The Altar of Deimos: Cover Design

Tags

Erotica, GIMP, Self-publish, Writing

In preparation for this blog hop, I redesigned the cover for The Altar of Deimos. Last day to sign up is the 20th!

For the curious, a summation of my experiences thus far, something I think bears repeating: In regards to Carrie Ann, the woman in charge, the words pleasant and professional spring to mind. She’s got some great advice on her blog. Her emails about the hop are timely (neither too late nor too early), easy to understand. And she responds to questions fast. A+, will hop with again.

But, back to the matter at hand, what I’ve learned thus far.

First piece of advice:
Use an image that speaks to you. I found this picture at Romance Novel Covers, and the way the woman’s hair fanned out over the bed struck me.
Scanning through the shoot, I found this one picture where she has her finger stuck in her mouth all “oh my” and I knew I had the perfect image. I whipped up a quick cover using this great tutorial by Aubrey Watt. Since her hair was what I really loved, I ended up inverting the image and cropping a bit of the bottom.
Which brings us to the second piece of advice—

Never Ever Design One Cover:
Design many. Make sure they pass this test from Popular Soda. My first one, where I had just inverted the image, didn’t. Cropping it to give me more space for the text (which could stand to be larger yet) and changing the color helped:

The third thing you need to do is play with GIMP.

Seriously, it’s just a program. Hit ctrl+z if it gives you shit.

If you’ll notice, the third piece of advice works well with the second piece of advice. These are two attempts of mine. The first image doesn’t work because it’s just two random images crammed together. The second is black and white, which, while artistically appealing, will never have that pop to it. Also, no sexy lady. First image source. Second image source.

It was another striking image by Mikhail Vrubel that I ended up using to create my new cover. I was fooling around with the colorize tool and paint bucket. The background from the watercolor “dripped” down into the model’s hair and on the bed. Once I figured out the right shade, I used a textured paint tool to blend the image of the woman into the watercolor. Fiddling with the text size, I was able to make my title  flow in the available space. Using a guideline, I aligned the text, and bam! I had a snazzy new cover.

I owe an extra thanks to my fiance for lending his eye and his expertise.

A Fun Toy from Reddit

Tags

Editing, Erotica, Writing

It will eat your life, it will also yield fun toys like this, The Writer’s Diet, posted in r/writing by blue_teapot. Apparently even my rough drafts are pretty lean. I’ve been murdering “that”, “there was”, to be verbs in general, and “started to” from my other works with fervor. It seems that all my editing is producing better first drafts, because I notice those words now, and if possible, I avoid them. If not, I just say “I’ll fix it later” because I try not to putter on the rough draft.

Speaking of editing, we’ve all scanned the basics like a gagillion times. It was after I was scanning Excessica’s Editing Guidelines that I finally went on a witch hunt for certain words. For instance, that last sentence was terrible. Let’s try it again: Scanning Excessica’s Editing Guidelines, the basics really stuck and I went on a witch hunt for certain words in my writing.

I also got myself excited for 30 seconds thinking they were open for submissions again, cuz talk about drool. I was getting ready to send them The Vampire’s Gallery squealing like a girl, when I noticed the second thing it says on their submission guideline page is they’re closed for submissions.

Save you Half-Assery for the Kitchen

Tags

Marketing, Self-publish, Skye Warren, Writing

You know, those nights you’re too tired to cook so you make “dinner salad” with whatever meat that is all wrapped up in tinfoil, and you eat a bowl of cereal later cuz you’re still hungry. At least, that’s what happens in my house. But yeah, that half-assery has a place in your life, but it’s not in your marketing efforts.

Skye Warren’s guest post got me started, and I moved on to looking at things like this excellent website (recommended by Lindsey). All the while I had no page with stories on this blog. I hadn’t even bothered tagging any of my posts.

I mean, what the hell is the point of blathering on if I’m not going to take 30 seconds to tag my stuff so people can search for it? Why am I even wondering what SEO means when I don’t have a bloody avatar?

I think I got a little overwhelmed, trying to read everything, join everything. If I do everything half-assed, it’s like doing nothing. So, I’m going focus on this blog a bit. I’m going to tag, I’m going to do a great post about designing covers (please note: the post will be great, not the covers), I’m going to post more free smut and tag it free smut!

Marketing Your Novel at Every Stage

Tags

Erotica, Marketing, Self-publish, Skye Warren, Writing

Skye Warren has an absolutely flipping brilliant guest blog post on Dirty Birdies called Megapost of Free or Cheap Author Marketing. Skim it, read it, bookmark it, copy and paste it into Google Docs and rename it To Do List. It’s one of those things that it doesn’t hurt to read several times. I have, and now I’m blogging about it. Were I to extract two essential pieces of information from this, it would be:

1. There are things you can do to market your work at every stage of writing.

2. Community is important if you’re going to do the self-published thing.

Point 2 actually ties back into Point 1. You don’t need to be published to start interacting with a community. Sections Readers Groups/Writers Loops are really guides to being a part of community so you can enjoy the benefits of one. And in the end, it just comes down to being respectful and obeying the rules. When you’re part of a community, people will want to support you.

Now, I’d like to get into what can be done at different stages.

Still Writing, Nothing Published
We’ve already talked about one thing you can do: join communities. You’re going to need someone to tell you your crap stinks, so you should probably go ahead and join some manner of writers group.

Reading has always been an essential part of reading, so find a relevant group on Goodreads and see what they’re up to.

This section may be only relevant to Luddites, my apologies to the members of the 21rst Century. You can also get your blog started—or make a new one for your writing—and get everything linked with your Facebook profile, etc. This is actually something I still need to do, along with getting some manner of picture up.

In regards to blog topics, I think there’s a lot to be said for aggregating useful information like Virginia did with her posts of Erotica Reviews and Publishers (please heed the caveat that the publishers have not been vetted).

You can blog about an article you found good and share what you’ve learned (cough cough).

You can talk about books, because if you’re writing I assume you’re reading.

When you release your book
Or are getting ready to release your book, you can submit it for reviews. You can participate in a blog hop, you could organize a group sale with your fellow writers, or if you’re feeling frisky, organize a guest post.
Also, at this point, you should feel a bit more comfortable with your group. I like Skye Warren’s method of networking, where she offers help to people. She’s helped me, and I’ve bought her books, and left reviews for them, so it works!

Getting your name out there
If there’s anything that’s clear about giving your books away: it may or may not work. Skye recommends choosing from your backlog if you do. It’s gratifying to have a bunch of people reading your work, but a free promotion on Amazon might not generate much in the way of sales/reviews.
Participating in anthologies is another good way to get your name out there, and in case of the Paranormal Sex Bundle the money goes to charity!

This has nothing to do with writing, I’m just excited the new season is finally on!