I know that many of you loved the Santa Muerte cover. But it was communicating the wrong thing. Alas. I love that tattoo. On another site I polled, everyone leaned towards the road and vanishing point. Then everyone I polled personally liked the initial concept for the one below. I liked the road, but the bullet holes won. Here is the final result.
Folks, please resist the SERVANT marshmellow.
Me and my big mouth. I unwisely let it slip in a comment thread that I had Servant up on Amazon (it’s up early because I need at least 24 hours to make sure my purchase gets the ratings going and to make sure everything looks right). And some of you have gone out to purchase it, for which I love you, BUT I should have made clear that we’re still in the proof check phase. That means we’re carefully going over the beta version of the trade paper book and catching the errors you only see when it’s in book form (next time I’ll do the trade paper first and then the ebook). You might not notice the things we’re catching and will be happy with the proof version. But I hate thinking you’re getting anything but the best.
If you’ve already purchased and don’t care, fine. If you do, Amazon has a liberal return policy. For the rest of you: DON’T EAT THE MARSHMELLOW. Give us just a few days. Make sure you’ve signed up for the new book release notification on the left. I’ll let you know when everything is ready to go AND on sale 🙂
Happy holidays!
For those of you who are thriller readers, which two of the following would you be most interested in?
Before you make your choice, please note that they’re mockups. Unfinished. We’re just getting the idea.
Note as well that BAD PENNY is not a thriller of the spy, mystery, or intrigue type. It’s not military, cop, or FBI. It’s not fearful woman-in-jeopardy suspense. It’s not serial killer. It’s Lone Ranger Kicks Butt–a guy outside the law saves some folks and metes out justice. It’s action. And when thinking about tone, if you have the lighter KNIGHT AND DAY on one side and the very serious Jason Bourne or John LeCarre on the other, this one leans towards KNIGHT AND DAY.
Okay, let me know your choice. As dictator I may disregard all your votes, but at least I will feel like an enlightened dictator.
I received the proof of SERVANT from CreateSpace today. Folks, it is georgeous. Inside and out. The cover, title page, Isaac Stewart’s map, headers, front and back matter, chapter titles, the poems. I’m so pleased.
Most readers will look at it and say, hey, looks like another book. But that’s the point. The interior is designed to give a great reading experience and fade into the background, letting the story come to the fore. The cover is meant to grab and give the feel. I think both do their job splendidly.
Of course, you know what this means, don’t you?
It means that next week we will have a new release day with the new release discount pricing. You may wonder why I don’t just do it now. The answer is that there are some copy edits that need to be made. Things you never catch until you see the story in book form. That’s why you always get a proof. As soon as we’ve made those updates, I’ll announce the sale.
The last few weeks I’ve been burning the candles at both ends with publication tasks. So no time for long reviews, but I still wanted to share.
Icefall by Matthew KirbyWow. I loved this book. LOVED IT! It’s Norse historical fiction. A war is coming, and the king sends his children away to a remote fjord steading to keep them safe. He also sends a number of trusted warriors, a company of beserkers, a cook, a thrall, and a skald. But the fjord isn’t remote enough.
It’s a fine tale full suspense, wisdom, surprise, and two lovely character arcs. It’s told from the point-of-view of Solveig, the king’s plain daughter. And her voice and the details Kirby includes totally transported me to their world. A wonderful tale, wonderfully told.
I don’t know if I like 3D very much, but Bullock and Clooney do a marvelous job. Do you remember Tom Hanks in the excellent Castaway where he’s marooned on a tiny island? This is Bullock’s Castaway, except the physics of space are deadly. A great film.
This film is about Jackie Robinson, the first Black man to play in the White leagues of American baseball, and recounts his first year. It stars Harrison Ford as the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the guy who is determined to bring Blacks into the game he loves, as well as Chadwick Boseman who is new to me. I watched this with the whole family, and we were all enthralled. What a great story.
I not a big zombie fan. So for me to recommend this means it had to be good. It was good. A delicious thriller with plenty of scare. I really liked the thriller feel to this. My wife and two youngest daughters sat on the couch holding each other’s hands. I sat in my La-Z-Boy throne heart pumping with the action.
As I mentioned above, I’ve been working hard trying to get my books out the door. (Please, boys, just get out! It’s time for you to make your way in the world!) I’m using Adobe InDesign to format them for Kindle and EPUB, but I barely know the program. That caused some big problems. But then I subscribed to Lynda.com–a training website. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I did.
For $25 per month (and you can just subscribe for one month), you get access to hundreds of high-quality online classes recorded by experts. Each class is usually a few hours long, made up of videos that are usually each shorter than ten minutes. The site allows you to create playlists of various courses you want to take, makes recommendations, and lets you know which videos in a class you’ve watched. It also includes a verbatim transcript so you search for the part of the video that’s interesting to you.
The workhorse I’ve been using is “InDesign CS6 to EPUB, Kindle, and iPad” by Anne-Marie Concepcion. It’s 7.5 hours long. I’ve also been referring to parts of “InDesign CC Essential Training” by David Blatner and “Creating Long Documents with InDesign” by Mike Rankin. And I have 16 other courses in my playlist that I can’t wait to get to like “Designing a Book Cover” by Nigel French and others on graphic design, typography, and logos.
If you need training on some software product, go out to Lynda.com and see if they have a course for you.
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