Jennifer Bogart - Author: Mid-summer giveaway - "Reflections" FREE on Kindle...

Jennifer Bogart - Author: Mid-summer giveaway - "Reflections" FREE on Kindle...: When I realized my KDP Select contract was coming to an end, and I hadn't used all the free promotional days, I figured I may as well st...

Mid-summer giveaway - "Reflections" FREE on Kindle

When I realized my KDP Select contract was coming to an end, and I hadn't used all the free promotional days, I figured I may as well string them together and put them out there. So - here it is, the great, mid-summer freebie you've been waiting for.

You asked; I answered.

Over the past six weeks, I’ve done a number of book signings. From trade shows to bookstores, it’s been a fun and exciting time. Along the way, I’ve been asked a few questions, so I thought I’d answer them here.

Question: As an independently published writer, how do you get your books in Chapters?

Short Answer: I picked up the phone and asked.

Long Answer: Each Chapters store operates differently. They all have the ability to stock books on consignment, but how they distribute those SKUs and handle author appearances is up to them. Polite phone calls, brief emails, and making a personal connection with the Events Manager all worked in my favour.

Question:  How long does it take to write a book?

Short Answer: About a month and a half.

Long Answer: It might only take 45 days to write a book, but it takes about a year (and sometimes more) to reach publication. The editing process is what slows things down. I rely heavily on beta readers, my editor, and other writers for feedback.

Question: How long have you been writing?

Short Answer: Since I was old enough to pick up a pencil and loose leaf.

Long Answer: As a teenager I wrote wonderful works full of angst and heartache. As an adult, I needed a job to pay the bills so I worked first as a proposal/technical writer and then as a copy writer. Four years ago, I started writing fiction again and it has become something of an addiction.

Question: How many books have you written?

Short Answer: Three.

Long Answer: Actually, I’ve written several books. Most of them are tucked away in a box, stored on a floppy disk, or have been used to start backyard fires. They make excellent fuel for roasting marshmallows and hanging out with my boys. At this time, only five books are worth sharing. Three are published (Remember Newvember, Reflections, Money, and Masks & Madness), one is with Beta Readers (Liminal Lights), and one is at the beginnings of the editing phase (Shadow Shifts). Currently, I’m writing the third book in the Liminal Trilogy (Seminal Souls) and doing some research for a sequel to "Money, Masks & Madness".

Question: Are your books about you.

Short Answer: No.

Long Answer: Honestly, I think every writer puts a bit of herself into each book she writes. A little piece of my soul is threaded through the text, linking the words back to the essence of me. The stories might not be about my life, but there are elements of my personality, character, morals, and beliefs embedded in them. 

Fame, Fortune and the “F” Word

Recently, a friend told me I have “a fear of fame”. At the time, I laughed and tucked his comment away into the dark crevices of my mind. Why would he think I’m afraid? Doesn’t every writer dream of fame and fortune? Isn’t that the ultimate goal? We can kid ourselves by insisting we write for personal enjoyment, that we strive towards lofty literary goals – but in all seriousness, what’s the point if there isn’t an extensive readership?  Self-gratification only takes you so far.

Unfortunately, my friend might have been right.

Publicizing my work scares the crap out of me. There. I said it. I hate advertising my books, I hate showing off my accomplishments, and I hate asking for reviews. Not because I don’t think my writing is good enough, but because I am afraid of rejection. Writing is personal – a little piece of my soul is weaved through every book I write, so in essence, when someone criticizes or rejects my work, I take it as a personal assault, even though I know I shouldn’t.

Fear is a powerful thing. It’s what prevents me from querying agents, spending money on marketing, and tackling the kind of writing that digs deep into the psyche. Fear paralyzes, it dissembles, and it makes writing difficult.

It also innervates the brain, helps produce astounding work, and propels us forward. This is when the adrenaline kicks in, your brain slips into overdrive, your emotions go into lockdown, and you’re forced to make an instinctual decision. Fight or flight. Go big or stay home. Use it or lose it.

Just do it.

I have a love-hate relationship with this sly, sneaky thing called fear. For now, I’m going to fold it up, stick in my back pocket and sit on it. It could very well be the kick in the ass I need to get things done. This is one F-word I plan to use to my advantage.

Book Review: Lumen by Joseph Eastwood

This book is for anyone who loves fantasy. Joseph Eastwood’s imagination draws the reader into an alternate reality where magic exists, perils abound, and characters come to life on the page. Daniel is a complex character, both strong and weak, dealing with his changing body, maturing emotions, and new powers he must embrace. Born in the Lowerlands and educated in the Upperlands, Daniel's begins to experience privileges he wasn't meant to have. However, with his privileges comes unexpected danger as he finds himself fighting to stay where he doesn’t belong.

While the story is intriguing and the characters are believable, this book does have its faults. First, it needs a solid line edit to correct small issues such as typos, missing words and awkward sentences (nothing too worrisome, but still all too common in independently published books). Second, there are a few inconsistencies in both the plot and the characterization. I had difficulty figuring out if Daniel was from the lower part of the Middlelands (as suggested at the beginning of the book), or if he was actually from the hated Lowerlands. Technically, Daniel isn’t allowed to leave the island or he could die, and yet he is permitted to go without consequence. Reuban both supports and hates Daniel – which is realistic enough, but he falters between giving the boy privileges and protecting him and setting him up for failure. Not to mention, Reuban breaks character and risks his school, students, and own life in calling for a Luminary without ever  giving the reader a good reason why. There are times when secondary characters know things they shouldn’t. For example, Daniel’s mother doesn’t know what he is, and yet she does when he arrives at her house with Mia at the end of the book.

As the book progresses towards its end, revealing Daniel’s true form, it feels a bit rushed. So much time is given at the beginning, creating realistic characters and a unique world that I wish a little more time had been taken to reach its conclusion. The ending culminates in numerous inconsistencies, leaving many questions (which obviously lead into the second book), and making me feel as though the entire thing was rushed to completion. Again, without giving away too much information, I can’t understand why Reuban waited to carry out his plan for Daniel instead of acting the moment he knew his true form. I also find it hard to believe that only one teacher champions the youth – but not until his life was in imminent danger, and immediately following a scene in which the teacher didn’t care if Daniel lived or died. 

Why would Daniel stay in a place where he obviously wasn’t wanted? Especially if he could leave at anytime without consequence. It didn’t seem to me like he was getting anything out of being there, other than numerous beatings. I also think the character of Jac could have been better defined. His role is important, and the author has the ability to delve into that character’s mind, as he often does, so why not expand on his role in the book earlier to help clarify events and perhaps clear up some of the inconsistencies?

Despite the issues above, could be a good book. With a bit of polish and more attention to detail, this series should meet with success in the YA fantasy market. 

Joseph Eastwood can be found on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter and on his blog. 

Copy, right? Wrong. Cover Yourself (geddit!!??) by Russell Cruse

I have a thing about copyright.  So many new writers ignore it at their peril.

The covers of both my published books comprise nothing but images created by my own fair hand. If anyone's interested, this is how I did it. 

This is the cover as it now appears (click to enlarge if need be) but since I possess only limited charm and modest funds, It was unlikely that I would be able to persuade someone to stand on the side of a mountain in the middle of the night whilst, a mile away, another willing volunteer skis away, leaving neat tracks in the pristine slopes. So how was it done? Well, the first thing to do was to raid my holiday snaps.

I took this photograph (1) about four years ago on the slopes of Diavolezza in Switzerland.  Since this is

(1) Mountain ridge on Diavolezza

where part of the novel is set, I thought it apposite.  I snapped it just as a party of cross-country skiers had crested a high ridge. You will notice a distinct lack of a) the moon and b) a figure.  The sharp-eyed amongst you will notice that it appears to have been taken in daylight.  Well done.

(2) Colorized

The first thing to do was to colorize it on PhotoShop(Copyright Adobe Systems 1989-2011) (2)
This is embarrassingly easy and creates instant night scenes.

Then I fished out another photo I'd taken high on the Julier Pass, again in Switzerland, of the full moon.

(3) Fiddling with the moon (Original on left)

This required rather more jiggery pokery to get the effect I wanted.(3) I had to enhance the moon enormously, cut it out and then insert it in a suitable place on my master sheet.(4) It still needed a bit more finessing since the altered moon had too much of an unreal appearance.  I settled for somewhere between the two.

(4) Moonrise on the mountain.

The next thing it needed was a figure.  In the story, the hero, David Benedict searches the mountains for his lost love (yes, I know: it's very moving) and so I needed a picture of him.  The main problem in getting him to pose for me was that he is merely a figment of my fevered imagination.  So I needed a stand-in. Again, my holiday snaps were enlisted. 

(5) Skier gets into shot

I found a shot of a frozen lake in Silvaplana, south-west of St. Moritz which had been spoiled (not the lake, the picture) by a skier gliding into shot at just the wrong time. (5)  Of such serendipitous strands are our little lives fashioned.  

(6) Skier gets plopped onto mountainside

With a bit of help from PhotoShop (Copyright, Adobe Systems 1989 - 2011) I was able to make a passable David Benedict, whom I then inserted into the picture.  I added a suitable shadow and there it was. (6)

All that was then needed was to crop the picture to a suitable paperback aspect ratio, add the text and that was it.

Now whether or not it's a good cover is debatable.  I happen to like it but that doesn't make it good.  I was told by someone in the business that it was too individual - ie:  in order to have impact, your cover should look as much like the cover of a book with a similar story as possible. 

I'm certain they are right.  If I was to do it again, I might aim for an Ian Rankin/Val McDermid kind of feel, although "Head Count" is a more humourous work than that of either of those two authors.  I need to get my hands on a couple of good, darkly comic whodunnits and see what their publishers come up with.  

More of Russel Cruse's work can be found on his blog, Authonomy and Amazon. 

Book Cover Tutorial by Sam Dogra

A cover can make or break a book, regardless of the old saying, and it really is important to invest the time and effort into getting/ creating a brilliant cover (not just a 'good' cover). Here I hope to cover (no pun intended) step by step how I made the book cover for my book, The Binding. I don’t claim to be an expert, but hopefully through sharing my methods you might pick up something useful.

This tutorial is meant for ebook covers. Paperback books for POD are slightly more tricky, and I'll cover some of the differences at the end.

I used a combination of Photoshop CS2 and Elements 9.0 (mostly due to brush compatibility issues), and my Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet (not required).

WARNING: This tutorial requires a very strong grasp of Adobe Photoshop. If you're unfamiliar with the software, I strongly suggest you find a professional to do the cover for you. All of the techniques I've used were gleaned from free online tutorials and personal experimentation. However I have been using Photoshop for years for my own artwork, so while these skills can be taught, don't expect to learn them overnight!

1. First off, we need ideas. What do you want the front cover to look like? A good place to start are with similar genre books already published, to get a 'flavour' of what covers are in vogue right now. Think about a cover that catches your eye- why does it interest you? Is it the image, the colours, the font? An easy way to do this is use Google images and see all the covers lined together and see which one grabs your interest.

 2. Right, now you've established what kind of cover you'll like, time to find some images. Deviantart and Google are good resources to use, as well as your own photographs. BUT, the most important thing- and I really cannot stress this enough- is make sure you have permission to use the stock photos you find. You'll want something that's free for commercial use, as you're using it for a book. If you're unsure, ask the photo's owner. If that's not possible, then opt for the safe side and just don't use it, no matter how 'perfect' it is. You can pay for stock image use, too. This can be the most time consuming part of cover design but it's very important.

3. Open a new file in Photoshop (I'm using Elements here). Try to set a relatively high resolution- you can shrink the finished version later to the right dimensions without sacrificing quality that way. For my book, I used 200ppi and 31cm x 45cm.

4. As Binding's opening scene begins in a dark forest, I went for this lovely picture of a night woodland (image credit: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/133/2/a/Magical_Forest_STOCK_by_wyldraven.jpg). Use the Transform option to resize accordingly. I was happy with the light and shadows, but if it's not right, use Levels (Ctrl + L) to adjust.

5. Next I needed a necklace. I made this myself using an emerald earring and a silver chain that I have at home. I took a photograph on a dark background, then removed the background. To do this, just use the Magic Wand tool, and set the tolerance fairly lowish, then select the areas you want to remove. Holding Shift allows you to select mutliple areas. Finally, use a hard edge brush to erase the edges and make it tidy. I then duplicated this over to the cover file as a new layer, and resized it.

6. The colour of the gem is green, and I want it red. You can select the gem using the select tool and then use Hue/ Saturation (Ctrl + U) to 'colorize' it, but it looks pretty fake that way. A better way is to open Hue/ Saturation (Ctrl + U) and tweak the individual colours (select the box that says 'Master' and alter the hues etc for each colour channel). In this case I made the green/ blue hues red and orange. This just makes it look more natural. Again, just tweak the colours around and set whatever you're happy with. I used Levels to make the chain a bit brighter, too.

7. So I have the 'icon' image, which looks okay, but it's not very exciting, is it?  To add some flare, I downloaded a brush set for lighting effects (http://fav.me/d1ymy2t) to make a 'streak' in a white colour on a new layer above the image. On its own, it's a bit too bright, so I toned the Opacity to 60% and switched the layer mode to 'Overlay'.

8. It's still not there, yet! The final touch for this part was to add some brush effects. Again, I downloaded a brush set from here (http://fav.me/d226rso), this one showing smoky patterns. In a pale blue colour, I made some strokes so it looks like the gemstone is smoking on a new layer above the gem layer.

Again, it's a bit stuck-on without adding some effects, so make a Layer Style (either by right clicking on the layer in CS2 or going to Layer> Layer Style in Elements). This brings up a box like this:

I want the smoke to glow, so I've added an Outer Glow in a slightly darker blue shade. You can play with the settings, adding a drop shadow or changing opacity of the glow, to get a wide range of effects. Don't overdo it though!

9. So, that's the necklace done, but book covers need titles! So the next step is to find a good font. Again, like with the stock images, make sure you have permission to use the font for commercial use. The font I've used is called Hawaiian Lover, and I've altered it manually (using a hard edged Eraser) to remove the bubbling. I choose a calligraphic type font as I think it fits the style of the book. Try to avoid the default fonts as they can be very plain, but at the same time don't get a gaudy one either that's hard to read. It's useful to have a friend feedback to you about the cover but constructively. I argued endlessly about font with my friend, but it was worth it as eventually I found one that both to our liking.

10. Plain text is kinda boring on its own, so this needs some layer effects. Open up Layer Styles again and play around. I went for a Drop Shadow and Bevel to make it look more three-dimensional.

11. I did the same for the remaining text (Chronicles of Azaria, Book One, and my author name), although I used different fonts. Be careful using multiple fonts- it can make the cover look terrible! But I would say use a different font for the author name from the title. My author name is Bookman Old Style, and the series title is Fondamento. I used the same Layer Style for all of them to give it some consistency.

12. To make the book series title stand out, I used another brush set (http://redheadstock.deviantart.com/) and used the swirlies brush, and then used Layer Styles to add a glow effect.

13. Almost done! Lastly, I wanted to frame the cover a bit better. Once again, your friend the brush set (link) comes in handy. I made corner edges with the brush (under Brush settings you can change the direction of the brush, or you can rotate the painted image via Transform), and applied a Drop Shadow and Bevel Layer Style.

14. Save this image, then save it as another PSD file. Now it's time to resize to the right dimensions- Amazon etc will usually specify this. If you want to keep the Layers separate, use the 'Link' option so that everything can be resized without merging the layers. All you need to do now is adjust the cavas size (Image > Resize > Canvas Size), put in the dimensions, and press OK. It will tell you that the canvas dimensions don't meet the image ones, but just allow this. Now, using Transform (Ctrl + T), resize the image so it fits into the new canvas size. Once that's done, you can save this image as a JPG/ PNG, and voila! Your ebook cover is all ready to go. Do be mindful of the file size however- using Photoshop's 'Save for Web' feature can compress files more without sacrificing quality too much, so don't be afraid to use it.

15. Paperback covers are a bit trickier to master as you'll need to make an image for the spine and back cover as well. Createspace etc have accurate templates that you can use to get the dimensions right. This will depend on things like page number, paper thickness etc, so don't attempt this stage until you have the formatting of the paperback book completed. Then all you need to do is generate a template, and open it in Photoshop. This is mine:

All I did was flip the forest image over, and use it for the both the spine and back cover. Using the same text and Layer Styles, I wrote out the title again for the spine, and used the same Layer Styles for the blurb as well (although I used a different font). I've also left a space for the ISBN number.

I used a similar process for books 2 and 3, but also used Layer Gradients to make sure the colours were more balanced. The icon image for book 2 is actually made from a brush set for feathers.

And that's it! Overall it took me around 1-2 hours to make one cover (although most of that was spent trying to get decent photos of my necklace!). The other covers were easier as all the styles were already done, so I simply had to alter the text.

It's also a good idea to acknowledge your sources, so I have an acknowledgements page in my book citing the links to the stock images and brushes I used.

All cover images are copyright Sam Dogra and may not be reproduced without permission.

Sam Dogra can be followed on her blog, Goodreads, and for a sneak peak at her current projects, Authonomy.