and aggressive spirits, and Veronica may have more than she can handle. Soon, she will discover that the spirits she sees and hears sometimes affect her world in other ways as well.

Two hours a day to be productive

The title just about says it all. Luke-Andre is a sweet baby who, we've discovered, loves pureed green beans (who would have seen that coming?), but he's not big on naps. Most days--not all--he takes one 2 hour nap and a few 30 minute ones. The 30 minutes ones I use for taking a shower and eating. The 2 hour nap has become the one period in the day when I can be productive.

And I can get a fair amount of writing done in 2 hours. The trouble is, I have a lot of other irons in the fire:

• homework for my MA in history
• blogging here and the recipe blog
• knitting a blanky out of the yarn my aunt used to make a sweater he won't sleep without--so far, in a week, I've knit about 3/4 of an inch
• reading the signed copy of Naamah's Blessing Jacqueline Carey sent me herself to review (SO EXCITED)
• and, most recently, designing my covers for the serial.

I had hoped to employ a friend of Jeff's for the covers, but he's a professional artist and I just don't make the kind of money he charges, even with the hefty discount he offered.

It's ironic because the part of the cover I thought would be hard--the background--I've already finished, and now I'm struggling with the rest. The background will stay the same for every cover, to provide continuity. It's a deco skyline, with the palace and temple in the story at the center. In the foreground I intend to have a close-up of the main character, and when I paint and draw, I'm usually all about portraits. And I'm finding this really hard for some reason. I've been toying with trying to do the portrait kind of deco-style. I can't decide if I like it or not. I voted on another blog when the author posted two possible covers--that was fun, so maybe I'll do something similar here.

More than the design questions, however, I'm running into technical problems: if I want the background the same, it makes sense to scan it and add each different foreground in a design program. Except 1) I don't own a design program anymore--I used to have PaintShopPro a long time ago but that died with the computer it was on; and 2) that means creating the portrait on paper I can cut to be able to place it over the background manually, as I don't think I'm skilled enough to do a proper cutting job on the pc. And doing it on paper means using pencils or pastels, not paint, and I intend to paint the background--I've already got it all drawn out on a flat canvas.So the two may not look good together unless I can work some sort of magic with the design program I don't have.

There are probably some nifty programs that do really useful things like make it possible to scan an image that isn't rectangular without filling in the negative space with white, but the learning curve for me on anything like that is bound to be steep. And I only have 2 hours a day to do it. And I'm still writing (I'm midway through part 4--I think there will be 8 parts, although I'm still not positive). So I really could use more hours in the day.

...And he's awake. After 30 minutes. Looks like today will be one of those exceptions where there is no 2 hour nap at all.

epublishing your novel

I'm so excited. I've epublished my novel, Broken Ones, on Smashwords, and it will soon also become available electronically on Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Clicking the "publish" button on Smashwords was SO COOL. Seriously. So cool!

So I had to do a fair amount of research to get it all done, and I thought I'd bring my findings here so that perhaps someone feeling as overwhelmed as I did yesterday can get it all in one place.

First of all, publish to at least these three retailers: Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.* Every retailer has their own format to follow for epublishing. This is annoying, and I suspect when we move out of this "wild west" era of epublishing, one of the things that will happen is standardization of formats. But in the meantime...

The simplest order to epublish is as follows (at least in my experience):

1. Publish to Smashwords
2. Publish to B&N
3. Publish to Amazon

Why? Because Smashwords has this wonderful free guide: Smashwords Style Guide. Warning: it is 73 pages long. Don't be intimidated, though, the first two dozen pages or so just tell you why using their guide is useful. The bulk of the instructions exist from around page 25ish to page 68, and there are a lot of images. And it is totally worth doing what they advise.

One thing I didn't think they made clear is that they won't take a .docx file. Only .doc, so "save as" .doc (it's listed as Word 97-2003) if you're using the latest Word.

Once you have your Smashwords formatted document, it is way easy to convert it to B&N and Amazon. Just remove the Smashwords copyright info and replace it with the appropriate info for whichever format you're doing. On the B&N site, you can upload the Word doc as is. For Amazon, you have to convert the file to html. Don't worry, all that means is "save as" a web page or as html, depending on what your program calls it.

Always look at the preview. When I first uploaded my file to Amazon I saw I had lost my paragraph indents. Then I realized I'd uploaded the .doc file, not the .html file. Because Amazon will take a .doc file, but the .html file keeps all that nice Smashwords formatting you created whereas for some reason it loses some from the .doc file.

Alternately, you can use Guide Henkel's guide to formatting, which provides you with step by step instructions for creating a clean, issue-free html file. Note that you cannot use this file for Smashwords. You definitely can for Amazon, and I didn't try for B&N. I ran into one problem with it, and commented on Guido's blog, and he responded within like, an hour. Really supportive. If you do decide to go with this guide to format your Amazon Kindle, be aware that the first line in the style sheet needs to be changed. Quoting Guido here from the email he sent me:

Simply change the first line in the style sheet

       html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0.1em; }

to this one

       html, body, div, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, li, dt, dd, p, pre, table, th, td, tr { margin: 0; padding: 0; }

and you will be fine. Kindle does not interpret the padding command properly and applies it only to the left side of the page.

When you're ready to upload your formatted book:

Have your bank account information handy when you are ready to upload your book. This will save you time and help you avoid annoying your significant other by asking him/her five different questions about your bank account. Believe me.

I created a paypal account for B&N because they pay you every time you earn $10 with paypal, versus every $75 if you choose to be paid by check.

A note or two about creating a cover:

You can do it yourself. I did. There are places online with free stock photos and illustrations, but in the end I went to dreamstime and set up an account, and paid $9.99 for 8 credits to buy a 4 credit image. So I paid, essentially, $5.00 for my cover and the right to use its photo commercially. I then used Paint to add the title and my name. I chose my photo carefully, as I wanted to combine the concept of "broken" with a sense of hope, and I also wanted a literal broken window since two windows get broken in the book. I also like to think the sunbeam could be a ghost image, but that might be stretching it. And I also carefully chose the font and how to format it. I suggest you look at your cover as a thumbnail in your file directory, because it will be that small (or nearly) in some of the directories Smashwords lists it in. If you can't read your name and title, start over.

You want an image that is minimum  800h X 600w because that's the minimum required by all three companies, I believe. At least two out of the three, for sure.

If the thought of creating your own cover gives you hives, you can, I'm told, go to DeviantArt and hire an artist on the cheap. One person told me it would cost around $35. One of my critiquing buddies is going to have his nephew do his cover. There are lots of possibilities.

Finally, some things to consider:

• Price: if you go by what epublishing guru J.A. Konrath says and does, price your ebook at $0.99 for promotional periods, then raise it to $2.99. Why? For one thing, on B&N and Amazon this makes a big difference in terms of your royalties. B&N Nookbooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99 earn 65% while anything outside of that range earns 40%. Amazon Kindlebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99 earn 70% while everything else earns 35%. So once you've got some momentum going on your sales and you have some five star book reviews, it may make sense to raise your price to $2.99, especially if your book is at least 65K words. Readers apparently judge value based on length a lot of the time. I've also read that some authors prefer not to list at $0.99 indefinitely because the $0.99 ebook attracts a certain kind of reader, and that kind of reader can be unpleasant. I wish I remembered which blog I read that on, because I'd link to it, but I don't, so do some searches for more information.

• Don't publish your book until you've given it revisions and a thorough edit. I mean, don't get me wrong, I probably missed some typos in my novel--I think I catch them all, and they still slip by me, masters of stealth that they are. But I think typos are forgivable. What hangs me up when I'm reading are things like passive voice, overuse of to be verbs, etc. And stories that confuse me, etc. So don't put your book out there until it's been through some beta-readers, etc. Broken Ones had a total of six beta-readers and I still caught way too many gerunds and to be verbs in my last edit. And try to eliminate every "there was" or "there were" you find. And to quote Stephen King, "The adverb is not your friend." Apparently a lot of crappy self-published ebooks exist out there. I believe that while some of these are selling, eventually the cream will rise to the top. Make sure yours is creamy.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has epublished or is considering doing so. Please comment and tell me a bit about your journey!

*ETA: I have been asked, "Why go through the trouble of reformatting to submit to Amazon when Smashwords automatically formats for Kindle (as well as many other formats)?" My answer: because at this time Smashwords does not place your book for sale with Amazon. That means if you want your book listed on Amazon for people to buy for their Kindles you must submit it separately to Amazon. Smashwords does list your book with B&N, but only if you make their Premium List, and I'm not going to take my chances.