New covers! Free books!

Hi everyone!

First, I'm running another promo and OF SEA AND STONE is free for Kindle readers right now! This is a finished series, so if you like to binge your books, you can read the whole thing from start to finish. The whole series is also available in Kindle Unlimited temporarily.

You can get Of Sea and Stone free by clicking here.

I felt like freshening up some book covers, so I redesigned the rest of the Secrets of Itlantis series last week. Here are the new covers:

I'd redesigned Of Sea and Stone forever ago, and hadn't gotten around to making the rest of the books match. Finally did that... I was fun to sit down and do a whole series of covers all at once. Usually I'm designing them one at a time as I release the books.

I'm pretty sure By Sun and Saltwater is my favorite. That was always my least favorite cover of the old ones.

I also redid the cover for The Season of Lightning. I've had trouble with the covers for that book... I felt like the old cover slightly misrepresented the genre and didn't feel particularly YA and didn't really match the mood of the book either.

Here's the new one:

In other (final) news, I'm working on the next book in the Kingmakers' War series.

Happy reading, everyone!

Cover Reveal for AERALIS!!

Ladies and Gents, we have a cover reveal!!

Aeralis, book #5 in the Frost Chronicles series, releases in just a few weeks. Until then, feast your eyes on the cover and add it on Goodreads!

Cover Reveal for BLUEWING!

Today I am thrilled to be able to reveal the cover for the newest book in The Frost Chronicles, BLUEWING! Scroll down to see the cover...

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Keep scrolling!!

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Annnnnnnnnnnnd here it is!

Here's the summary again:

Lia Weaver is a fugitive. Her family's farm has been confiscated by Farther soldiers, her sister has been reassigned to a new family in the village, and her official status is "missing." Now, she and a band of fugitive followers must make their home in the harsh wilderness of the Frost. Food is scarce, and hope is scarcer still as Lia tries to find information about the whereabouts of her missing friends. She is determined to rescue them, but when a surprising ally steps forth with an offer that will both return her friends and expel the Farthers from the Frost in exchange for something very precious, Lia must make a choice.

Hopefully BLUEWING will be releasing in just a few weeks! Stay tuned for more details. :)

Cover reveal of my new book!

I'm always a bit nervous to reveal cover art, because I have some followers on here who are professional artists and designers, and I've never taken a design class in my life.

Nevertheless, I AM pretty excited to share with you the cover art for my new book!

Once Upon a Beanstalk (And Other Fairy Tale Mashups) is a collection of humorous short stories. Rumplestiltskin and Red Riding Hood are married and running a royal wedding planner venue, Rapunzel has been rescued from her tower and is about to start her happily ever after, and the Grimm Brothers are a group of notorious thieves who are forced to rescue a kidnapped princess from a mobster giant. 

All the stories take place in the same world and involve characters met in previous stories.

I've truly enjoyed writing them and I can't wait to get the book formatted and released!

Making Your Own Book Covers

Sometimes I fall into what I consider the "daydream trap."

I start thinking about what Amazon reviews I'd get for a MS I'm working on, or I imagine what the perfect cover would look like. I pretend the book is on my shelf, and I dream up scenarios where people I knew in school who looked down on me randomly run into me, gush about this "amazing book" they read, and I'm like, "Yeah, I wrote that book." I concoct imaginary scenes in bookstores where I am recognized and approached. You know, silly stuff.

But sometimes it IS fun to do more than just write. I love everything about books--where you get them (bookstores, libraries), what's on the cover . . . I like to dream. And I like to dabble.

And if I could do one thing besides write the book, I'd want to design the covers. See, I have this thing about book covers--I love looking at them, I love finding pretty new ones, and I love imaging what mine will look like some day.

So yesterday I indulged the daydream a bit and made a mock cover for one of my finished books that I'm hoping to query one of these days (whenever I finish editing it!) ... I don't have money lying around to buy stock photos, and I'm very OCD* about stealing images or "borrowing" them so I just used a photo I'd taken of my sister a few months ago. It's not exactly my first choice for the book cover, but it works. I really like the parasol, which is a leftover accessory from my wedding a few years back. The title is also a working title. But, ah well. I think it turned out rather well. I played with the colors a bit in an editing program, threw some text down, and voila.


What do you think?

Now, I'm no expert at making covers, and as such I can't see all the ugly problems that I'm sure it has. I've never had a single class in cover art or graphic design, so I'm sure there are a lot of flaws in this. I DID try to limit myself to 2 fonts, haha. I know that much. And I'm not 100% satisfied with it either--I fussed with where to place "A Novel" for FOREVER, for instance, and I'm still not sold on the place I picked in the end. Also I feel like my pseudonym should be more readable. Maybe I'd add a little colored bar at the bottom to fix that. Or something. And like i said, the picture is far from perfect, but it was something I had on hand and it was the best one I had that didn't show my sister's face (she is only 14, so I am OCD about posting her all over the internet too--yes, I'm one of those paranoid people) ... but I like it.

It makes me feel all tingly inside to look at it.

It makes the story feel more ... real.


Does anybody else ever dream up covers for their stuff?




* For real

PS ~ I'll confess I also spend way way way too much time on stock photo sites, picking out hypothetical images for hypothetical covers. It's a sad addiction.