Clover Autrey: WWII

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.

Next I enlarged and off-centered it and added words. There isn't much contrast in this cover with the white on white words, but I was going for a clean and sterile "lab" type look. Also since I was still writing the book when I found this picture I was able to base Kat's look on this model, so she is an exact look for the character.

Pretty simple and easy. Then I really started having fun. I thought it would be cool to have her eyes open on the back cover, a kind of awakening to her situation like what happens in the book.

So I bought another stock art from Dreamstime with the same cover model.

What I did next was overlay this picture on top of the other and then erase all of it except for one eye. With a bit of enlarging and tilting I got it overlaid over the closed eye and then did a little tweaking like clone-stamping her skin tone over the dark lashes beneath her closed eye and little touches like that.

I'm actually quite impressed with myself at this point.

Next I flipped the picture so it will be a mirror image when the book jacket is folded over and viola!!!

Available at Amazon

While visiting my sister in Tucson, we just had to go to the PIMA Air and Space Museum since all my guys are "plane guys".

Note to travelers: Don't hit Arizona in July. It's hot, really really hot. Even though the museum yard boasts more than 250 aircraft, we pretty much stayed around the ones in the 3 huge hangars where the fans were blowing. What? I'm not an idiot. Go ahead and walk around the acreage beneath the blazing Arizona sun in 110 degrees. I'll wait for you right here in the air conditioning.

It was fun to watch the way everyone wanted to take on the museum. Bekie and Pat strolled along with the guided tour, listening to the old aviator's every word.

Pat in his Happy Place

Kyle & Sam

Bekie

Tate and the Wright Flyer

The guide was too slow for the boys, so Kyle and Sam wandered around, climbing into the planes they could and pushing buttons, and then running ahead to the other hangers. Bekie seemed a little disappointed that the boys didn't want to listen slowly to the guides, until my guys pointed out to her some of the aircraft by name and capabilities. She just got a big dose of how this younger generation soaks up info they're interested in within nanoseconds like little computers, before zipping on to the next thing.

Tate wandered around the planes by himself, giving me the look as I lagged behind, trying to sneak his picture. Mr. Grumpy Poser was not tolerant so most my shots are of his back side or blurred as he caught me and streaked away. Rotten child. His focus was less on the planes and more on the technology.

During the first hanger tour, the boys and I were hungry and bored, waiting on the "tourists and the guide" so we schlepped into the little cafe and ordered fries. Whoa, they had good fries. We went through 3 of the 4 boxes before Pat and Bekie were finished with their tour.

F 100 or maybe F150

Then we went into the WWII Hangers. Now, these I really enjoyed, mainly because I'd just written a story centered around WWII and am planning on extending that into a series, so I took a lot of pictures. This seems as good as place to store them for research so bear with me for a second as I go photo crazy: