Book Covers

Book covers are important, they draw people in, make them want to read and tell something about whats inside. And getting one designed for an ebook can be expensive.
But that's not why I did my own.
I like completing a project. The cover is part of the whole book and I do have some things I want to show. And I love art. I paint, draw and do other kind of brochure, design work on the side so the book cover is something I want to do.
In Soul Mates the main character goes to heaven; see sky and clouds. She comes back to earth as a dog; see paw prints.
Now I worry that this cover is a bit simplistic. I worry if people will get the right message. I want the readers who like dogs and maybe a bit of the heaven-god story peeps too.
The only thing I don't have is the actual dog and I vacillated quite a bit over finding a dog to put on the cover. Then I wondered if this wasn't your kind of dog would you turn away because it wasn't the dog sitting at your feet. So dog came off the cover and now I wonder if THAT was the right move. Decisions, decisions, decisions.... So? Opinions?

Next Project

As I wait for Soul Mates to go up on the Kindle store I'm contemplating my next project. I have several books finished in first draft but need to think about genre. Blurb for Soul Mates: After a tragic death on mean city streets, a woman meets God and begs him to let her reincarnate to bring the heavenly message of unconditional love to the world. Follow the adventure when she is tossed back to earth as one of the smallest dogs on the planet.
So should I stay in the same genre. I mean if I want to create a name for myself? What if my next book is a tad darker? Serial killers, demons, darkness...would I blow my chance at forming a readership? I'm guessing people who like animals and feel good stories should like this story.
Or should I come up with something softer, more in line with Soul Mates? I do have a few ideas. I also have a Vampire story I'm having fun writing but that is so far out of left field that I'm thinking it wouldn't make good next book for the Kindle store. So now I spend my writing times rocking back and forth on which to work on, what should I be aiming for and playing with my T-shirt designs. Crazy Painter T's

It's close...almost ready to upload to Amazon's Kindle store. Editing, editing and more editing, cover work, formatting problems, formatting solutions and now...soon...up it goes.
This is scary as hell.
It's like telling the world to take your talent, ego, and hopes of success and tie them up in a big knot and stomp on them. Fold, spindle, mutilate. And this is only a novela. Something small and cute. Not the giant wordy thrillers I've been trying to pare down. I'm putting this up as a test. Can I really do this? Be the writer I see in my heart? Actually sell a book?
Scary
Exciting
Scary
Exciting
>insert deep heartfelt sigh here<
In the mean time I'm working on another book. A more serious book far away from the genre of the first. (that worries me--that my writing spans several genres and how am I ever going to develop a following?)
And I'm making T-shirt designs. Crazy Painter T's
It's what I do when I'm not writing or painting because sitting still isn't an option. If I sit still I think about these the scary prospect of strangers reading and critiquing my work. I know you can't please everyone. I'm really not interested in trying. But still...
Scary
Exciting
How do you guys shove your work out there and still stay sane? Does it get easier with the next book? Does the anxiety ever go away?

Spacey Kindle Issues

In formatting for Kindle, uploading the manuscript on Kindle to see how it looked wasn't helpful. It went up with all these weird sentence breaks. So now I don't know if when I put it up on Amazon for download, if it will have these same weird line breaks. Frustration. The Amazon publishing guide didn't answer this issue. This book, Soul Mates, isn't even on of my favorite things I've written. I like it well enough but I wrote it on a dare and then kind of liked the story. It's more of a novella and I'm putting it up as an experiment so I'm trying not to obsess over this stuff. But I still want it to be perfect. Maybe its the Virgo in me. Then yesterday I downloaded a free preview of a book and it has the same weird line breaks. Like you're tolling along and suddenly in the middle of the sentence the words drop down on a different line. Why? Did this guy format the manuscript wrong? Was there some other conversion issue I'm missing here? Anyone else experience this issue?

Where to Hide the Bodies...

In trying to make room in my creative cave for a futon (I do need somewhere to do my thinking) I took to cleaning out stuff I hadn't seen in a long time. First I dumped the old or even semi-old paint, cleared out the misfit brushes, stained water cans, and all those things I cut out of magazines, printed off the net and random sketches of what I wanted to paint someday. Then I turned to that big bin under my work bench and found it was packed with pages of some really old stories. Some 400 pages or better, some shorts and some stuff I still have on my computer and work on occasionally. And even some written on a typewriter (am I dating myself here?) and in the computer paper with the holes on the side. There were a couple of note books with a hand written story that encompassed 3 books. I barely remember writing it. It was real hard to keep cleaning and not stop and read it all though. There were some poems I must have written at a really angry time, old love poems and then the usual weird stuff that pops out of my brain if I'm not on alert. It was really hard to let this stuff go. I know there's a few boxes in the attic and maybe one or two of those under the bed storage boxes under my bed with pages and pages of stories and that, realistically, I'll never do anything with. I'll never polish, publish or even read them but for some reason it's comforting to have them here. I think of them as a legacy of sorts. Maybe someday when I'm gone my kids will read these things and know a little bit more about what made me tick. That the woman who took care of them, raised them and set them loose on the world was a bit more than chief cook and bottle washer. But then again...maybe they shouldn't see too far into my mind...it might make them wonder about my sanity. So where do you keep your bodies? And why do you keep them?

Kindle Tips?

In formatting a book from word for the kindle the information out there seems confusing. Different websites seem to say different things. I think the writing is easy compared to all this detail stuff. Anyone know of a good website that's easy to understand about formatting for Kindle? Did you format and upload your own book or pay someone? One good thing about going the traditional publishing route is that someone else does all this grunt work for you. After watching more and more new and established authors go Indy I wonder how the publishing houses feel? I once went to a conference where they had this machine that would print on demand. Put the instructions in one end and a fully binded book pops out the other end. They hoped to sell this machine to schools, stores and anyone who wanted an instant book. This was supposed to be the new thing in publishing. this was a few years before Kindle hit the market.

Now that Amazon and all the Indy epub opportunities are here I wonder what the future of traditional publishing will bring.

Responsibility & Life

So much of life is about taking responsibility. Responsibility for a job, car/house payment, kids, pets and so on and so on and so on. Sometimes it's scary and sometimes its exciting. I finished my book, Soul Mates and its in final edits (at least I hope they're final!) and soon it will be up on Amazon. It excites me, it scares the hell out of me. And its a responsibility too. When this goes out with any mistakes, typos or story line glitches its out there for the world to see. Scary. Sink or swim. No take backs. Sometimes I think the only way people succeed is if they drop the fear, take the responsibility and just go for it. Was Thomas Edison afraid to flip the switch and let them see his new toy? Did he wonder if he'd be laughed at or just figure his toy was so awesome of course they would love it. Maybe Thomas' experience isn't quite the right one to bring forth. But as for writers? The traditional writers wouldn't be a comparison because they had editors, professional designers, and a whole crew at a publishing house. I forgo all that to jump in as an Indy. Somedays I want to shout; TELL ME I'M NOT CRAZY! Going it alone is scary and thrilling. And with great power comes great responsibility. Soon. What's that dog got to so with all this responsibility stuff? She's my foster dog Daisy. Came up from Tennessee before Christmas and I think her situation might have been abusive. She sometimes flinches when I raise my hand. She didn't play or even look at the toys until she was here over two weeks. She came a fragile little ball of fur and is slowly coming to trust. Finding a home for a dog like this is a great responsibility. I want the home to be loving and kind and most of all gentle with this lost little soul. I want to make the best choice when I match her to a forever family. See, it's the "R" word again. It follows our lives like ...well i was going to say the stars above and be nice and poetic but the vision that hits me is like gum stuck to your shoe or too much peanut butter in the roof of your mouth. It's there, it's sticky and you can't get rid of it. So I guess I'll embrace it.