A Tip On Making a Self-Published Cover

My Favorite Cover Tip: Textures

I love covers. I love making covers. I especially love that moment in creating a cover where everything just suddenly comes together and the clouds part and angels sing. I'm absolutely no expert, but the cover for my first book in the Marionettes series got some really positive attention for standing out amongst a slew of professionally made Young Adult fiction covers. That's some pretty solid cred right there.

So, in this little image-heavy article, I'll explain how I used the above textures to take my image and make it into a cover.

Yep, we used to work at a haunt

Is that something I could put on a resume?

Okay, albeit it was a small-scale haunt held every Halloween by my old boss, a family friend, but he's a serious Halloween haunt hobbyist. Each year, he and his family would build their house into a walk-through haunt for the heckuvit. They'd start planning in August just to have it ready for one day at the end of October, and each year had a new theme.

(Got some minor makeup gore in this post down below, so bewaaaaaaare.)

I'm not really a haunt-type person. Little me, I'm an introvert. But, despite that, I also participated in stage plays and musicals every year of my high school career. Kinda odd, I guess.

But scaring people is a whole lot different than speaking onstage in front of an audience. If anything, it's actually harder. It's a lot more intimate, and the audience is expecting a whole lot more out of the performance from every actor.

It's pretty demanding, even physically. My bossman has worked plenty of professional haunts, and he'd wake up the next morning sore and beat -- and got the worst cold of his life one time (misssserable). The first time I participated in his haunt, I bruised my hand up to my arm just to create the perfect slap-of-flesh-against-hard-surface tune. Those were some wicked bruises. Ah, good times.

Victoria's first go at the haunt utilized her vocal chords to the utmost capacity. As in, she screamed. Shattered glass with those screams. And every time my boss has his birthday bash with the whole family present, everyone always remembers her by that scream.

I mean, the makeup's convincing enough. I'm rubbing my neck even as I try very hard not to look at that picture. (I'm not a big gore person either. Yikes. Give me a psychological horror film, okay, but blood and guts? I'll make some embarrassing noises I'd rather not talk about.)

Just to give an idea of how intense her scream was, as soon as people entered her "chamber", so to speak, and she let loose that deadly shriek, people would fall over themselves and create some awesome fire hazards. Ah, yes. Memories.

After my first couple haunts, I got to be one of the walkers, antagonizing the line and perusing the haunt at my own will. At least then I could chose the people I wanted to approach, and I mean, a good and proper doll-like role was perfect.

Yo, also, that's totally my real hair. That's 100% my own hair attached to my head, and that was the end of the night after it had deflated from the elements.

I'd walk around barefoot just like that. All I had to worry about was dodging out of the way of shoes when kids went screaming.

And when I say "kids", I mean grown adults, as well as adult men. The guys were the most satisfying to get to wet their pants, I have to say. They come in with the most swagger, and then leave with the least.

But, this picture doesn't really show my face. So let's take A CLOSER LOOK.

Ah, yes. There we are, still getting ready. I hadn't emptied a can of hairspray into my hair just yet, but don't I look like just a dear? Almost as inviting as he looks. That's a guy you'd introduce to your parents, for sure.

Eheheheh.

But, if there was one thing I learned through these haunts, it was how to effectively scare people. There's "shocked scared", but there's also "buildup scared". When I write, the buildup scared is my favorite. I love some good tension, the "ohshit ohshit ohshit" moment before the explosive "OHSHIT".

I mean, "Interlude" is a perfect Halloween story, and we constructed it with my typical breakneck pacing style. Mmm, sweet, suspenseful tension.

Maybe next year we'll be able to market Interlude as a perfect Halloween story. For now, we're focusing on our marketing plan for November and December to get some momentum going -- and, as I've mentioned on the writing tumblog and blog, I'll be doing NaNoWriMo this year to get a head start on writing book 4.

Awesome times ahead.

Everyone stay safe this year!

INTERLUDE is now available!

SO, as you can see, INTERLUDE is now available! You can get your digital copy through the Amazon or B&N store. Formatting the paperback will take a little bit longer as I take care of some other priorities first.

Also, we DID mention that we were going to make the novella free — but we’re not sure if that’s breaching the Amazon contract. I understand it a little better now and have a better idea of how Amazon’s price-matching system works. Seems to be a rather fuzzy conflict there.

Instead, what what we’ll be doing is giving away free digital editions from now until October 31st. All you have to do is go to our contact page and send us an email, and make sure to put “Interlude ebook request” in the subject line. Let us know if you need either a Mobi (Kindle) or Epub (Nook) version or any instructions on how to transfer the ebook from your computer to your e-reader.

We’ll only be doing this through the last days of October, so make sure you get your email into us!

Casting Shadows: A Dance in Shadow and Whisper Mix

[So, here's the soundtrack I put together for Dance in Shadow and Whisper. Definitely best to listen to if you've already read the book, but I won't provide any context! The links below will take you to Youtube videos until I can gather the songs for 8Track or something similar.]

1. Heads Will Roll Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. Another Case Uh Huh Her
3. A Beautiful Lie 30 Seconds to Mars
4. The Sweet Hello, The Sad Goodbye (bassflow remix) Roxette
5. Heavy In Your Arms Florence & The Machine
6. Manifest Destiny Zola Jesus
7. Still Here Digital Daggers
8. I Never Told You What I Do For A Living My Chemical Romance
9. In the Middle of the Night Within Temptation
10. This is Not the End (Moon Version) The Bravery

Book 3 Cover Reveal + New Updates!

Yo, I meant to update about seven times already, but I kept getting distracted by -- shockingly -- the novella and book 3! But since intros are boring and totally skippable (shh, it's a word), let me just jump into the most exciting part:

WOO! Look at that cover -- aw, yisss. I'll be updating Goodreads with the new entry soon. With how things are going, we're right on track for a December release, and we've got much more room to stretch than we did with book 2 (which we finished just days before September 1st).

I'm not supposed to play favorites, but if I were to play favorites, then I would say book three is my absolute favorite so far. Don't ask me why or else I'll start gushing spoilers.

The manuscript is currently sitting with betas, who are very nearly complete with the novella. Once the novella's back with us, we have one last run-through before it's all set to go.

After all these months revising, it'll be a relief to actually start writing book four. My fingers are itching for some day-long, 10k marathons that finished the original 120k words of book 3 in about a month's time. Those were the days where I wrote until my fingers hurt. Aw, yes. Good times.

(Tip: if you're going to write until your fingers hurt, make sure your hands, wrists, and forearms are level so you don't get carpal tunnel, okay? Carpal tunnel is bad.)

On a final note, I've finally put together all the songs for the first book's soundtrack. I'll make a little banner and try to figure out the mystery that is 8Track and post it soon! Also, since this cover involved some more intricate changes than the others, and nine variations, I'll of course have another cover process post in the future!

Holy Freaking Curse Words in YA

I'm not really a heavy subscriber on the profound language of the curse word. I throw out the occasional bomb when I get angry, but it stays fairly PG13 (perhaps a little less so on the internet). I've always been like this, despite how my mother cursed (and still curses) like a sailor. It's just my personal decision, and I don't condemn anyone for making their own decision.

I'd be out of a girlfriend if I did.

So, in the spirit of banned book week -- someone told me the other day, "Cursing is a sign of lower intelligence and a lack of a command of the English language."

I got puffy. Super puffy.

I said, "I can curse all I want and still be fucking eloquent."

He didn't expect me to say that. Let's just put it that way.

To me, cursing is simply another way of communication, but the words themselves mean little after societal context is taken away. "Kill" is a dangerous word, and it's dangerous by its neutral definition alone. A child can read the definition of "kill" and know it's a bad thing. "Shit" is, well, poop. An angry word for poop. And it's the "angry" part that people generally don't like, even if a child reads the neutral definition and only giggles because poop is funny.

Because of this, there are appropriate times and places for this type of expression. But "appropriate" is sort of subjective, isn't it? Who gets to decide what language is "appropriate" for young adults?

My characters curse. They do. Well, not all of them do as frequently as others. Some of them throw out the occasional bomb as I do: when under excruciatingly uncomfortable situations where "shoot" just simply won't suffice. Other characters get a thousand times more creative.

(Seriously, sometimes I sit and stare out the window, brainstorming some of these curses because, wow, they're crazy.)

But the fact is simple: for me to censor or reduce a character's cursing is painfully out of character for them. It's in their character to curse the way they do, and my responsibility as a writer is to write honestly and truthfully. They curse. Some more than others. Some a lot more than others. But this is them. Good young adult fiction should always be honest to teens and never hold back, just because they're teens.

I've always considered Marionettes to be Upper YA for its edgier themes and language. I know I might have been a bit surprised if I'd picked up a book like this when I was a teen, but to be perfectly honest, the teens of today are not the teens of my day. Seriously. My teen section in Barnes and Noble was an itty-bitty thing. Now, it's growing at a rate that bookstores don't even know what to do with.

Also, teens are tougher now. They're more independent and, holy cow, they're a whole lot more aware of the world than I'd been. And just like with anything else, teens will decide for themselves if the language of the curse word is something they want to practice. Censoring it in fiction doesn't keep it from them -- it just makes them ask, "Why is this character saying 'shoot' instead of 'shit'?"

The Paperback of Book 2 is Available on Amazon!

The paperback of Fracture the Spider's Web is all up and available in the Amazon store! It looks nice, right? All bright and shiny and freaking awesome.

So far, for some reason, Amazon has the digital and the paperback as separate listings. You can search by title or series name and you should get both listings, so make sure to scroll a little bit down and the paperback listing should show up.

The first round of revisions for book 3 are done -- all I need to do is go back, tweak a few more things, and then it's off to the betas! There's also, of course, Interlude, the novella that I've just started revising. Compared to these massive manuscripts I'm used to, the novella will be easy-peasy.

That's all for now. Stay awesome.