Spookapalooza!!!


The Romance Studio is celebrating the spooky season with their annual Spookapalooza! Giving away an Amazon gift ecard (electronic gift card only, value $100 minimum) to one lucky reader as well as lots of other prizes from the TRS prize vault and participating authors! I'll be over there having fun and donating some of my books! 


Authors will be posting about their books and other related topics 24/7 Oct 25 through the 31st on Halloween. My favorite holiday! 


Happy Halloween Y'all!!!


LDS Authors Giveaway Hop


Joining in this hop to bring to light some of the talented LDS writers out there. If you like any of their work, nominate them for a Whitney Award.

For this hop, I'll be giving away a copy of Latter-Day Daughters: Hannah's Treasure by Launi K. Anderson.



All I ask is that you either follow this blog or sign up for my newsletter. Or both. Just sayin...  And then leave a comment with an email address where I can contact you.

Be sure to follow the rest of the blogs on the hop for a chance to win more prizes and discover new authors.

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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A Short Live, A Huge Impact

Chase should be celebrating his 18th Birthday today, finishing his Senior year of High School, driving, kissing girls, thinking about college and his future.

Yet he left us 3 years ago, 24 days before his 15th Birthday. 3 years. It feels like 3 months.

I can't describe what it's like to have a terminally ill child. You've either been there and know the experience, or you haven't. There's no in-between. It's 24/7 of keeping up with treatments and medication, and driving to specialists, checking port feeds in the middle of the night, and worrying about what could go wrong whenever you step out of the house on your own for a few hours.

But there's also a closeness that's reached from spending so much time together with deep conversations that otherwise wouldn't come up. Some conversations about what's after life that no one should ever have to have with their child.  

For the record, I do believe in an after life. I believe in God, and I believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior. For me, that stuff isn't made up or just something nice to believe in that brings me comfort.

I imagine Chase in the spirit world, finally able to do the things his body wouldn't allow him, happy, at peace, not hurting, and having a wonderful time with his brother and uncles. Who needs a driver's license when you can soar at lightspeed?

So Happy Birthday Chase. Enjoy this day and know that even though we miss you so hard it hurts, your life is being Celebrated.

Love you.

Mom






What Magical Wielder are you?

Just for fun...