writing - StarDance Press

1920s, fantasy, publishing, writing

Magic Most Deadly Cover Reveal

September 16, 2013 elouisebates

This cover.

You guys.

I thought it was going to kill me. The delays. The parting of ways with my first cover designer. My blithe assurance to her that I had it all under control. The near panic as I realized I, in fact, had nothing under control. The frantic search for a new designer who would meet my budget and give me what I desired. The – literally – sleepless nights as my mind wouldn’t stop worrying the matter, like a dog with a bone.

(It probably didn’t help that all this was taking place right before, during, and after our move.)

Then, in a serendipitous bit of Google searching, I came across Fly Casual. I loved the name first, quite honestly (Star Wars FTW!), even before I saw samples of Amanda’s work or realized that her cover and formatting package fit my budget exactly.

Amanda is a writer herself, as well as graphic designer, and a fan of many of the same mystery novels I love, and which inspired Magic Most Deadly. We hit it off right away. The very first concept design she sent was amazing, and we were off and running from there.

Less than a week from our initial contact, she was emailing me the final product. And it all was more perfect than I ever dared to hope.

For Maia Whitney, life after the Great War is dull, monotonous, and drab. Nursing soldiers in the bloody fields of France hadn’t been easy, but it was better than life at home, standing in her sisters’ shadows. There seems no chance for a change until the night she witnesses a murder in the woods.

The last thing Magic Intelligence Agent Lennox Davies needs is this outspoken, independent lady crashing his investigation. Bad enough that a murder happened on his watch; much less that she had to see it happen. He works alone, and he does not have time for Miss Maia Whitney’s interference.

But as Maia’s own magical talent blossoms and danger thickens around the two with every step they take, before long Len and Maia must rely on each other in a fashion neither has ever done before. If they can’t learn to work together, England itself might topple. Even worse, if Maia doesn’t learn to control her magic soon, she might do more to destroy them even than their shadowy enemy.

Can they set aside their stubbornness and self-reliance in time to save themselves—and all England?

Magic Most Deadly, by E.L. Bates, coming out September 30, 2013.

Hurrah!

If anyone is looking for a cover designer and/or interior formatter, I highly recommend Amanda of Fly Casual. She understood almost instinctively what I wanted, listened to all my nit-picky suggestions with infinite patience, and produced an amazing, professional, meticulously crafted finished product even sooner than her projected finish time. All around, working with her was just a wonderful experience!

1920s, characters, fantasy, goals, heroes, heroines, publishing, world-building, writing

Character Sketches

September 9, 2013 elouisebates

By which title I mean, real sketches of my characters. Not written sketches of their personalities, etc. Art. Done by me. Not an artist.

I was trying to put together a concept sketch for a potential cover designer last week, and got enormously fed up at my inability to draw anything better than stick figures. I used to take art lessons, said I, and the pencil drawing I did of a horse has hung in my parents’ house for years and nobody ever guessed it was drawn by a kid, and the bird in pastels I did for Grandma is now hanging in my kitchen, and looks lovely, so why do my fingers no longer obey my brain when it comes to drawing?

Enough is enough, said I. If I’m going to be teaching art to my children, I better start believing and practicing some of the precepts.

A few hours later, I had come up with two reasonable sketches – one of Maia, and one of Len.

They aren’t perfect. If I were to draw them again, and again, and again, I know I could get them better.

But you know what? I like them just the way they are. And I think they convey a lot of strength and personality that wouldn’t necessarily show in a more polished and perfected piece.

So here, without further ado, is the first public appearance of Miss Maia Whitney and Mr Lennox Davies, co-protagonists of Magic Most Deadly:

After finishing Len’s portrait, I was bitten by the art bug, and now every time I sit down for a few moments you can find me picking up a pencil and paper and working away on noses, eyes, and ears. I drew a couple fairies for my daughters to play with, and even got bold and attempted a unicorn (er … definitely need work in the direction. Proportions were WAY off).

After telling myself for years that “I wish I could draw, but I’m just not an artist,” it’s fun to prove myself wrong. Anyone can become an artist, especially if you’re willing to accept that your first attempts will not be great.

Who knows, maybe by the time I’m ready to publish the next Maia and Len book, I’ll have even better portraits of them ready to go!

And speaking of publishing, and speaking of art …

I found a cover designer! Amanda of Fly Casual, and she did the most amazing job, I am so blown away. I can’t wait to share the cover with all of you. So that’s what I’m going to do. NEXT WEEK. Monday the 16th.

If anyone wants to help me share the cover, let me know in the comments and I will email you the details. In the meantime, go check out Fly Casual! Amanda is a wonderful graphic designer, and a joy to work with.

Books, editing, fiction, Life Talk, reading list, school, writing

Dredging the Deep

September 2, 2013 elouisebates

Funny, when I had absolutely no time to blog, posts kept popping into my mind right and left. Now that I’m back to a regular schedule, the well (as I posted on FB) has run dry.

But look! Pretty photos!

We found the Mallard family!

Grace picking blueberries

We found the Mallard family!

Grace picking blueberries

Filled our baskets with blueberries, on to the blackberry patch!

We’ve been having Adventures.

We also survived our first week of school, and now I get to change the schedule completely since we’ve seen what does and doesn’t work. Namely, starting at 9:00 is not going to happen until the girls are able to make their beds in less than thirty minutes.

And I’m trying not to fret over this whole book cover thing. My biggest problem here is that what I want, I can’t afford and do not have the know-how to be able to do myself. What I can afford, or can figure out to do on my own, I don’t really like. This is a dilemma.

But! Luckily the extra time I’ve had to work on Magic Most Deadly has been useful, allowing me to go through it one more time and put in some extra tweaks to make it just a little bit better. Also it has allowed me to put off formatting a bit longer, so hurrah!

(Sometimes I think I’m not really cut out for this indie path. But then I think about dealing with traditional publishers, and I think well, even these stresses are better than that.)

I’ve also been journaling almost every morning, and that has been good. I am also giving Anna Karenina a fourth try, and am halfway through (further than I’ve ever made it before) and seriously wondering why people love this book so much. Can anyone clue me in? I mean, I don’t hate it, but I don’t understand the great, deep passion so many have for it. And after I finish this, should I try War and Peace, or move on to Dostoevsky (and if so, which one)? So many questions.

In addition to all this, I’ve been grieving deeply over Syria, which doesn’t exactly inspire me to write fun, fluffy blog posts.

So. That’s a little bit of what life has been like for me this past week. How about you?

1920s, Books, children, publishing, school, writing

Book Covers & Sundry

August 26, 2013 elouisebates

Quick post today. Our first day of school got pushed back a week because the science curriculum took longer to get in than I anticipated, so TODAY is our first day, instead of last Monday. Starting in 20 minutes, in fact! But I wanted to at least get something up. Trying to get back into some sort of a routine here, even if it’s ragged at first.

A little while back, I contacted an artist friend of mine about doing a painting I could use for a book cover for Wings of Song, the story currently in 2nd draft form. I have learned how long cover art can take, so I wanted to get a head start on it!

She both moved more quickly than I could have imagined, and produced something more beautiful than I could have dreamed. Here it is:

(clicking on the photo will take you to her studio’s FB page)

It’s STUNNING. I’m so pleased. The physical painting should be getting to me this week, and I have every intention of hanging it above my desk after I’ve scanned it into my computer to add title and author.

Ironically enough, right around the time Val and I were completing our transaction, the cover designer for Magic Most Deadly and I came to an amicable parting of ways – her life took a few turns which meant that she wouldn’t be able to tackle the cover for another several months, and I just couldn’t bear waiting that long to put my book-baby out there.

So now I’m figuring out my options for MMD. Do it myself from stock illustrations? Simplest, but also liable to make me tear out my hair. Hire someone else to do it? That gets pricey, and I’m also kind of fussy about my covers – standard covers today, with photos of real people gracing them, just don’t fit my writing style. Talk to artists I know and see how they feel about Art Deco? Maybe, but that also gets pricey, and can take a long time.

Plenty of options, I just have to figure out the best one. I find it thoroughly amusing that I have a book cover for the unfinished novel, and nothing for the completed one. Seems a fairly typical pattern for my life!

And now I get to put writing concerns aside for a few hours, and instead focus on teaching my kids. Science, math, and handwriting for the 1st grader today, and letters and numbers with the preschooler. Hurrah for the first day of school!

(By the way, I finished this post with TWO minutes to spare. Go me.)

writing

Handwriting

July 8, 2013 elouisebates

I was having a terrible time getting going on Wings of Song. I would sit and stare at the blank page on the computer, finally write a few paragraphs, get going, feel pretty good, write a few chapters … and then come back either an hour or a day later and delete everything.

Finally, I took drastic measures. I pulled out my old clipboard, scavenged a lined paper supply from my children’s hoard (for whatever reason, they would ten times rather draw on lined paper than on blank), found my pens that are the only pens I can ever write with, world without end, amen (hey, I know I’m not the only one that fussy about my pens), and started writing longhand.

It worked. It worked really well. The writing is slower, but so much better – I can see the improvement already. Even the notes in the margins, rather than simply deleting and replacing text, seem to help.

Sometimes you just have to return to the old-fashioned way, right?

But oh, my poor hand muscles. They are so sore after a bout of writing. I started using a computer for all my writing purposes in college ten years ago (ten years! I bumped into one of my favorite profs this weekend while visiting home, and both of us felt immensely old when we realized how long ago it had been that I was in his class), and I’ve been almost exclusively computerized since. My handwriting muscles are seriously disused.

(This immersion into computer writing happened mostly because of readability. My thoughts have always raced so much further ahead of my fingers that my handwriting is cramped, tiny, and painful to decipher. My eyes, and the eyes of everyone who had to read what I wrote, figuratively danced for joy when I started typing.)

I keep reminding myself to be thankful I don’t live a few hundred years ago. Imagine trying to write a novel with a quill pen!

And no way will I start using candles to light my paper. I’ve done that before, when we lost electricity for two weeks following an ice storm. Never again.

I may be old-fashioned, but not that much.

Books, favorites, fiction, publishing, writing

Summer Sale!

July 1, 2013 elouisebates

Right now, all my publications are on sale.

(“All.” Doesn’t that sound grand? So much more impressive than “one short story on its own and two shorts bundled together.” Language is a beautiful thing.)

“Justice’s Mask,” a historical fiction short story published under the penname of Louise Ayers, is on sale through Amazon for $0.99.

“If This Be Magic & The Traitor and the Spy,” two historical fantasy shorts published in one volume, on sale through Amazon for $1.99 on Kindle, and $3.99 paperback.

This is the start of my summer promotions for Magic Most Deadly, which currently does NOT have a release date, but most definitely should be out by fall. I also have some lovely giveaways planned, and some picture teasers for the book itself.

At some point, there will be a COVER REVEAL, and I’m still trying to figure out if it’s worth doing a blog tour for that – if you’d be interested in signing up to join in the cover reveal, let me know!

But first, the sale! What better way to kick off promoting a forthcoming novel?

(And hey – if you happen to buy either of the above books, and you want to leave a review on Amazon? That would be AWESOME. Even if it’s a negative review. I promise, I won’t even read it, I just want to know it’s there!)

(And if leaving a review is way too much of a pain for you, that’s cool, I get it. Sometimes I have a hard time doing reviews even when I want to, too. I’ll still think you’re awesome just for buying and reading.)

(Actually, I’ll probably still think you’re a fantastic human being even if you don’t even buy and read.)

And hey! Happy Canada Day, north-of-the-border friends!

Books, fantasy, fiction, publishing

Elle Strauss Cover Reveal

June 19, 2013 elouisebates

I was tremendously excited when I heard Elle Strauss was putting her “Love, Tink” serial together in one complete package, with a new cover and everything. I bought every one of the episodes as soon as it came out, and I’m happy to see them all together now. So naturally, I signed up to be part of the cover reveal!

Not familiar with Love, Tink? Here’s a brief synopsis:

Love, Tink: The Complete Set by Elle Strauss
Publication date: July 10th, 2013
Genre: YA Fantasy

Synopsis:

Originally published as six separate novella episodes, Love, Tink the complete series is all six stories together in one volume.

Tink is hopelessly smitten with Peter, the leader of the Lost Boys who’d mysteriously arrived at Neverland two years ago. Unfortunately, Peter is tired of the adventure and especially tired of dodging Captain Hook who is after his head. He just wants to go back to New York City and live his life as a normal fifteen year old

Tink is the only one who can help Peter return, but it breaks her heart to do it. She just wants to make him happy, so she does the unthinkable and betrays the fairy king. Now her heart is filled with remorse. Should she go after Peter? Should she follow him to his New York?

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18029050-love-tink

—-

ELLE STRAUSS AUTHOR BIO

I write fun, lower YA fiction (time-travel and fantasy). I’m fond of Lindt’s sea salt dark chocolate and hiking in good weather. I’m married with four children and divide my time between British Columbia, Canada, and Germany. I also write upper YA (historical and science fiction) as Lee Strauss.

Author Links:

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

Ready for the cover? Here … we … go …!

Isn’t it lovely? Doesn’t it make you want to read the novellas? The complete series is coming out July 10th!

editing, goals, Life Talk, school, seasons, stories, writing

Scattered

June 11, 2013 elouisebates

-My copy-editor send back Magic Most Deadly this morning. This marks the last round of edits on it (whee!). Then I get to move on to formatting (not so whee). Still, overall way more exciting than not.

-On Saturday, Carl, the kids, and I went to the fabric store to pick up supplies for my sister’s baby quilt. Carl is, surprisingly enough, absolutely the best person to go quilt-fabric-shopping with. He has an unerring eye for colors and patterns that will work well together. Most of the prettiest quilts I’ve made have been ones he helped with.

-I’ve started packing up non-necessity items around the house. Pictures came down off the walls last week, and I’m starting to eye the bookcases, wondering what books we can live without for the next month and a half. (Answer: not many) Winter clothes are already packed away, and pretty soon I’ll be putting extra linens away in totes. Despite the many, many moves we’ve made in the almost-nine years we’ve been married, I still loathe packing.

-In related news, holy cow the end of July and our big move is coming up FAST. We’re going to be traveling three of the weekends between now and then, too. Yikes.

-As the work I need to do on MMD winds down, I’ve actually started writing, not just plotting and researching, my next book project (working title: Wings of Song). I’ve written, deleted, and re-written the first chapter already. Exciting! It’s odd but fun to be working on something without any magic in it at all. It’s also just sheer delight to be writing something set in the same era and general location of my grandfather’s childhood. I think this book will be dedicated to all my grandparents, in thanks for the stories and memories they’ve always shared.

-I’m backing off on the full load of school I’d been attempting with Joy. I think we’ll be fine doing that once the move is done and we’ve settled, but everything is too crazy right now. We’ll just keep doing a little bit here and there (working mostly on art lessons, because that is what she loves the best), but not try doing full weeks until sometime mid-August.

-I love all the fresh fruit starting to be available now. I’ve a big batch of rhubarb in my fridge waiting to be made into rhubarb crunch, and I made a strawberry cake for Grace’s birthday party that was amazingly good, and just to be able to open the fridge and indulge in fruit without worrying that it means we’ll run out before our next grocery trip is a treat. It’s so much easier to stay healthy this time of year!

Although this isn't technically health food, I suppose. — Although this isn’t technically health food, I suppose.

-It’s also pretty fun to be back browsing at the farmer’s market every Saturday (the ones where we aren’t traveling, that is). I came home this weekend with a pot of thyme and a tiny bottle of fresh cream. SO good.

-There’s not much else for news on this front! Posts are probably going to be scattered and/or non-existent from now until after we move (early August), so don’t get alarmed if a week or so passes without hearing from me. I will try to stay active on Twitter and Facebook just so you all know I’m alive!

-Have a fantastic week, all.

Books, fantasy, goals, heroines, publishing, stories, writing

Responsibilities and Inspirations

June 3, 2013 elouisebates

The thing about being an independently-published author (or at least journeying toward that goal – Magic Most Deadly, is so, so close to being ready!) is that you still have to be responsible about your writing.

By which I mean, if you have two books planned for this year, and two more planned for next, and you know that you are a slow enough writer it will take you all year to get those books written and ready for publication, you cannot, no matter how much you want to, hare off on a side trail and write something completely different. Because you have responsibilities just as surely as if you have a contract with an outside publishing house.

Which is why I am not writing that heavily female, POC, straight-up high fantasy quest-and-battle novel I want to write after seeing this, and reading this and this.

But I want to.

And so I am jotting down notes and character ideas and possible plots in my handy-dandy notebook here and there, as I think of it, and maybe, just maybe, once my self-imposed contracts are up, the spark will still be there and I will be able to write it. Or there’s even the possibility that I might be spurred to write these stories that much faster, so I can get to that one sooner.

In any case, it’s always nice to have inspiration bubbling, even if one can’t go chasing every will-o-the-wisp idea that floats across one’s path. Not, in any case, if one wishes to be that responsible writer one is trying so hard to achieve.

Seriously, who hasn’t read LOTR and wanted to see Eowyn get her shot at adventure? She would be an amazing protagonist.

(I am also, in trying to be responsible, not taking up my Welsh language studies again. Though that has more to do with homeschooling/packing/moving/I have no time for a new time-consuming hobby than it does with writing!)

goals, philosophy, writing

Get Healthy Bloghop: Water

May 29, 2013 elouisebates

My number-one secret for getting/staying healthy isn’t really a secret at all.

Drink water.

When I was pregnant with my first child, the best advice my doctor gave me was to keep hydrated. I got a giant water bottle – one marked with easy-to-read measurements, and used that to keep track of my water intake each day. By the time I was finally done with pregnancy and nursing … well, by that time I was expecting again, so when I was finally done with all that, I had firmly established the habit of drinking water constantly throughout the day.

I’m not perfect with it anymore – my girls are four and five, long enough for me to occasionally slide back into bad habits. But oh boy, can I tell the difference when I get out of the habit. When I am drinking enough water, my mind is clearer; my body healthier; my hair and skin happier; my temptations to eat too much sugar far lessoned. When I’m even slightly dehydrated? I get slow, sluggish, and stupid. Cranky, too.

I don’t always like drinking it. Sometimes it’s too boring, sometimes it just tastes unpleasant. So often I add fruit to it to give a little more flavor, or squirt some lemon juice in, or even add just a tiny bit of juice. Anything to convince myself to keep drinking it.

And no, coffee, even decaffeinated, is NOT an acceptable substitute for water. So sorry! (Neither is black tea, which is sadder for me personally.)

Exercise is good (I’m still looking for something to fill the gap ice dance was for me this winter); healthy eating in general is hugely important; the simple act of moving throughout the day necessary; but for me, drinking enough water to stay properly hydrated is the single best thing I can do to stay healthy, body and mind.

How about you?

This post is part of the Staying Healthy Bloghop. Check out more posts at Alex J Cavanaugh, Stephen Tremp, L Diane Tremp, and Michael Di Gesu.