Before and After: The Vanished Knight Cover

Hey everyone! Since a lot of you guys were really interested in seeing more of these before and after posts, I thought I'd do a few more of them.

Today, I thought I'd share what went into one of my covers.

Before: 

At the time (and depressingly, much like now), I didn't have a ton of money to spend on publishing, so I decided to see if I could publish a without spending money. The answer was that I could publish two ebook without spending a dime. 

How? Well... Photoshop has a month-long free trial and Flickr makes it possible for me to find images with a creative commons license. 

The image I picked was Albion_Sovereign_Medieval_Sword_11 by Søren Niedziella. The license has a CC BY 2.0 license attached, which means that it's free to adapt and to put to commercial use, as long as I give proper credit and don't imply that the licensor endorses my work in any way. (New kids in the image copyright game: This paragraph can be very important if you want to make a cover from a free image.) 

After: 

This was literally the first time I tried to make a cover, so I kept the image manipulation to things I knew: changing exposure, the composure of an image and cropping. 

By composure, I mean, placing the image so that the viewer's eye gets drawn in. First was the placement of the sword itself and next came the titles. 

I also had the added issue of the maker's mark on the blade. Little things like that can really make a viewer's eye go to the wrong place. Luckily, though, the best placement of the blade was in a way that happened to put the mark out of the frame. 

The result? 

Pretty good, don't you think? Oh, but that's nothing compared to the new cover I'm about to put on the books. 

Yep. I already have the e-book covers done. Only need to do the paper-back covers before I update both The Vanished Knight and The Heir's Choice. 

Who knows, maybe one day, the books with the old covers on them will be collectors' items. ;-) 

If you'd like to check out The Vanished Knight, you can find it at the following e-tailers: 

Amazon.com | Amazon Universal Link | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Scribd | 24Symbols

The paperback is also available at places like Walmart's e-store, Book Depository etc. 

And there you have it? Let me know your thoughts. Also, would you guys like a crash-course on image copyrights as learnt by me? Looking forward to more before and after posts? 

Guess what finally arrived today...

That's right. My paperback proofs are finally here.

I already checked them and everything's as it should be. Which means that the paperbacks should be available on Amazon by next week, and on extended sales channels within the next two months or so.

Will keep you posted.

How are you doing?

The Muse Party Blogfest

Hi all! Just because I felt like doing something a bit different, today, I decided to take part in Sarah Foster's Muse Party Blogfest.

Basically, it's a virtual party where writer's and muses go. Or characters, if it comes to that. I'm dragging a character along, because he's been veeeeery vocal while I've been editing the book he's in. (If you'd like to join in or to see who else is at the party, click here.) Now without further ado, time to get going.



Misha: *Checks outside while she finishes getting dressed. Stifles a laugh because Darrion's scowling while leaning against her car.*
Darrion: *Tugs at his collar, so not into this casual-not-taking-weapons-with outfit, but Callan and Kaela both insisted, so...*
Misha: *Heads out as soon as she's done.*
Darrion: *Brightens slightly.* We can still skip the party.
Misha: What? No. I said we're going and just not arriving is rude. Besides. I didn't get dressed for nothing.
Darrion: *Looks her up and down* Well...you do look nice.
Misha: ...Thanks.
Darrion: And I do so appreciate you not trying to make your dress match my shirt.
Misha: *squints, trying to figure out if he's being sarcastic. Goes with... not.* Yeah. Not the matchy matchy type. *Gets into the car.*
Darrion: *mutters* Thank God. *Takes two bottles off the car's hood and gets in as well.*
Misha: Says the guy who spends more than three quarters of his life in uniform.
Darrion: *Sing song* Not the same.
Misha: *Little shake of her head. Just drives.*
Darrion: Are you sure you have time for this? I mean--
Misha: Do not bring up all the editing I have to do. It'll get done.
Darrion: *Tiiiiiny smile. Secretly loves winding her up.*
Misha: I should have invited my muse. *Glances his way.*
Darrion: Now why would you say that?
Misha: Or maybe I should have brought Gawain. He's always a hit at parties.
Darrion: *Peeved* I can be a hit at parties too, you know. We're friends for a reason.
Misha: Okay... What are we going to sing for karaoke?
Darrion: *Scowls*
Misha: See? You're too uptight for strange parties.
Darrion: And yet, I'm a great conversationalist.
Misha: If you can resist hitting someone. *Groans* You're not going to hit someone.
Darrion: *Scowls* Why am I coming with you again?
Misha: Because you won't leave me alone, remember? You follow me around everywhere.
Darrion: Right. *Crosses his arms, making his shirt strain at his shoulders.*
Misha: What party game are we going to suggest?
Darrion: Is Quin coming? We can maybe tie him up and--
Misha: Don't...
Darrion: *Grins* We only need to stop somewhere for sticks.
Misha: Gaaaaaaaah you're incorrigible!
Darrion: *Chuckles* You love me for it. *Seriously thinks about a game that's actually safe for everyone to play*
Misha: Musical Chairs it is.
Darrion: ...
Misha: *Explains*
Darrion: Oh...kay?
Misha: It'll be fun.
Darrion: If you say so.
Misha: What's in the bottles?
Darrion: Mulnich for me and... since you definitely can't handle mulnich, liquid chocolate for you.
Misha: *Grins* Enough to share?
Darrion: *Nods*
Misha: *Grin widens* And that is why I love you.
Darrion: *Little smile back.*
Misha: *Sighs when they arrive at the party.*
Darrion: *Frowns at the entrance where people are milling around.* No one's seen us yet. We can still escape.
Misha: Oh for the love of -- *Gets out of the car.*
Darrion: *Follows* Can't blame me for trying. You know I don't generally do well with crowds.
Misha: Nonsense. You're charming. You're good looking. You'll be the heart and soul of the party as soon as you smile.
Darrion: Exactly what I'm not looking forward to.
Misha: ...You realize becoming King means you'll deal with crowds for the rest of your life, right?
Darrion: Worth it.
Misha: *Can't argue with that* Well...if you really don't want to go... I'll just go alone. Just...try and stay out of trouble, okay? *Heads in.*
Darrion: ...*Sighs and catches up to her at the door, hooking her arm through his.* This is worth it too.
Misha: *Beams and kisses his cheek, then looks around for people she knows.*

The Vanished Knight: Now Available for Pre-Order

Hi all! 

Okay, so I was totally planning to write some other things last week, but I've been away almost every day since Tuesday. 

The good news is that The Vanished Knight e-book is now out on pre-order at the following places: 

Amazon.com

Amazon anywhere else

Kobo

iTunes

Barnes & Noble

The entity living inside Callan’s soul orphaned her at age eleven. By the time she’s sixteen, it’s ensured her being shunted from one foster family to another. 

Her thirteenth foster assignment should be routine. Except... it's not. A psycho in medieval armor kidnaps her and she ends up in a magical world. There, she accidentally discovers a secret her parents had kept until the day they died. 

Both actually came from this magical world, but left before Callan was born. To cover their tracks, they’d lied about everything. Even who they really were. 

Driven to find out where she comes from, Callan’s trapped in a race for life and death. Walking away isn’t an option, but if she stays too long, the entity will find its next victim. 

In this world where secrets are sacrosanct and grudges are remembered, finding the truth will be near impossible. Especially when Callan has her own homicidal little secret to deal with. 

One with a taste for destroying her life. 

Add it on Goodreads

Also, I'm still looking for help with getting the word out. In particular, with the cover reveal (which will actually be more of an excerpt reveal) and reviews. But I'd also love to get more blog tour stops too. If you'd like to help, please click here for more information. 

Anyone excited that The Vanished Knight is almost out once more? 

The Vanished Knight Has a Blurb

Hi all!

For those of you who missed it, I'm publishing the first two books of The War of Six Crowns on 31 July. 

If you can/would like to help, please click here for more information. 

Today's news: 

The Vanished Knight has a shiny new blurb: 

The entity living inside Callan’s soul orphaned her at age eleven. By the time she’s sixteen, it’s ensured her being shunted from one foster family to another.

Her twenty second foster assignment should be routine. Except... it's not. A psycho in medieval armor kidnaps her and she ends up in a magical world. There, she accidentally discovers a secret her parents had kept until the day they died.

Both actually came from this magical world, but left before Callan was born. To cover their tracks, they’d lied about everything. Even who they really were.

Driven to find out where she comes from, Callan’s trapped in a race for life and death. Walking away isn’t an option, but if she stays too long, the entity will find its next victim. 

In this world where secrets are sacrosanct and grudges are remembered, finding the truth will be near impossible. Especially when Callan has her own homicidal little secret to deal with. 

One with a taste for destroying her life.

Let me know what you think! 

HUGE Announcement and I Need Some Help

Okay. Deep breaths. Those of you who stopped by on Wednesday have probably seen this already:

 

It was supposed to be just one quick taster to tide you over.

But. You know how I kept saying things haven't been falling together right? How I would just keep plodding along until things did fall in to place?

Well. They have.

Just not in the way I'd expected. Which is why it took one unexpected royalty payment from my former publishing house - more than a year after I got my book rights back (Although, that wasn't their fault. The Post Office of South Africa was on strike for most of 2014. I kid you not.) to make me realize that it had.

To illustrate:

I needed to find a way to learn how to format my books and got given an AMAZING step by step guide. (More on this later.)

In my time off, I've basically been editing. So basically, I have one round of edits left to make sure the continuity is kept constant, followed by proofreads, which will probably happen in pen.

ISBNs I've had since last year.

So all I needed were the covers.

Well. The one you saw. Now, I present to you:

Which means that, except for nailing down the back of the book copy, I basically need to decide on my release date. 

Ahem. *Cough* July 31 *Cough*

Seriously, then, I really need exactly one thing: Your help.

Unlike last time around, I'm giving myself three months to set up my blog tour, marketing etc. And I'm thinking of doing the set-up differently.

To make things easier for me AND you... Please see the pages above. Blog Tour, Cover Reveal and Review. Inside will be a linky list and an explanation of what the entry entails. Don't worry. No selling or buying of souls just yet.

You're welcome to enter more than one activity, if you'd like.

So what do you say? Anyone want to help?

About time, wouldn't you say?

That is all. 

Thoughts on editing The Heir's Choice

As some of you may know, I'm busy editing The Heir's Choice at the moment. I haven't really said much about how I'm doing, but let me just say this:

Editing a sequel is hard. 

Especially because the sequel and the first book were two halves (literally) of the same book. See originally, I had this awesome 107k word book that I had to split.

And the approximate split was as follows:

The Vanished Knight: 65k words.
The Heir's Choice: 65k words.

"Hey wait!" you might exclaim. (It's all very dramatic in my brain, I promise you.) "That doesn't add up!"

No. Because in order to make TVK into a book on its own, I've had to add about 15k words to the first half of the original book. Which is great.

Except for the bit where every single one of those changes has to be worked into THC. Which is most of what its extra 15k words consists of.

And then I'm not even getting into the real challenge.

As you might know, I'm going to re-publish TVK and publish THC at the same time. There is a very very good reason for this, but I'm not going to go into it. First, I want to see if my plan works.

But if it does work, most of the people reading THC will be doing so immediately after finishing TVK.

So what's the challenge? (Aside from marketing.)

If I assume that my plan will work, no one will want constant reminders of what happened in TVK. If my plan doesn't work, everyone will want a TON of reminders. Which leaves me with the unique challenge of striking the right balance between too much information and not enough.

While making sure that all the main strings I left hanging at the end of TVK gets picked up in THC.

Simple.

Except.... TVK has a lot of strings.

How are you doing? What are you doing at the moment?

Update Day

Hey all! Welcome to yet another update day! It's scary to think that next month we'll be half-way through the year.

For those of you who don't know, I have a list here of people who have big goals and every month, we update each other and the world on how we're doing. Anyone's welcome to join, so do go sign up! 

So how did I do? 

Basically, I gave up on doing any edits this month about half-way through, since my mind just wouldn't fall into line. So instead I got back to doing needlepoint with my writing music blaring in the background. And I did farm-related work (of course, being my job). Also, I pretty much got into the car whatever opportunity I got to escape for a few hours. 

You'd think I'd be here saying that once again, I got absolutely nothing done. 

You'd be wrong. This month I finished cleaning up The Vanished Knight for publishing and revised nine chapters (out of 26) of The Heir's Choice. 

So, still not at last year's levels of productivity, but hey, I'll get there. At least I can say I got started. 

Hopefully I'll be able to finish this round of revisions within the next two weeks. If I do, I definitely want to get some drafting in. It's way past time. 

Which means, my year (past and planned) looks like this: 

How are you doing? 

And the winners are...

Hey all! I'm busy painting my guesthouse, so I'm only dropping in to let you know who won copies of The Vanished Knight. 

Without further ado, the winners are:

Brandon Ax 

and 

Laura Clipson

Congrats!

If you've missed out on this round, never fear. There's always Amazon. ;-)

Since the death of her parents, Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land...

When Callan is forced through the doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince.

But when the Black Knight fails to return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess.

Now with Darrion growing ever more antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms afire.

'Tis More Blessed Giveaway

Hey all! As promised, I'm giving away The Vanished Knight. Thing is, since it's my birthday tomorrow, I'm giving away not one, but two e-copies.

To see who else is giving away books today, go here.

All you have to do to win is leave a comment with your e-mail address. I'll announce the two winners on Monday.

For those of you who don't know anything about The Vanished Knight: 

Since the death of her parents, Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land... 

When Callan is forced through the doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince. 

But when the Black Knight fails to return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess. 

Now with Darrion growing ever more antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms afire.

Can't wait for the prize draw? You can get The Vanished Knight at these following resellers: 

Where I Am and Updates

Hey all! Today, I'm visiting Suzanne with an interview, and Shah with a short post on Guy Fawkes night.

As for my progress, I think I'm doing good. Finished rereading The Vanished Knight this morning and wrote 1896 words so far today. Which means I'm about 300 words away from being a day ahead.

It'll be awesome if I can get those words and maybe another half a day's worth written tonight, since I want to spend tomorrow rereading and starting to revise The Heir's Choice. Of course, I'm pretty sure I'll be adding on a lot of words, but it might be good to have a bit of breathing space in case I struggle to write in the new scenes.

I'm seriously excited about getting The Heir's Choice done. I think it can only do the sales of The Vanished Knight good to have a sequel out there. And honestly, I do think people will enjoy TVK more if they can go right into the sequel.

It's not that I was mean to my readers or anything. Although one of my friends said she hates me because reading the book kept her up the night before her exam, and now she's wondering what's going to happen next.

Which is probably one of the best reviews I got so far. :-P

Anyway, I just want to say thanks to everyone who've bought my book so far. I don't know who bought or how many bought copies, but I do know that for the whole month since it was published, TVK never went below 600000th of all the purchased books on Amazon. It peaked at around 77000th, which I think is pretty dang awesome for a debut work by an unknown author. Hopefully the sales will keep coming.

I'm Out Yet Again

Hey all! Today, I'm visiting Aimee at http://aimeebeatricejodoin.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-vanished-knight-war-of-six-crowns.html. She reviewed TVK and interviewed me based on what she read. Hope to see you there!

P.S. Sorry for the untidy Iink. Am away from my computer and my tablet refuses to play along...

The Day is Come. The Vanished Knight is out on Amazon and B&N

The Black Knight, Nordaine’s crown prince, has no legitimate blood heirs, meaning someone must be appointed to succeed him. With two of the candidates’ families willing to kill for the appointment and the third candidate being seen as a threat to all, peace is balanced on a sword’s edge. 

But then the Black Knight vanishes. 

Darrion and Gawain, two of his possible heirs, set out to find him, but after they rescue an earth-girl from Merithian soldiers, they discover she has possible ties to Nordaine. Not only that, but Callan Blair could be an Elvish princess. And war looms on the horizon… 

The Vanished Knight is out tomorrow.

[Redacted on reversion of rights, 9 April 2014]

The Vanished Knight is out next week. HEEEEEEEELP!!!

Yeah... The time has come, ladies and gentlemen! I have a release date, and it's much sooner than I expected.

In fact, I'd like to launch The Vanished Knight by 15 October (projected release is 4 October).

For me to make a bit of a splash, I need your help. I know this is super short notice, but I literally found out thirty minutes ago. The delay between finding out and posting this was caused by me picking myself up from the floor.

Because I know that your schedules are super full, I'm doing it this way: I'm letting you decide when you'd like to do the post. If you can help at all, please let me know in the comments:

What you'd like to do. I'll do: guest posts, author interviews and character interviews. You can also request an e-copy of my book for reviews, or simply my cover and/or blurb to post it on your blog.

When you'd like to do it. Anything from 15 October to 31 January works for me.

Contact details. I need to be able to contact you.

Thanks in advance to everyone who'll help!

Do You Have a Dream? Update

Hey all! Still as rushed as before, but since it would suck if I missed my own bloghop, I thought I'd give a quick update on my Five-Year-Project activities.
First bit of excellent news is that my ITIN arrived. So at least I know I'll be able to publish.
Then, I've received the draft of The Vanished Knight's cover. Can't share yet, but it's awesome. Can't wait to show you all.
I've also received the first round of copyedits. Will be Iaunching into them this weekend. In the meantime, I'm steaIing snippets of time to finish Birds vs Bastards by Friday. Only two scenes left.
Next month, I'll be back to editing TVK. I'll be drafting in my down-time, but I haven't decided which WiPs to work on.
That's it for now. Who else has news to share?

Want to sign up? Click here.

Writing Lesson in Horse Riding

I recently figured that hey, I write about knights and cowboys. Maybe I should learn how to ride a horse myself.

It's something I've always wanted to do. There's something absolutely beautiful about seeing a horse and rider in harmony. Something almost mystical.

Learning how to ride, is another animal altogether. There was Calypso, who hates me. Really. I went up to him, trusting him and... well... He tried to head-butt me. And the riding went worse.

So given that Calypso was out to get me, my instructor introduced me to Juno. Now Juno and I hit it off. With Juno, I thought I'd be able to go all the way.

Except the second time I rode him (yes, I know it's stupid to name a stallion for the Roman goddess of women and motherhood), he started to do things that made me less than comfortable. I mean, I'm new to this riding thing. So when I want the horse to stop, it's nice to know the horse will stop. Still, I figured it'd be okay, since I'd grow better as I practiced more.

The lesson after that, though, I was asked to ride Quicksilver. Now Quicky is rather an ornery beast. He's the one who puts all the horses on the farm in their places. And when he does, he kicks butt and takes names. He's also the one who wants to be in front no matter what, so he's faster than either of the other two. And he bites any horse who tries to take the lead from him.

The thing is... Quicky and I simply hit it off. Sure, he was fast, but never in a way that undermined the trust I had to put in him. In fact, riding him gave me the confidence to think I could actually learn other things. Most importantly, though, he loves me too. If there's a group of people and he's loose, he comes to me and lowers his head for me to pet him. Is he the horse I can trust? Possibly. He might change his mind later, but for now, we're getting along perfectly, even if logic says I shouldn't have liked him.

Incidentally, today, I had to ride Juno and my mom had to ride Quicky. Juno was actually scarier today than Calypso. And my mother felt the same way about Quicky.

Now, I bet you're wondering how I'm bringing this to writing. Well.

When I started writing, there was a western. We got along okay, but when my mom took my computer and gave it to someone else, I stopped working on it for years. The spark just wasn't there. (Juno.)

Later on, there was a fantasy. A quest, in fact. With a chosen one. But it was dark. Took me places I didn't want to go. In fact, it was part of some stuff I was going through at the time that really really messed me up in ways that made my university issues look like kindergarten. In the end, I burnt it. Yep. Wiped it, and all the back-ups, and burnt all the plans and drawings I'd made for it. (Calypso)

I have a few other drafts that I could explain, but right now, there aren't horses that match them.

Finally, in walked a character while I was re-reading Chronicles of Narnia. After all those failed attempts, I'd decided to give up on writing idea until I was certain that my idea was a good one. The character didn't take no for an answer, and the story he revealed to me was so good that I knew I'd finish it. To put money where my mouth was, I even started this blog as My First Book. I planned it to be a blog of me finishing a book and getting it published.

Was it because the story was easy? No. In fact, my older bloggy friends might recall that I called it The Beast. The story was huge. It defied my every attempt at pre-planning. The characters were reticent. In fact I hated one of the main characters. But I couldn't give up. I didn't want to. (That story went on to become The Vanished Knight.)

Maybe it's too soon to make this call, but that sounds a lot like Quicksilver. A bit of a bastard, but hey, it picked me and I love it for giving me that honor.

So in summary, the lesson I've learnt so far in writing and horse riding:

Just because you're struggling to get into it doesn't mean that you should give up. It could be that you just have the wrong horse for right now. 

 

Anyone want to talk about the drafts before the one they finished? 

Announcing the Title, the Winner, and My Progress

As some of you might know, my upcoming book's title has changed. I ran a small competition where everyone had to guess a letter until the name was revealed. Which was done quite quick, I might add. :-)

So without further ado, my soon-to-be released title is: 

The War of Six Crowns: The Vanished Knight

And the winner, picked by random.org is: 

S.P. Bowers!

Congrats! And thank you to all who played along.

Okay. So... Today is Update Day for the Big Dreams Bloghop, which means I get to regale all who are interested with stories of my progress. 

Here's what I did in August: 

1. Finished the rough draft to book three in The War of Six Crowns series. 
2. Saw a graphic designer who'll be helping me create a brand and image for said series. 
3. Finished the content and structural edits to The Vanished Knight. We are officially in copy edits, people. 
4. Wrote half of Birds vs Bastards. 

I'm still waiting on the ITIN, which is putting a serious wrinkle in my plans. The reason for this is that without that number, I can't publish. So I'm really sitting on needles in the mean time. Without the ITIN, I don't have a fixed publishing date. And without a fixed publishing date, I can't arrange for blog tours and the like. Sigh. 

Because the ITIN puts things out of my control at the moment, I won't be setting any fixed goals with regards to The Vanished Knight. Besides, the edits will be done when the edits are done. In the mean time, I'm eagerly awaiting the production of my first ever book cover. 

The main goal I have for September is to finish the Birds vs Bastards rewrite. As soon as that's done, I'll have to clear my head and get back into draft mode. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish one more rough draft by mid-October. But I'll probably end up drafting right through November as well... 

Depending, of course, on whether or not I'm publishing during that time. Hm. 

But yep, that's pretty much where I am at the moment. 

How are you doing on your big goals? If you haven't signed up, please do. No dreams are too insane, too big or too small.