Just thought I’d mention that Peter Kassan, the author of Lightpoints (I did the cover) has recently posted a blog post about the cover creation process. Thought others might be interested. 🙂
Read about the process here:Â http://peterkassan.com/2013/03/blog/
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration, Writing
Hello, everybody. Today we have an interview with Rebekkah Ford, the author of Beyond the Eyes, and most recently, Dark Spirits.  For today’s interview, we’ll look at both Dark Spirits and the self-publishing process. So, without further ado, please welcome Rebekkah Ford to the blog! 😀
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What was the inspiration for Dark Spirits?
Well, the whole series was created from an idea I came up with from the beginning. The movie that scares me the most—The Exorcist, my love for history, my experience with the paranormal world, and the out-of-box ideas I have about it.
Was it easier or more challenging to write Dark Spirits than Beyond the Eyes?
I think it was harder because I had to recount some of the things I wrote in Beyond the Eyes to keep the continuity of it all and to remind readers of events that happened in that first book. It’s more time consuming I think.
Who is your favorite character to write?
Nathan. He’s fun to write, and I enjoy writing in the male POV.
Anything we should look forward to in book three, The Devil’s Third?
Yes, the reader will finally get to discover what Paige is, there will be magic, and shocking revelations.
Why did you decide to write the Beyond the Eyes trilogy?
Because I grew up in a family that dealt with the paranormal and the unknown fascinates me.
What was your process for writing Dark Spirits?
I wrote every chance I got. I have a f/t day job, so I would get up extra early in the morning just so I could write before I had to go to work, and then in the evening I would write as well. I also spent most of my whole weekend writing. I still keep to that routine.
What made you decide to self-publish?
It felt like the right thing for me to do. Beforehand, I did a lot of research on it and the pros outweighed the cons. I did have some agents interested in Beyond the Eyes, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. So I decided to take the plunge and self-publish.
Have you been satisfied with the experience?
Pretty much. It’s hard, hard, work though. I don’t care for the marketing aspect, but then again, even if I were to have taken the traditional route, I’d still have to market my books. So there’s really no way around it at this point in my life. I honestly would much rather write than try to sell my work.
How did you go about choosing an editor?
I was on Absolute Write, which is a wonderful writing forum. I saw an ad an editor posted for his services, so I emailed him, and the rest is history.
What kind of editing did you have done to your novel, and how was the process?
My editor and I have a process—I send him a chapter at a time. He line edits, checks for errors, and leaves comments. Once I receive my chapter back, I make the corrections, maybe do some rewrites, and send it back to him. He double checks it and sends it back to me. Afterwards, I send him the next chapter.
Did you do your own formatting, or hire someone to format the book for you?
No. I’m horrible when it comes to technology. I wish I knew how to format my book, but I don’t. I hired somebody else to do it for me. Tugboat Designs formatted Dark Spirits for me and did a wonderful job.
How have you gone about promoting your book?
I did a launch party on Facebook and next month I’m doing a couple blog tours. I’ve been using social media like Twitter and Facebook. I’ve been doing giveaways as well and getting reviews from readers who are already a fan of this series which is wonderful.
You mentioned enjoying writing Nathan’s POV. I personally enjoyed reading it. What was the best part about writing his POV, and what was the most challenging?
Thanks! The best part was stepping inside Nathan’s head, discovering what thoughts he had, and getting to know him on a much personal level. The most challenging was restraining myself from writing erotic thoughts about Paige. Nathan had them, but since this is a young adult series, I had to refrain from writing such naughty things. 🙂
Any idea when we can look forward to reading The Devil’s Third?
I’m not sure yet. I’m hoping before the end of this year.
You introduced the concept of parallel dimensions in Dark Spirits. Will we be seeing more of that?
Oh, yeah! 😀
What’s your favorite part of the magic system in the Beyond the Eyes trilogy?
I like that Paige is slowly discovering what she can do and Carrie has dabbled in elementary magic. It’s not like their characters woke up one day and BAM, they have all these powers. I like to keep it realistic, so my favorite part about the magic system is it’s not ostentatious.
Do you have any favorite books that helped inspire you to write the trilogy?
Believe it or not, Anne Rice’s vampire books. There are no vampires in my trilogy, but one of the many things I love about Anne Rice’s stories is how she spins realism into a fictional tale that’s dark, but yet alluring. If that makes sense? The cool thing about my Beyond the Eyes trilogy is, after The Devil’s Third, I still have the option to continue writing this trilogy if I wanted too. There are still endless avenues to explore without it being tiresome.
Anything you’d like to add (either about the books or self-publishing) before the interview concludes?
I just want to thank the fans of this series and future readers. Your support means the world to me. I could have went the traditional way and published this series through a publishing house. However, I had to find out if I could do this on my own. I also wanted complete creative control and to know that my books would never get pulled from the shelves. So I carved out my own path, and although it’s a lot of hard work, I have no regrets. I did this and nobody can ever take it away from me. That’s a feeling that money can’t buy, along with bringing enjoyment to the readers who fall in love with this trilogy and them telling me about it. So if you’re an author reading this, do what makes you happy and follow your heart. If you do those things, there will be no regrets. 😀
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Great, thanks for the interview! You can find Dark Spirits at the links below. As a side note, Beyond the Eyes is currently available for 99 cents on Amazon, so get it while you can. 🙂
Beyond the Eyes: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-the-Eyes-ebook/dp/B0088JF7HQ/
Rebekkah’s Blog: http://themusingwriter.blogspot.com
Rebekkah’s Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/RebekkahFord2012
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Spirits-Beyond-Eyes-ebook/dp/B00BEKJ9VG/
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-spirits-rebekkah-ford/1114506937?ean=2940016397214
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/286383
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Client Work, Writing
Alright, so Rebekkah Ford gave me a copy of Dark Spirits as part of the payment for the book cover design, and now I’ve finally had the chance to read it. Yay! So, this is my review. In the meantime, look forward to an interview coming soon from Rebekkah Ford. 🙂
Blurb:
“Now immortal, Paige is emotionally and physically stronger than ever. She must find the location of the ancient incantations to prevent mass genocide. But the war against good and evil is spawning another war–a battle between the dark spirits themselves. Paige is saddled in the center of both growing revolutions and is ready to take on the dark forces. But Nathan’s overprotectiveness prevents her from taking action, and he’s hiding things. Paige’s personal life gets more complicated when Brayden arrives back in town and offers the equal partnership she desperately craves from Nathan. Then there’s Carrie and Tree, her two best friends and only family she has left. Unfortunate circumstances thrust them into Paige’s dark world, giving her no choice but to allow Nathan to arm them with combat techniques in hope they’ll be able to protect themselves. Meanwhile, Paige is having visions and discovering abilities she was unaware of. When Anwar comes to visit, his weird behavior alarms her. Could he be turning to the dark side? Time is running out. Paige not only needs to find the incantations but also to untangle the bands around her heart and make a decision that could leave her with a life worse than death–a life of betrayal from the ones she trusted most.”
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My Review:
Quick Disclaimer: I don’t typically read paranormal romance, so what I may say might not be the same as someone else who reads a lot of paranormal romances. That being said, on to the review!
The characterizations were definitely enjoyable. My favorite characters were Tree, Max, and Ameerah. Even though Max had very little screentime, he stood out as a nice guy. I’d like to see more of him, though I’m hoping he doesn’t cause complications to the already iffy relationship between Paige and Nathan. Tree has the awesome “I’m a protective friend” aura, but he isn’t quite as overprotective as Nathan, so that’s a plus. Ameerah was a really neat character, and I hope to see more of her in Devil’s Third. I want to know more about her.
Again, I enjoyed the “Old One’s” character, and how his personality showed in Dark Spirits. I expect we’ll see more of him, and I do hope to see more about the magic and the different dimensions and such. Some of my favorite parts in Dark Spirits was in dealing with Carrie and Nathan’s witchcraft, as well as the mention of the different dimensions and types of dark spirits.
A large part of the story focused on Paige and Nathan’s relationship, and I was fine that they were having to work out a few issues… such as Nathan’s over-protectiveness (I’ll give Paige that one; he could’ve avoided a few problems by simply taking her with him), and Paige’s conflict between Nathan and Brayden. I did like Brayden’s character in this book better, but I kinda wish Paige wouldn’t be so quick to forgive and trust him. Needless to say, he doesn’t have my trust yet, and both Nathan and Brayden are a bit too obsessed with “protecting” Paige.
One downside I found for this story is that Paige’s emotions are all over the place. Granted, she does have the new-immortality-heightened-emotions thing going for her right now, but when she seems to have the hots for Nathan at almost any random moment, it felt like she should have spent a little more time learning to control them. On that note, there were times the descriptions felt a bit wordy, especially in regards to the characters emotions. It felt like we got a lot more information than necessary, or information we could have guessed on our own. But I also don’t read much in the way of paranormal romance, so it might just be a personal preference.
I did really enjoy getting to see both Paige and Nathan’s point of view. It threw me off at first, because I didn’t expect it, but I think it added to the story, especially during some of the scenes Paige doesn’t witness. It also gave a good deal more insight into Nathan’s character (and his brutality), and it makes me leery of him. So I think it adds an extra bit of intrigue.
The greatest thing about Dark Spirits is that the plot kept pulling me back to it. I wanted to know what happened next. Since I read it during break times at work, I was often having to sit it down right in the middle of a “But… what happens next?” moment. Though it felt a bit heavy on the description, it painted a clear picture of what was going on, and I didn’t get lost. I could easily remember what was going on. A very nice thing to have if you can’t read it in one sitting.
Formatting was good; it was easy to read, and I only noticed a couple typos. The beginning (first two chapters) was a bit slow, but it did well to remind us what happened in the previous book and what was going on in the meantime.
Dark Spirits was an enjoyable read, I really enjoyed the ending, and I look forward to reading The Devil’s Third. 🙂
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You can find Dark Spirits on Amazon. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration, Writing
Wow, this past month has been busy. I have a couple new book covers I’ve been meaning to post for a while, and I have an exciting announcement: I finally got “Ashes,” the prequel to “Socks” uploaded to Smashwords! Yay 😀
So, first off, the book cover. In keeping with the tradition of “Socks,” I made the covers to resemble each other.
Now, for a bit about “Ashes.” It takes place a bit before the events in “Socks.” As in, the rebels have just attacked the city, and now Cory and Serena are desperately racing to save the contents of the last existing library before it’s destroyed. The story is 7500 words long, quite a bit longer than the flash fiction, 1000 words of socks. Right now I only plan to place it on Smashwords as an ebook, since I’ve been having some technical difficulties with Kindle lately. But don’t worry, you can still get it for your kindle through Smashwords. It’s currently available for 99 cents.
Find it here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249071
Meanwhile, a side note about my 1000 Words project. Socks has the most reviews out of the nine short stories available for free, but has the fewest downloads. (Find the short story here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154150)
Dreamkeeper has the highest amount of downloads, but no reviews. I wonder if it has to do with audience, the description, the cover, or some other factor.
Either way, just wanted to make the announcement. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration, Writing
Another Distant Horizon based picture. It’s been a while since I’ve done any sort of coloring of sketched art. So, to explain this, I started out by sketching the image with a pencil, then went and did a basic lining of that with a pen. Afterwards, I did some shading work with the pen, then erased the extraneous pencil marks. Once that was done, I photographed the image flat with a flash on my camera and pulled it into photoshop. Did the threshold adjustment to convert it to black and white.
Then I started layering and using clipping modes combined with blending modes and masking to apply textures and coloration. The textures were mostly pulled from pictures I took on a walk downtown earlier in the day. Once that was complete, added the sections around the tank, and blurred the edge a little to give it that dreamlike quality.
Overall I’m pretty happy with this. Granted, it’s not the best, by any means, but since I was experimenting with the technique, I’m not going to complain. And I’m thrilled with how the hand came out. I think it actually looks semi-realistic and pressed to the glass. Yay!
So… now that you know how it’s made, a quick explanation of the picture itself. It’s a scene… rather a couple scenes, in which the main character of my novel I’m working on is caught in a telepathic attack. And she’s imagining she’s in a beastie tank… which turns people into monsters. Long story short. But that memory attack plays back into the story more than once, so I wanted to have a shot at creating an image of the tank.
Anyways, that’s all for now. Done on my laptop with Photoshop CS4 and bridge. And a mouse.
Filed under Personal Work, Photo Illustration, Writing
Finally wrote out the synopsis for book three of the Distant Horizon storyline with Isaac (my husband), and afterwards, it left me wanting to create a picture representive of the ending. So here it is.
This time I didn’t try to make a book cover format, since I wanted more freedom for positioning.
Photoshop CS6 kept trying to shut down on me while I made this, but eventually (finally!) I just merged a bunch of layers and went from there. The authosave function did come in handy, though it was amusing seeing the file have recovered-recovered on it after shutting down the program twice.
Anyways, just some original art for the fun of it. 🙂
Meanwhile, “Ashes” is formatted, and I’m just waiting to hear back from my beta reader before I release it on Smashwords. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Personal Work, Photo Illustration, Writing
As I get closer to self-publishing “Ashes,” I thought it might be nice to do a cover reveal. So here it is, the cover to “Ashes.” It’s got some similar treatment done to it to resemble “Socks,” but it has a different color scheme to match the themes in the story itself. As an interesting little side note, I believe this is actually the same picture I used in “Socks,” but done differently enough that it shouldn’t be noticable. (Except that I pointed out, but anyway).
As a side note, I was debating on whether or not to include a blurb on the cover mentioning that it was a short story or prequel. After some discussion on Absolute Write, I decided not to include it. Why? Because the same information will be mentioned on the web page where it can be bought/downloaded. Also, because hopefully it will resemble the cover of “Socks” close enough that a connection will be made. Granted, this is experimentation on my part, but that’s kind of the point of doing this. 🙂
Without further ado, the new cover!
Also, as a quick note, I found this article and thought those of you interested in doing your own cover creation might like reading it. It’s about font choice. 🙂
http://clancytales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-font-your-cover.html
Filed under Book Covers, Photo Illustration, Writing
So, as Isaac and I get closer to finishing Distant Horizon (and thus starting querying), I’ve been doing reading on how marketing of a book is done, both for trade and self-publishing. After all, both are looking for readership, right? I found a few interesting tidbits I thought I’d share.
One is the article at the link below. It talks about how marketing is done of a book in the trade publishing world, and points out some good tips that could probably also be used if you’re self-publishing, too. It talks about the importance of marketing as a way to gain publicity, but that marketing doesn’t always equate to publicity. It’s that word-of-mouth you want, when you get other people promoting your book without your asking. Needless to say, I thought it was an informative read:
http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-dont-we-throw-some-money-at-it-like.html
Another interesting idea I came upon was the idea of offering signed prints of your book cover (if it’s one that looks really good)Â for the first people who buy your book off Amazon and show you a receipt. Found this at Madame Guillotine’s blog, here:Â http://madameguillotine.org.uk/
Of course, ARC (advanced reader copies) are also a good idea, and it looks like Goodreads contests may be a good way to get publicity for them. The hope, of course, is that they’ll read your book and leave a review, and maybe, just maybe, recommend t to a friend. 🙂
Also, another neat blog (not so much on marketing, but on publishing) I found is called The Intern: http://internspills.blogspot.com/
Thought I’d share that, too. Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for you at the moment. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
So it turns out you can’t have two pen names linked to a single Smashwords account. The result is that I’d either have to create a second account for Stephanie Flint, or change all the covers and copyright info on the previous books. Seeing as how I wanted to keep “SBibb” for the account link, I decided to change the covers.
Overall, it might’ve taken a couple hours. Luckily, most of the covers had layering where I was able to just change my last name with a couple modifications, and Photoshop CS6 (loving the new save function) is helpful with doing some easy adjustments. Afterwards, I adjusted all the front matter and bio info on the stories themselves (again, yay for having everything in nearly one place).
I also added tags to each short story that included “SBibb, Stephanie Bibb, Stephanie Flint” to make it easier to find. Search engine optimization (SEO) is important to having your websites and books and such found, so I also included a note about the name change in the long description. I didn’t put it in the short description since I’d rather reserve that space for info about the story itself.
I also linked the “Where to find this book in print” to the1000 Wordsanthology (print edition)Â on Amazon. Since I don’t want to change the inner covers of the ebook version on Smashwords, I’m unpublishing it there. Kindle allows me (as far as I understand) to keep the older editions of the book the same, while putting my new name on any new books I publish. Therefore, I decided that will not change.
However, one thing I did try to do was make it easier for people to find my work, whether they look it up under Stephanie Bibb or under Stephanie Flint. I imagine it’ll take a little while for my stuff to show up on search engines under the new name, but this way, it should be linked. Also, when I did the book covers, I was careful to make sure the font didn’t change when I switched out the names. That way the quality of the cover remained the same.
Then I went through and made sure that all the edits were in place, and finally changed my profile name on Smashwords itself. I also uploaded my profile picture, taken by my wonderful husband, Isaac. 🙂
Here’s the response I got from Smashwords about the name change, in case anyone else needs to know it:
You have two options:
1. Open a new account for the new name. I wouldn’t recommend this because the books won’t be linked either with us or with the retailers. It’s also a pain to manage two accounts.
2. Here’s a link to the FAQ’s section on changing the author name:
https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#Updating
Scroll down a bit until you see the section “I’ve decided to change my Pen Name. How to I change it without de-listing my book at retailers?”
Some additional recommendations: A. You should change your profile to the new name, and then update your front matter for all the books so it reads “Copyright New Name 2012” Originally written and published under the maiden name, Old Name
… this will help our vetting team and our retailers understand why the name on the cover doesn’t match the name in the metadata.
B. Also, update the tags, bio and long description so both names are mentioned. This will help make all the books more discoverable if someone’s searching on the old or new name.
So hopefully this is helpful. Meantime, I’ll see if everything transferred over smoothly. If it did, then maybe the premium distribution will start working again soon. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Uncategorized, Writing
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 