I'm Moving!

With Dusted having sold billions of copies I have decided my Money Room is getting far too small and need to relocate somewhere far more posh. Behold, my new house:

It has 34 bedrooms, 47.5 bathrooms, 3 kitchens all fully staffed, 18 fireplaces, and a monocle room, all on a lush 349 acres.

...But seriously, I am moving.

Expect moving adventures soon!

Writing with Music

Writing is all about jotting down the images in your head. Music, I find, forms a lot of those images. Put together they make for some pretty good work. Depending on the scene I'm trying to create, I'll listen to different types of music.

Here's an example of some of the music I listen to while writing:

Better yet, if you ever find yourself stuck on writing a scene, try listening to something that you think would help fit the mood of it. If you can, make it something new that you've never heard before because you don't want to get tied up listening to music you already associate with something.

If you find yourself really stuck, don't listen while you're trying to write. Just put on some good music, find a good chair, and zonk out for a while. Just don't let this happen.

Same Book, Different Cover

Good News Everyone!



You just totally read that in his voice.

 

 

Dusted is getting a revamp.

 

It's been nagging at me for a while now. There are all these little things, like spelling errors, adding to the legalese on the inside of the book (don't want anyone thinking it was based on true events, nope, not at all...), extras, and the description.

 

Though it wasn't until recently that I considered doing all of these in a single thing. It started with the thought of the cover, inspired by reading a little bit of H.P. Mallory's Publishing How-To Book, and went from there.

 

 

Dusted, I'll admit, has a pretty bland cover. When setting it up against covers within the same genre I realized fades terribly into the background. There's no focus point, no color wheel reference, nothing. Expect news about it in the future.

Until then, I'm here to talk about covers.

Most of what I've mentioned about covers either mention how to put them together or else pointing out several books that have the same cover today I'm going to talk about the opposite of the second one, the same book, but with several different covers. I'm going to use the first Maximum Ride book as an example because it's evolved a lot over the years.

 

  

Here's the original cover for Maximum Ride, and the one that grabbed me right from the beginning (hint: it was the wings). It's not trying too hard, really. But it was also published back in 2005, before the whole Vampire Teen Angst Explosion that hit about 2007 (in 2005 it was a time for Young Teen Adventure, as we were flying high with Harry Potter) This one was for the hardback as well as the mass market paperback that came out a year later.

This was the first redesign, and published as a trade paperback, the most teen-friendly format for books. It's got action (heck it looks like a scene from a comic book) and the tagline "You've gotta soar to survive."

Same tagline, new look. The girl is now the focus on the cover (as we're not fully into Vampire Teen Angst Explosion of which covers are prominently girl's faces) and the wings are toned down.

When Max: A Maximum Ride Novel (derp) was published in 2009, I think this redesign was chosen to match the new look of the series. It looks more geared toward the adult market, hoping to appeal to James Patterson readers rather than YA readers.

And, finally, the final cover that matched the last three books starting with Fang: A Maximum Ride Novel (another derp). New tagline ("Meet Max. Welcome to her nightmare") and full-on angst-girl face on cover.

In fact, here's a lovely compilation of covers that I found while looking for the above ones.

It should give you an idea of the evolution of the rest of the covers (although they are out of order) and how the market for covers has changed over the course of 5-7 years, as well as the change depending upon the audience they are trying to grab.

 



Cynthia Hand Book Giveaway!

Cynthia Hand is giving away multiple copies of her Unearthly Trilogy, you can read about the details on her blog.

(Note, although she mentions I am going to give away 5 paperbacks of Hallowed and 5 ARCs/hardcovers of Boundless to anybody who can show me that they tweeted / blogged / posted / pinned about this giveaway somewhere. I'm not going to show that I mentioned it. I already have my copies so I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart/for the lulz.)

Email is apparently 1,000 Years Old

"While digging through some old stuff on my computer I found an email I wrote to Cynthia Hand, author of the Unearthly series. This was soon after I had read Unearthly, and before she even wrote Hallowed. It's apparently dated February 3rd, 1011."

February 3rd, 1011

...

I say goode Lady Hand, thine booke is of the utmost quality. I must admit mine thoughts were rather distracted by it. Why, I hardly even had time to yelle at mine unwashed peasants, I was so busy reading it.


Would you believe it took someone pointing it out to me for me to notice?

Random Things I Find on the Internet

Sometimes, when my mom isn't home, i like to go in her garden, cover myself with dirt, and pretend i'm a Carrot.

An Email I Wrote to Cynthia Hand

While digging through some old stuff on my computer I found an email I wrote to Cynthia Hand, author of the Unearthly series. This was soon after I had read Unearthly (my review is here), and before she even wrote Hallowed. It's apparently dated February 3rd, 1011. I waited for a whole year, before giving up, but here it is, a letter from The Little Writer That Wanted To:

Mrs. Cynthia Hand,

I would like to start by saying your book is one of the best impulse-buy books I've bought in a long time. I had gone into Barnes and Noble to get a different book when I saw yours too (I'm attracted to shiny things). I had decided to buy it, good or bad, because I wanted to support a local author. I myself live a stone's throw away. The copies there looked a little roughed up from shipping, but had it not been for that, I would not have dug through the selection and found an autographed copy, something of which I've never had before. I finished your book in four days and can't wait for more.

I already have a novel I've been wanting to publish too, with the sequel quickly on its way and several other stories that, with some polish, might be presentable too and I was wondering if you could answer a couple of writing-related questions for me?

I read through your blog about the whole process of you being published, but I noticed it started out with you already having an agent. How did you get one? Did you do research, pick someone out, and then send a query letter? Or was it by means of a previous acquaintance? Or just happenstance?

Do you think an agent is practically required to be published? I've heard of people just sending their manuscripts to editors at publishers so that it might happen to catch someone's eye, but I'm not sure how effective that would be.

Were you able to get anyone else to review your manuscript before you sent it off? My dad's reviewed my manuscript, which was actually quite helpful and full of critique, but no one else seems to want to. They keep saying they're worried they'll offend me.

I've been passionate about writing for a long time, and have been writing seriously for seven years now. I was hoping you could help me because you've recently been through it yourself.