Tag Archives: book cover

Cover Reveal – It’s Cold Outside

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I write a lot of short stories, some of which are for the blog, like answers to challenges, and some that never make it to the blog. I have twice put out books of short stories. My first book was Seasons of Imagination and then I did Embers. The stories in these books were very eclectic and tended towards the short, though both had longer stories, even novellas.

You can see where this is leading, can’t you?

Yes, I am putting out a new book of short stories!

This time I decided to use a selection of only science fiction stories. The average length is also much longer. As with the other two books, the theme unifying these stories might be a little thin, but it does exist.

And here is the moment you’ve been waiting for, the cover:

Continue reading →

Cover Reveal – The Old Mill

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A stench lies on Avebury, New Hampshire. It isn’t something that one can smell, it is more of a psychic soot polluting everybody’s mood. No one recalls when it arrived, but there does seem to be a connection with the Old Mill and its mysterious new owners.

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Following the trail of the local legend, the ghost of Martha Goode, Gill Baxter is driven to discover the truth behind the events of 1821 and, hopefully, prevent another “time of dying.” That trail, though, leads directly to The Old Mill.

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Yes, I am finally coming close to the end! Editing is complete and the formatting actually was far smoother than usual. I, of course, checked the formatting 20 times over to be sure – there is no way possible everything worked right off without Word adding extra pages ad some inconvenient point! But, it looks good.

So that means it is time to schedule a release!

Continue reading →

Question About Cover Reveals…

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books-7-16-2019

A few years ago I asked  people when they thought a cover reveal should be brought out.  I was surprised that several authors who were traditionally published told me that about six months was right.  Their reasoning was that the cover was the most basic component of the book’s promotion.  One said that she had a cover reveal before she had even finished the rough draft!  The idea is that every time the book is mentioned anywhere, the cover is there.  The cover symbolizes the story in people’s minds.

Since that post, I have noticed that most people do a cover reveal a few weeks before the release.  In fact, I often see a cover reveal paired with a preorder or an announcement of the release date.  I very rarely see the reveal more than three weeks out, perhaps a month if we stretch it.  I have even seen the reveal the day before the book was released!  Actually, I’ve seen the cover reveal less than a week before the release date several times and by several different authors.

So, what do you think, when is the ideal time for a cover reveal?  Should it be months ahead of time so the cover comes to symbolize the book and it is deep in people’s minds, or should it be days before the release to build that hoped for excitement?  Someplace in between?

As you may have guessed, I have the cover of The Old Mill ready to go, but I haven’t touched the manuscript since early October, shortly after finishing the second draft.  Just curious on what people thought.

Cover Reveal! Two Novellas

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My next book is going to be two novellas, Towards the Light and The Mad Quest.  They both started as serial replies to Sue Vincent‘s #writephoto prompts, and ended up being 30-35K novellas.  I hope to release in mid-April, but there is no set date.  yet.

What do you you think?

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(Note – I am traveling and thing this is an old version of the blurb :(  Will put an updated version up later.)

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Brandon finds himself down the rabbit hole and into a new reality where he is captured by Dwarves, gets involved in “Elemental Politics” and finds himself in a race to save the worlds – yes worlds, six, perhaps seven – and the peoples of those worlds in the tongue-in-cheek Fantasy novella, “Towards the Light”.

Lorounce, a “not only is the glass half empty, but the longer we talk about it, the more that evaporates” kind of guy, is on a reconnaissance mission with his childhood friend and secret crush, Merla, to enter the stronghold of the evil Lord of Darkness.  The mission soon spins off on an adventure to try to rescue the prince, find and confront the dragon to secure the magic sword and then raise an army to defeat the evil one with said magic sword all while being chased not only by the minions of the evil one, the dreaded Snow Demons, but their own people as well. Whew.  It is totally impossible, mad even, but with some unexpected help and a few twists along the way, maybe they could pull it off, this adventure called “The Mad Quest”.

“Towards the Light” and “The Mad Quest” are two fast paced, farcical Fantasy novellas.  With visible winks and nods to the great Fantasy works that came before, but with a few unexpected twists to keep you guessing, these two stories are light-hearted valentines to those classic works of the past; love notes but with pokes in the ribs and “bunny-ears” behind the head fun.

More on Embers – Short Stories

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book cover for Embers

I don’t know how others chose stories for a collection. Here is the story of Embers, the book.

I wrote a list of candidates and then read through the stories twice, using a different order each time, and graded them.  I also sent most of the stories to two other people. I already knew about some, both plus or minus, so didn’t send those.  We sat down and talked about how they felt about each story.  I then took their input and my two grades and came up with a final score.  At this point I knew about half of the ones I ended up including and I knew a whole bunch I was not going to use.  It was those others, the in between stories that I liked but wasn’t totally sold that they were 100% right.  One day I just went through the list and wrote a plus or minus beside each story and that was it.  I put each story that earned a ‘plus’ as a separate file in a folder then decided on the order.  Thus I made the book.

Funny thing is that after the book was made, I started finding all types of connections between the stories.  The one that stood out the most for me was that most of them took place at twilight, either dusk or dawn.  Maybe it was just a climatic moment at the beginning or end of the day, but sometimes it was the entire story.  OK, a few took place at noon or midnight, but even in these few stories there is something that has the feeling of twilight.

I noticed other connections as well, but I will leave up to the readers to discover them :)

*** Continue reading →

Cover Reveal – Embers (Short Stories)

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book cover for Embers

Yes, I have another book in the works, a book of short stories.  I call it “Embers“.  One of the short stories is Embers, which was actually named from a #writephoto challenge by Sue Vincent.  That story is in five parts, with the first being written for the challenge.  And, of course, each short story can be thought of as an ember, a little nugget of imagination packaged up in a self-contained short story, ready to burst into flames in your mind.

See that picture at the top of the page?  Yep, that is the book cover.  Maybe ;)  I’m doing my own cover again, so it is possible it will be tweaked as time goes on.  It should be pretty close to the above, though.

I am currently shooting for a December 4th release date.  Just in time for Christmas ;) Continue reading →

The Halley Branch – Tweaked Cover

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The Halley Branch Cover

When I did my cover reveal for The Halley Branch, I had one person ask me if it was an alien.  What?  “The skull just seems flat to me, but what do I know?”  I checked by putting a photo of a skull in the same position over it as a layer in Photoshop.  Actually it was pretty close, but yeah, slightly too flat.  I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but then, you know, there will always be someone out there who will say, “I bought your book thinking it was about aliens!  That skull is so misleading!!”   It took me about 5 minutes in Photoshop to get a little closer to the photo of a human skull I had imported.  Not exact, but closer.

What do you think?  A little less like an alien?

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An evil 300 years in the making.  A trap set 150 years in the past.

The day should have been a normal “family day” at the Hawkins’ Mausoleum, but a premonition followed Trevor into the crypt. To make matters worse, he couldn’t shake his morning vision of a dead woman draped in a funeral-shroud.

After rescuing a girl trapped in the tomb, repressed memories forced him to reevaluate everything. Was his extended family a cult with roots going back to America’s colonial past?  Was the evil Benjamin Halley still stalking his tomb after 150 years? Was there any truth to the Power described by the family’s patriarch, Miles Hawkins?

Trevor realized that he was being manipulated and drawn into a trap set in the 19th century, and feared that everyone around him had already been ensnared.  Who could he trust?  The members of his own family’s Branch, The Bradford’s, like his cousins Bill or Stan?  Perhaps members of the Hawkins Branch, such as the beautiful but jaded Amelie?  The one Branch he knew not to trust was the extinct Halley Branch.

But the Halley’s were the ones who were welcoming him with open, if dead, arms.

The Halley Branch Cover Reveal Part 2

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The Halley Branch Cover - front

Yesterday I posted the cover for The Halley Branch.  Today I want to say a few things about it.

Several months ago I asked some people how early they do a cover reveal.  i was very surprised that most said 4 to 6 months.  I had someone say their publishing company did the reveal before the book was even finished!  So now that it is out there, I can use the image when I talk about it.

Some of you read the rough draft of the book when I posted it as a serial.  Do you recognize this image? Continue reading →

Cover Reveal – The Halley Branch!

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The Halley Branch Cover - front

It is still several months out, but I thought you all might like to see what the cover for The Halley Branch will look like.

What do you think?  Like it?

Here is a rough draft of the front and back together.  This is subject to change.  (I will have a second post with some conversation about the cover later): Continue reading →

Cover Reveal – The Fireborn!

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Fireborn Cover

In the shadowy area where myth and history collide…

Do you see that wonderful picture at the top?  That’s right, that is the cover of The Fireborn!  Don’t you just love it?  As with the cover of Seasons of Imagination, this picture was created by the multi-talented Belinda Borradaile from over at Idiot Writing.

I couldn’t be happier with the cover.  I hope you like it too!

Mark your calendar – the official release will be on August 21!