Clover Autrey

We've been renting the same house for 8 years. I like the house, like the neighborhood, like the school district, like the local church community. But we have been "house-poor" for all of these years. We also moved in when when we had five children. The 3 oldest have moved on so now we have this 3500 square foot home that we pretty much walk through to get from one area to another.

So as our lease is coming up at the end of September, enough is enough. I'm so tired of throwing money into a house that isn't even our own. It's time to downsize. The problem is is that our credit isn't where it needs to be. Why? Oh, could it be because all our money goes into rent instead of paying off these few lasting leftover bills from when our family was held hostage by a terminal illness? It's a vicious vicious cycle.

Here's the problem: My junior wants to stay in his high school. Can't blame him. But we're not going to stay in this cycle another two years. Just can't do it. Especially with a missionary out in the field.
But we have been getting a good rate on our house. The same models in the area are going for at least $500 more and all the houses in this area for rent at the price we can manage are 1/3 the size and barely $100 lower in rent. Wahhhhh? Really? That's not even worth it. We're going to be stuck like this forever.

So I prayed and fasted about it. A lot. For many months, worried that we were going to have to move our sons into another school district. And I was very specific because in my experience that works. So I asked for a home within the area beneath a certain price, even realizing that there was no way.

Except, there was. Unbelievable we found a rental that fits all our criteria. The same model a few houses down is renting for $400 more, but it was all painted cute. This one, holy heck, it's a mess. It seriously looks like a flop house. But it's freaking $500 less than what we are in now. That's doable for us. It's a miracle, is what it is. And it's only because the owner doesn't want to do any work into it, or possibly can't afford to, we're getting if for well below the going rate.

So I'm thinking for that much of a break, yeah, I can live with a kitchen countertop that is outdoor slabs cemented on. I can scrub the filthiest bathrooms ever known to mankind. Seriously, I don't know what kind of people lived here or what they were growing. Well since I found weed paper in the drawer I guess I do know what they were growing. And coffee filters on top of the bathroom cupboards. Um, what do you do with coffee filters in the bathroom? I'm thinking it's not for making coffee. My son looked at the tub, grimaced and said, "Can we buy a new bathtub?" It's that gross. I have pictures but hesitate to post them because I don't want a rash of vomiting. They are scrubbed clean now (with The Works toilet cleaner and Mr. Clean scrubbers, and then vinegar and bleach) and since I don't own a hazmet suit, I tossed the clothes I was wearing. Guh. All the while repeating in my head $500 less $500 less $500 less. But dang if I am not buying new toilet seats!

Then the neighbor comes over, sweet guy, and proceeds to tell me about the drug dealer, Roger, that lives on the other side of him who used to break in all the garages and cars, except now that he keeps calling the police and has installed security cameras, and R has been arrested several times, but nothing sticks, at least they no longer steal around here. Don't crap in your own sandbox, that sort of thing I hope. Sigh. This is the house I prayed for? What are we doing?

I seriously envision our family going into a dark cave and licking our wounds while we financially heal for two years. Two years, $500 less a month. We can do this.

But our landlord has allowed me to paint (at our expense of course). I was doing a real good job of it, going from a puse brown to a soft gray from the ladder slipped out from under me and now I have a sprained ankle. Man, it hurts and I have so much to do. The doctor said, "well, keep off of it." Right. I'm moving. I have so much to do.

I am grateful that it wasn't worse. The ladder (and I) didn't smack the floor, but the ends caught on the window sill so that I wrenched on the ladder. I have lovely rung-spaced bruises along my body. Joy.

how the ladder fell

In shock I rolled off when my friend texted seconds later, "hey, how is the painting going? Are you sure you don't need help?"

So I got a call from Judy, the president of the Keller Writers Association critique group, telling me about a reporter from the Star Telegram who is interested in indie-publishing and could I tell her a little bit about it.

Well, sure. I'm not one to pass up an opportunity like that. So I emailed Judy over some information. The following day the reporter gives me a call, asking if we could meet, and that she is interested in doing an article for the new K Magazine, Keller's Premier City Magazine, which is part of The local Keller Citizen, which is part of Star Telegram of the City of Fort Worth. And that the article is about National Novel Writing Month which takes place in November. You know, that crazy month where writers all over the world buckle down and try to complete a 50k novel from start to finish in a month?  Have I ever participated in that?

Why yes, yes  I have. I completed the uncompleteable novel during nanowrimo, Extracted. And I live in Keller.

Perfect. Yay, me! I fit all the criteria she was looking for.

My first BIG SHOT interview. You'd think I'd be nervous. But I wasn't for some odd reason.
Anyway, Sandra Engelland, the reporter came over to my house. She was wearing a bright happy blue outfit with cute ballet flats, has curly blond hair, and a nice smile. Very ease-putting. She also used a small notebook and pen to write everything, which for who-know-why made me all happy. Like it fit some stereotype I had in my head of how reporters should do things. Awesome. And dang, she wrote fast.


Her questions were great. I felt totally at ease and confident because we were talking on subjects I love and know what I'm talking about, so the conversation just flowed. I felt intelligent and capable and I loved it. I want to be interviewed more. Bring on the reporters!

Then as she was leaving she mentioned that she'd arrange for one of their photographers to take some pictures of me. Squeal! Okay, I didn't squeal. I'm a professional after all, but maybe just a little squeal inside.

So the following day, me and another author she interviewed named Henry met the photographer at The Book Carriage in Roanoke for about 5 minutes and had our picture taken together. Seriously, that's all it took. 5 minutes. Guy knew what he was doing. Well, I guess since that's his career he would. It was fun. I feel great about it...and slightly important and can't wait to see how it all comes turns out.

My nanowrimo book. One month to finish. A year to edit. That's what I get for speeding through it.


Extracted

This is the book that took 25ish years to write. It's gone through several incarnations. It began as a short story after I read Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and became fascinated with WWII. My story was about an old war veteran who had a heart attack, traveled through the tunnel of light but was ripped out of it, his soul snatched and put into the body of a dead soldier to keep fighting in an alien world's war. I titled it Do Not Resuscitate.

I loved the concept so years later I once again resurrected the story, but this time twisted it into a teen guy displaced on an alien world. I could never quite get the plot settled comfortably in my head so let it sit while I worked on other projects. It was when I was talking about it with YA author Mari Mancusi and she said, "Why don't you make the hero into a heroine?" and something finally clicked.

So no more alien world, just good old fashioned soul snatching in a scientific way right here on planet earth.

Oh but the cover...how to bring this concept into a cover... I searched long and hard until finally I found the perfect model, mainly because she was asleep and has such an innocent quality about her.

Here's the original picture I purchased from Dreamstime.com.  Actually the original picture had a green background which I had to erase, but somewhere when my laptop died and I switched over to a new one I lost the original.

I'm so excited about my latest book. It's totally different than what I usually write, meaning no magic or supernatural creatures mucking about. It's a straight historical, well, as far as what history can piece together on Vikings at any rate. And it was such a joy to write also. I love these characters. Anyway, more on them later. This post is about how I made the cover.

I wanted to go with that classic historical romance style. You know the ones with a couple in a clench in front of some type of historical scene, usually a castle. I just wanted readers to know exactly what it is at a glance.

So the first thing was to find the right couple. Not so easy when I'm using stock photo. First, there aren't that many blond guys. I have no idea why, but they are few and far between. I also wanted the heroine to have dark hair.  And not completely nekkid either. I couldn't find any at my usual stock photo haunt so I went over to The Killion Group and finally found the perfect couple. The leather pants definitely need to be cropped out though. Eew.



Next up is the historical landscape behind them. Viking book. Definitely need a Viking Dragon Ship. Dreamstime had just what I needed.

Saturated it a bit to bring out more color and lighten.

Next I put them together. It took a while to get the right placement of the ships. I ended up using the 3rd ship on the right because it fit the best beneath Rovena's the heroine's hair. I also erased some of her gown. It just flared too much. Actually the dress isn't exactly authentic for the time period but with stock photos I have to pick and choose what I can live with. Notice how I cropped out those awful leather pants? And please don't tell me they are really pleather. Gag. As you can see I started playing around with title and author name placement. I thought it looked pretty good until I decided I really wanted to go with the classic historical romance look and make it look like a drawing.
 Finding an illustration program took a little bit of work until I found one in Smart Photo Editor and ran it through. It first came out like this, which I actually love, except it made the fonts less readable. It also made their hair color almost the same. What I really liked about this couple was that her dark hair opposed to his light hair.
Well, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. I played around with the light balance, even tried to slip her old non illustrated hair over this hair, until it dawned on  me to use the clone stamp tool and clone darker spots of her hair over the lighter spots. It worked pretty well although I may have gotten a little carried away. Except Rovena's hair in the book is pitch black and fascinates all the lighter haired Vikings so I wanted it as dark as I could get it.


Now that's some nice dark hair on her. I'd rather he was lighter but I didn't want to mess with him too much. The lightening I did made his moles stand out on his neck. You can really see them when they are enlarged. I almost went in with the clone stamp and got rid of them, but decided I could use them and go in and write a few sentences where Rovena is noticing the mole at the side of his neck and wanting to press a kiss there or some such.  The next step was getting the words to show up. With the ships, water and her dress there is a lot going on, which I didn't want to smear out just to see the words so I decided to enlarge the title and go with white for most of it. My name still gets a little lost in her dress but I can live with that, especially since Viking is the main theme I want to get across as well as this is a historical romance. I think the classic style of this cover will convey that fairly well.  So here it is! Tell me what you think.