Coming up with a “cover idea” is not the easiest thing to do. In my mind, you need to find a cover that conveys the idea of your story or shows an action scene. The idea should be something that is eye catching. A book cover is a writer’s first means of advertising to their prospective audience. It should be something that catches a reader’s eyes and making them want to pick up your book to read the back cover, which is the secondary primary means of advertising for an author. (Wow, that whole back cover blurb should be my next blog series of discussions, but for now let’s keep the focus on the cover art.) The last part of this direct advertising is your front cover blurb and your sample pages from your novel.

In my opinion, there is nothing more important than your cover when it comes to your initial advertising. Getting someone to notice your book as a new writer and to actually check out what your story is about is the hardest part of advertising. I would go so far as to say that 80% to 90% of the people that decide to pick up your book due to the cover will probably choose to purchase your book if they like the back blurb about the story. What gets readers to get this far is the actual cover that catches their eyes.

Now for already famous writers this is not as important, but for us indie writers it is. We don’t already have a following of readers who want to check out our work, so we need to advertise and get people to notice our great story.

Now that we have an idea just how important the cover for your book, we can discuss the next part of the process. Before you can communicate your cover idea to your artist, you as the writer need to have a solid idea of what you want for the cover of your book. Sounds easy, right? Wrong, the whole process of coming up with a concept that rocks and then communicating that concept to your artist is extremely difficult. Also, you only have several tries with the artist you’re working with before they are going to say something like: We need to go with one of the concepts we’ve come up with or you’re going to need to pay me for all of the art work that you keep asking for. Also, covers are expensive and none of us have extra money to just throw away. Hell, as a new writer we are already gambling that all of the money we are spending now to get the book published in the first place is actually going to get enough of a return to pay for the initial cost of publishing our book, let alone actually make anything extra on top of that.

Once you have this mental picture of what you want your cover to be, you need to find a way to communicate this idea to the artist you’ve found. I do this in two different ways. First, I pull as many images that I can to convey the idea of what I’m thinking. I would post the file here that I use to do this, but with all of the focus on posting other people’s images illegally, I’ll just discuss the file I used to convey my thoughts instead. There are just way too many images to hunt down each artist to get permissions for this blog post. In the document I used to communicate with my artist I focused on several types of images. The first was the color pallet that I was looking for. I had several images that gave the impression of blowing snow with a bluish tinge to the scene. I also discussed the feeling I wanted to convey in the background of the picture. The second focus I had was on the art style I was looking for in the main characters. I was going for an anime with a slightly realistic look for the characters. I had a couple faces concepts that I wanted, but nothing exact. I had several pictures showing young women that were wolf-like in appearance. I wanted Starfire to look not quite human and to be a partial twin to the werewolf girl, Frostbrand, who is placed on the other side of Startüm. I had several pictures of the style of werewolf I was looking for. I also wanted the werewolf in question to look feminine and child-like. A tough request I’m sure, which Leo really kicked butt doing. Last, I had pictures of the armor style I wanted for the Startüm and the swords I wanted used.

Although I had specific ideas of what I wanted, I also left things loose for the artist’s own interpretation. I wanted to make sure I went with what the artist wanted to do to a point too. I did make some mistakes. I wish I had put Startüm as younger and with blonde hair to go better with the description within the pages of the book, but at the same time I really loved how the character on the cover looked Wolfish. It made me not want to change the image from what Leo came up with in that way.   

You can see the progression of the images from Leo. The first one was almost exactly what I was looking for. The only thing I didn’t like was the body language and the stance of the main character in Leo’s first try. Also, I wanted the character to look slightly more muscular and more aggressive. In the second try that Leo did I thought he hit this exactly, which is what I told him to go with. I wasn’t sure where the flame for Starfire should go. I initially had an idea that she was fiery all over, but I didn’t like the look in the first picture. Leo put it to her hand instead, which I thought came out great.

I’ll post information for the cover for Destiny and I hope this discussion helps those of you who are going through this process for the first time.  

Just recently I’ve been working on a chapter for my main chapters, Startüm Ironwolf, that has him being nursed back to life. When he wakes in the chapter he is being taken care of by a Wild Elf and is burning up with a major fever. I was struggling to get the 100% correct feel for the whole scene, but felt like I was missing something to the depth of the struggle he was going through with being sick. I’d been re-working the chapter back and forth several times to get the right feel, when suddenly I came down with a major flu with a burning fever for two days. Wow, let me tell you, there’s nothing like living the experience to be able to accurately write about it. Although in this situation I could have passed on the realness of the feeling to be honest.

For most of my writing I try to do two very important things. I try to picture each and every scene as if I were either there myself, or I do my best to picture the action as if I were watching it on a big screen at the movies. The reason I do this is twofold. First I want to make sure that the action going on is as accurate and realistic as possible. Even for my characters that are not exactly true to life. Startüm Ironwolf is extremely powerful and dense, so whenever action scenes are going on with I do my best to try to take into consideration the true physics of the real world in retrospect to his unique abilities and powers. The second part to this is that I want whatever rules I come up with for my world to be applied consistently throughout the story.

A good “bad” example of this is in the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Although I loved the visual eye candy and choreographed fight scenes, the main issue I had with the movie was that there was no consistency in the amazing feats that the fighters could do. During the major fight scenes the heroine was able to fly through the air, but when the hero, her lover, is dying. The heroine can only find a horse and take the long ride back to the town to get help. This lack of consistency in the rules of the world just made me really dislike an otherwise awesome movie.

A good “good” example of this is the Matrix, one of my all-time favorite movies. Neo is a hacker and he begins to hack the Matrix with his mind. The fight scenes, the upload of data to his mind the extra-physical skills of how the jumpers can bend everyday rules in the world. They all follow a steady theme that stay consistent with the rules that were defined within the world of the film. All of the “cyber-jackers”, the people that jump back into the Matrix, are able to hack the Matrix to a point. Their ability to “hack” allows them to bend the rules so to speak, but all within the overall rules that had been established within the film itself. For me this consistency of the rules of the world is essential in any story.

Maybe this is so important because so many of us like to try to guess what’s going to happen next. I know that’s what I’m doing whenever I’m reading a story. It’s always fun when the author comes up with a twist in the rules that saves the hero, and once it’s shown to me I’m like, “Wow, that was awesome!” On the flip side few things piss me off more when an author pulls out something from their ass that had nothing to do with the story or follows no established rules to save the hero or kill the villain. Even though I can’t think of any off the top of my head, I have no doubt there are a bunch of writers who are using this to good effect and are making money with their works, but no matter what it still just pisses me off whenever I run into a book that does this.

On another subject, I just sent Leo Black an email about getting Destiny’s cover completed. I’m going to do a whole set of blogs on this and the first cover art that I did for Flight, since I think it’s a good topic to cover, but I’ll save more on that for my next post. For now Leo really likes the concept I have for the book cover and things are moving forward.

I wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving Day, at least for those of you who celebrate it anyways. Now I’m trying to deal with the approaching rush of the holidays, while working and keeping up my writing for Destiny. Also, here in Germany they have Weihnachtsmarkts, which are holiday season open bazars with gluehwein (mulled wine) and “Fair” food. I’m not a big gluehwein fan, but they have this ciderwein that is just awesome. I’ll add in some of the pictures down below with today’s post.

After my first book was published, I’ve had to work with my wife on “when” I’m allowed to write. The plan we came up with is that during the week I am allowed to write at night, but weekends I need to save for the family, including Friday nights usually. Sometimes I sneak in some writing time anyway, but with all of the holiday fun I’ve just been too busy. Also, everyone wants me to bake U.S. style cookies =D I usually do chocolate chips, oatmeal/raisin/cranberry/chocolate chips and peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies throughout the holidays.

I’m still working on that first romance chapter. It’s incredible how hard the whole process is, but it’s starting to sound good. I just find it frustrating that sometimes “regular life” comes into play. With holidays and family time half the week can just be nixed out before you can get back to working on the part you want to finish.  Frustrating in one way, but also I’m glad to have the time with the family.

This week I’m going to try to get an email off to Leo Black about working on the cover for book two. Hopefully he can get it done by February or sooner. Last time he really liked the concept and knocked it out much earlier than expected. I just need to see what he thinks of the concept I want to work on for now and see if he thinks it’ll look good or not. He’s a great guy to run ideas past. I think it always helps to be open to suggestions from the artist you’re working with. Just make sure you have a good feel for their work though before going with any artist. Trust is essential to this process.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard for most people to take any criticism. Trust me, I understand how hard it is to hear that something is not as perfect or as good as you thought. Sometimes it can bring you close to tears, but the truth will also set you free … or at least if you listen to it from a good source help to make you into a better writer. You just have to seriously consider what’s being said and be honest with yourself. I say this because sometimes there will be those friends who just simply want to see you fail because for whatever reason they are jealous that you are writing and being successful. It happens, so just be aware of it. Unfortunately that makes it difficult to sometimes know what you need to pay attention too with the feedback you’re getting, henceforth the whole, being honest with yourself. I imagine most writers look at all the feedback they get and then do their best to look into their soul and the quality of their work.

I’ve seen some writers produce a good solid story, but then be unable to accept criticism to get the story cleaned up to be a good end product that people want to read. The worst part is that getting someone to give you “good criticism” is hard as hell. Most people want to not hurt your feelings and even if you beg them to hurt your feelings so that you can improve the story they won’t. Having that friend who is willing to tell you the truth that you need to hear is a rare and wonderful thing to have. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make it hurt any less to hear the hard truth, but none the less you need to hear it. It’s the only way you’re going to get better. If you fight back or get snippy with this friend who has given you the gift of the truth to help you fix up your writing and story, then next time they are not going to say anything … or they won’t continue telling you what you need to know to get your story ready for production.

So if you’re writing, just remember to cherish these friends who are willing to tell you the truth as they see it. And once you hear it, work to get them to say more and be completely open and supporting. It doesn’t mean you have to change everything, but it’s a good point to work from. Also important is to make sure that if you’re writing a certain genre that the friend is into that type of story. Otherwise, you’re not going to get the criticism you need.

Anyway, I’ll make sure I get two posts in this month at the very least.