Showing posts with label Highland Shapeshifter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Highland Shapeshifter. Show all posts

11-12-13

A Highland Sorcery Christmas book cover
First, a very happy 11-12-13 to you. I imagine there will be lots of weddings today to get this date!!!

With Christmas and Thanksgiving around the corner, I wanted to have a tie-in holiday tale to my Highland Sorcery novels and this made the perfect segue, giving each couple from the first four books a chance to come back to the same time period and reunite and celebrate just being alive.

The only problem? I don't write fluffy holiday features. Be warned: A Highland Sorcery Christmas isn't your normal holiday fare.

It takes place in two time periods, where the twenty-something son of Toren and Charity (from book one) is now the leader of humanity's survivors. Alexander is so close to weakening the monsters who have replaced humans at the top of the food chain. But when he gets near one of the beasts to test his formula, the monster takes a bite out of him and mentally downloads everything Alexander knows.

Now it’s up to his family to fight for his life in the past and the future if they are to save him and spare the world.

Not exactly your usual holiday get together. There be monsters this season.

Excerpt

The stormy wedge of dirty sky rocked sideways. Tight between Ethan and Dez, Alexander’s shoulders rubbed along their stomachs. His legs bounced, knees bent over their arms as they carried him over the rough terrain.
“It won’t stop. I need another pressure package. Now.” That was Bekah. The hard tension against his stomach released, but just as suddenly came again with more sharpness as a fresh gauze package was shoved against his wound. Somehow Bekah had tucked herself behind Dez and was keeping up with their pace so she could keep pressure on the bleeding gash.
Alexander shuddered, the sweat on his cheek mixed with the dampness along Bekah’s arm, reaching over his torso. The Sift had taken a chunk out of him.  
“You’re going to be okay.” Her voice rasped near his head. “We’re getting you to help. Just a little ways more. You keep on breathing, you hear me?”
Breathe. Right. That was important, wasn’t it? Everything narrowed down to pulling oxygen into his struggling lungs, but it hurt. 
An iceberg had somehow wedged inside his chest, blocking the air passages and with any attempt to expand his lungs, the icy shards bit into his flesh from the inside out.
The graying world tilted, his head lolling back, falling between the canyons of Ethan’s and Dez’s shoulders as they carried him uphill.
“Richards, run ahead for Lenore.” That was Bekah barking orders again, though she didn’t seem to be talking to him this time. Out of all his aunts, she was the bossiest.
The dusky sky disappeared, replaced by a smudge of gray cement ceiling of the parking garage his Holdout forces used out in the field. His forces. Alexander grinned at that even as metallic tasting blood trickled between his lips. Dez and Ethan had been among the first to believe he had a way to fight the overpowering Sifts, well, after he’d proved himself by saving Ethan’s neck with a shot of sorcerer’s flame. Some days it was good to be the last sorcerer on earth. He should have used it on the Sift today. He just hadn’t seen it before it dropped on him.
“What’s happened?” He heard Lenore a moment before her worried face moved above his. Her voice tightened. “Put him over here.”
Alexander felt himself being swung up into the bed of an abandoned pickup. His head swung with the movement too. Hissing, he curled in around his stomach, but was immediately pulled flat by several hands.
The saturated pressure package was yanked from his side and the pain of it made him blind, his scream caught in stolen heaving breaths.
“What happened?” Lenore’s knees jabbed into his hip where she knelt in the truck bed. Her pixie features strained. “Is this a bite?”
Nausea filled Alexander’s throat. Serrated teeth clamped into him, tearing a chunk of flesh away in a flash of scorching shock and pain. He struggled to get up, get away from all the bodies pressed around him, all the hands holding him down, locked on his arms and shoulders and legs, held fast and vulnerable for the monster to get him.
“Sift got to him.” The slim hands pressing onto his shoulders flexed. “We couldn’t…it was so fast.”
Lenore’s head snapped up, dragging the strands of her hair along his saturated shirt. The ends of her pale hair lifted, tipped in shiny wet red. “But you killed it. Right? You killed it.”
The vibration of collected fear flowed between the group of fighters surrounding him. Being crunched on by a monster carried its own particular horror, one you wouldn’t think could be topped, but when a Sift sank its teeth in you, the nasty beast captured your memories.
“Tell me you didn’t let it get away.”
“It escaped through a hole it tore out of the air,” Dez snarled it fast and hard, the staccato bark of a fired rifle. “Col jumped in after it.”
Lenore jerked back. The press of her knees lifted, preparing to flee. Alexander floated after her, trying to follow all the movement, keep his focus.
The weight on Alexander’s shoulders lifted as Bekah reached across him and latched onto Lenore’s wrists, keeping her in place.
“There’s nothing you can do for Col. He’s out of our reach. But Alexander needs you now.”
The women stared at each other, faces close above Alexander, swaying in and out of his waning focus. It was hard to latch onto anything. He just wanted to get away.
“Can you heal him?” Bekah gritted out and Lenore recoiled like someone waking from a nightmare.
       “I don’t…” She flinched again. “Yes. I won’t let him die.” Lips set, Lenore’s hands moved over the cavity that was his wound and Alexander bucked. All the hands holding him pressed down harder.

                                                     nook                  kindle                 itunes


Also out now and on sale through the month of November, the first 4 Highland Sorcery novels all together for the price of one. See where the adventure begins...


nook                          kindle

Making of a Book Cover: Highland Sorcery Christmas

I really enjoy playing around with Photoshop. I'm not an artist by any means and I seriously just know enough to cause myself trouble, but I think I have a half-way decent eye at finding the stock photos that will work. I mostly go for the model's expression on whether they capture the feeling I hope my book evokes.

This Christmas book is a first for me as it has no cover model. I wanted something that said "Christmas" with just a glance, but also "monsters" because for the life of me I cannot write a fluffy happy everything's harmonious and joyful story to save my life. I wanted a book where all the main characters from the first four Highland Sorcery novels got together to celebrate just being family all in one place...and as it happens, one time too, since they have all been traveling back and forth through time.

Well, I got them all together. *Clearing throat and ducking*. But it wasn't easy and they had one heck of a fight on their hands to get there. It basically goes: Toren and Charity's son is in danger (in two time lines), they kill the monsters, so yeah, let's have Christmas now.

Best freakin plot ever, right? Brings all sorts of Holiday cheer. In case you're wondering, that squishy sound is my eyes rolling.

Back to the cover:

I started out searching for something Christmasy: Loved this picture because the ornaments have a kind of Scottish pattern on them. (Note: I play around with the pictures and make mock-ups before buying them so this still has a watermark. My favorite place to purchase stock photos is Dreamstime.com.



Then I went searching for the perfect monster breaking into their happy little Christmas. The monsters actually come through rifts in time so this one breaking through the wall seemed perfect.
 I also found this broken ornament that symbolized a disrupted Christmas nicely. Well, I think so at any rate.
Next I layered the three photos on top of each other to see if they would work together. Using the eraser tool, I erased the bits I didn't want like the glob of red ornaments and the gray wall the monster was coming out of. I also used the clone tool to blacken over the top of the monsters snout and teeth so I would just have a clawed hand, since my monsters' faces don't look like that at all.

With a little placement, here's the mock-up I came up with at first. (Again, notice the watermarks since I haven't purchased all the pictures yet since I may not use them. That's what I like about Dreamstime. They allow you to play around with their images first.)

As much as I like how this turned out, it also seems a little busy, especially when you take into consideration that it will mostly be viewed as a much smaller thumbnail on most of the distributor sites.
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So I played around some more, got rid of the Scottish ornaments (glad I didn't buy it yet--maybe next Christmas?) and moved and angled the monster's hand a little bit. Then I went back to Dreamstime and purchased the two pictures so I can legally and honestly use them, and started over again, darkened the font color, and here's the final version.

It will be officially released on November 2nd, because when else would a Christmas with monsters be released except on Dia de los Muerte I ask you?

But it is also listed for preordering at Smashwords and hopefully soon at Barnes and Noble as well for the whopping price of $1.99. 


Also out now is the boxed set of the first four books in the Highland Sorcery novels. Four books for the price of two. 

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Making of Highland Moon Sifter Cover

This one took a lot of tweaking. I started out with this stock photo from Dreamstime. Well, minus the modesty slash. I saw it months and months ago while I was looking for another cover and just fell in love with this model's hair and facial expression. I bought it right then. In fact, this is the only cover model that I've ever written a character to match. Usually I just see the characters in my mind, but Bekah I wrote seeing this picture. This is her. That's a first for me.


However, even though Bekah is naked quite a bit throughout the book since time traveling doesn't allow anything material, like clothes or weapons, to go through, half-nekked people on covers gives a different impression for what's inside the book. I don't want to be misleading, so the search for a cover up ensued. That was really hard to find something that fit the way her body is twisted kind of sideways.
Finally I settled on this poncho.  And it kind of fit on her. It was fun getting her arm in front of it.

I also had to get rid of the hot red jalapeno key chain she was holding since, like I said, nothing material can travel through time rifts, including red key chains. That would have come in useful in the 13th Century though now that I think about it. Too bad.
  
Okay so next came the background. This brown one is kind of bleh, plus as this is the last book of the series and the characters are back in 13th Century Scotland where the first book began, I wanted to have the same purplish cloudy look to it that Highland Sorcerer has. Then I thought it'd be cool to throw in the moon since Shaw gets his magical power from moonlight. 
Okay, well it made sense to me and it took less than five minutes to find the perfect moon shot.
Added the purple saturation.

Next I placed Bekah onto the Moon background.
Added the Title and stuff... And softened the edge of the poncho on her shoulders and 
Here we have it... 

And the Series is complete!



New Release: Highland Shapeshifter

For the Kindle       For the Nook        Paperback 

Flung into the 21st Century, Highland shapeshifter Col Limont needs to find the healer Charity Greves in order to get back home and save his family.

However, the healer’s sister, Lenore, is determined to do everything she can to keep Col from dragging her sister back to 13th Century Scotland into his family’s supernatural war. But when monsters and a strange yuppie trio also try to stop him, Lenore has to reconsider her options.

But by helping Col, she’ll lose her sister.



***


Resolved, she edged forward and dragged the heavy tarp off the creature underneath.
And stared.
It was just a man.
He sat against the sewage pipe, arms pulled behind him, either tied or handcuffed. His head hung forward, dark hair obscuring his face. His jeans were ripped and loose, as was his dirty T-shirt, splattered with blood and mud. Cuts and abrasions speckled his arms and she’d guess there were more under his shirt and on his face. Anger at his harsh mistreatment rose up in her.
“You’re into trafficking humans now?”
“Ha!” Starch flung his large hands up. “Hardly human. Shapeshifter. And a powerful one at that. Took three ghouls and a troll to subdue him and that was after they tranqed him.”
“Is he still drugged?” She crouched down beside the guy, squeezing her hands into fists to hide the anger. This wasn’t right. “What’d you give him?”
She touched his arm and he flinched. Her heart went out to him. He looked young and innocent. A year or so younger than her, maybe eighteen or nineteen. Too young to be caught up in whatever mess this was. Her instinct was to soothe, but she couldn’t show any softness here. Grabbing his chin, she lifted his head.
And the world narrowed down to a pair of mossy green eyes.
Energy shot into her, buzzing strangely across her skin in a lightning rapid pulse. An instant familiarity burned through her, as if she knew him, though she was certain she’d never seen him before, but there was something. Staring into his battered face, a connection rippled between them, tangent and swift and then was gone as quickly as it came.
Stranger still, she wanted that connection back. 


Cover Reveal in the making

I love seeing the transformation a cover goes through. And I'm so pleased with how this latest one turned out for Highland Shapeshifter.

Here's the original stock photo: What caught my eye was not only the movement of the shot, but the worried expression on the model's face. So far I've loved all the girls on the Highland covers for their melancholy looks. On each of them, I'm drawn in, wondering what they could be thinking about.

Yeah, yeah, in reality, they are probably hoping the photographer will hurry up and take the shot, but...


Then it got tweaked a bit. Even though it will be cropped for the ebook cover, a version this size will be untouched for when we start working on the paperback size. It will be a little tricky since she is smack in the middle so the back cover area will have to be expanded, but that's for later.

This one below has been tweaked a bit, removing her reflection behind her. Later on the weird shadow on her leg will be removed and the brightness in the top left corner will be toned way down.


Next, it gets cropped. That was a little harder to decide which way to go because there is so much movement. The general photography rule (as my Sweetheart photographer husband is apt to point out) is for the subject's face to always look inward on the largest "rule of thirds" space. However, I liked the movement of her hair and hand lifting outward. It just felt more active, like she was on the run (which she is throughout most of the book) so I broke the rule and had it cropped so her face is closer to the edge, like she's looking off the page.

Below, notice the shadow from her dress on her leg is gone. She also has some weird nipplish going on with how she's leaning down, and since I write on the Sweeter side, I don't really want that, but some strategic letter placement with the title should take care of that. The things you have to look out for, right?

Here's the final copy. The light at the top corner is toned down a bit to give more focus on the letters. I really wanted a green on green, but the background was so busy, it was just hard to read and not showing up, so I went with kind of a white and green combination, which fits with the title lettering of the first book in the series with lighter and darker shades so it keeps a good continuity between books. I love how it turned out and can't wait for this book to come out this month. So what do you think of it?