Cover fun

I’m very excited to have created a cover for my short story “The City Trees,” which will be in the upcoming “Fantasy in the City” bundle through BundleRabbit!

Why, you might ask, does a short story need a cover? And why am I so excited about having created it?

This bundle will contain short stories from 20 different authors. In an anthology, one file containing all of the stories would appear on your ereader; with a bundle, each story will appear on your ereader as a separate file. Hence the need for a cover. 🙂 The cover will also be used on the BundleRabbit website, where you will be able to view a preview of each story. And once all the covers are ready, they’ll be used in a montage image that will be displayed when potential purchasers look up information about the bundle.

I’m excited about having made this cover because I’ve only made a few so far, which means every time I work on one it’s a fun learning process. I’m also super excited because this short story is set in the same world as the series I’m writing, and I can’t wait to get back to it.

This series is set in the same world as Entangled by Midsummer; the first book in the series will be The Language of Water. I have about seven chapters written in book one, and will get back to that manuscript later in the summer.

Making covers is really fun, and it can be a lot of work! The main character in “The City Trees” is a dryad, so I wanted the cover image to show a woman with a tree or trees. There are tons of stock images out there that technically meet that requirement, but in 99% of them the woman is wearing the wrong thing, has an expression on her face that doesn’t fit the tone of my story, etc. I narrowed down my list of options to five images, and decided to try out the top two of the five first.

The first image is perfect…except that it was taken using a filter or something, and the colors are muted and dark. I tried fiddling with it, but no matter what I did it looked drab and gloomy. That may well be user error – I’m definitely not an expert with image manipulation at this point. Finally I decided to save that image for either a gloomier story, or to use once I know more about what I’m doing.

The second image is great, except that part of the background doesn’t fit the setting of trees in a city, and the girl is wearing a sleeveless dress whereas my protagonist is wearing a sweater. I copied out just the part I wanted, gave that a whirl – and it worked! So far my beta cover reviewers have liked it. The only issue I can see right now is that I’m using white text, and the bark of the tree is a little light, so it’s a little hard to read the text that covers the tree. Not impossible, but still. I may try to change the colors slightly, but I want to be careful because the rest of the image works really well. (And, as you may have discerned, I’m learning how to do all of this as I go along.)

The last quandary I have is whether or not to put the series name on the cover. I could either have sub-text saying “a series-name-goes-here short story,” or just put “a short story” and leave out the name entirely. This is problematic mainly because I’m not yet sure what the series name is. It’s either “Elemental Worlds” or “Entangled Worlds.” I realize I could pick one and change it later, but that’s not the kind of person I am. I’d rather make a selection and stick with it, and if I’m not ready to commit then I don’t want to use it at all. I’ve given myself until next weekend to ponder this conundrum.

2016-05-21 Dakota Ridge

Ready for summer!

I officially have three firm deadlines:

  • June 1st: “The City Trees” (short story) and an accompanying cover are due for the “Fantasy in the City” bundle.
  • July 6th: Deliver Entangled by Midsummer (a novel) to the editor.
  • August 15th: Deliver Bewitchery (a novella) to the editor.

DeAnna Knippling will be editing Entangled by Midsummer. You may remember DeAnna from the guest post she wrote on my blog last October. DeAnna has edited short stories for me in the past; this will be the first time we’ve worked together on the novel. In addition to being a great editor, she is also a very talented writer.

Dayle Dermatis is editing Bewitchery. I have not worked with Dayle before, but know lots of writers who have, and they all rave about her. Dayle is also an accomplished author. She sold all six – yes, six – stories at the anthology workshop I attended a few months ago. On top of that, she’s going to be one of the editors at the 2017 anthology workshop.

I’m thrilled to be working with both DeAnna and Dayle! And on top of that – they will both have stories in the “Fantasy in the City” bundle!

Of course, I have a lot of work to do before editing. Right now I’m focusing on the novel – my goal is to get it to my beta readers within the next few weeks. I’m squeezing in work on the short story. I have the opening written, have known the ending for the past week, and I think I finally worked out the middle this morning. We’ll see when I get back to it.

My first week at my new day job was wonderful. The work is fun, the team is great, and on day 2 I realized I felt happier than I did in the entire 10 months at my last job. Sometimes something is a good fit, and sometimes it’s not – this feels like a great fit! 🙂 I’ve wrapped up two of my writing classes, and have four weeks to go on the remaining two classes.

On top of all that, dog class has started up again, and Jasper and I are getting back in the swing of things. And Rosie, while not yet ready for school (maybe in a year or two), has decided it’s safe to run through the agility tunnel, and has learned three new tricks! 🙂

It’s going to be a busy summer!

2016-05-12 Dakota Ridge

There is an end to this tunnel!

A few days ago I realized I’d passed a mysterious, and previously unknown, transition point with the novel. All of a sudden I could see that it will actually be finished soon! 🙂

This was a more momentous moment than it sounds. I’d been working super hard on the manuscript, but I kept feeling like no matter how much I did, there was a never-ending list of things left to do. Now I feel like it’s a finite list! Hooray!

I think this change in perspective was caused by two things.

  • I’d changed a few things as I went through the manuscript, but hadn’t gone back to the earlier chapters to update them. That’s now done.
  • There were a few sections in the first five or six chapters that were written quickly and needed some revision to make them fit with the rest of the book. My first drafts often contain sections like this because I find if I write fast I’ll stay in creative voice and get the gist of the story, then I cycle back later to refine what I’ve written. These sections have now been refined!

I also added more sensory details and description, but that didn’t seem to be part of my change in perspective. There’s plenty more left to do, but now it feels like I’m working on an almost-done novel. I should have an editing contract – with a delivery date on my part – within a week or so.

In other news, I signed a contract with an editor for Bewitchery, a novella about – surprise! – a witch. The handoff date is in mid-August. I have a first draft complete, and will jump on this as soon as I hand Entangled by Midsummer over to my beta readers. The novella should be relatively quick to wrap up, especially in comparison to the novel.

I’m wrapping up two online classes, and started two more – because why work on only one thing at a time? 🙂 Seriously, I’ve found it’s nice to switch up what I’m working on. If I’ve been writing for a while I might want to read about writing/publishing, or work on an outline for a different story, or design a book cover. I can write for a big chunk of the day, but eventually my brain needs a break. Having other types of tasks on my to do list means I can be productive even when I’m not actually writing.

The point of mentioning the classes was that I used one of the four homework assignments I just completed as a way to get started on the short story I’ll have in the upcoming BundleRabbit short story bundle Fantasy in the City. There will be 20 stories in the bundle, by 20 different authors, and all of the stories will be urban/contemporary fantasy. The protagonist in my story is a dryad (a tree nymph/spirit) who is living in a city.

If you’re wondering what the difference is between urban and contemporary fantasy, join the club! 🙂 I spent some time googling this a few months ago, and while I found quite a few different definitions, most of them boiled down to this:

Contemporary fantasy takes place in the modern world, but a version of our world in which magical creatures are hidden amongst us.

Urban fantasy is a subset of contemporary fantasy where stories are set in an urban environment.

One of the tasks on my to do list is to do more research on fantasy that is considered contemporary but not urban; once I get to that (don’t hold your breath) I will write about it in another blog post.

2016-05-03 Dakota Ridge