I know I am biased, but doesn’t Marie look nice up there? There being the top 100 Free in the Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Dystopian Romance eBooks section of the ‘Zon. I am pleased to report that so far Marie has been downloaded in the following countries: USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, and Brazil.
Starting today, Marie’s Journey will be free until Wednesday, January 29th. Marie’s Journey is my latest release and in need of reviews, so I decided to use the free-days option KDP offers. At the moment, my first YA novel is sitting at:
If anything exciting happens, I’ll share with the blogosphere.
My husband came to my rescue and recreated for the omnibus cover the exact same look of the books in the Ginecean series. I merely played with the final product.
Roberto’s masterpiece in all its splendor:
My only contribution was to slightly change the effects on the two chosen images:
I think we have a winner.
Outside is foggy and grayer than usual. I’ve been waiting for a few sites to answer me back so I can plan my next book promotion, and so I had a few hours of idle time and started working on a possible cover for an omnibus. This is the first attempt.
I am still trying to scratch the surface of the behemoth that is Expression Design 4, but one day at a time I am getting closer to it. Today, inspired by one of the paintings I created with Artrage a few years ago, I invented a title, added several textures to match the mood of the title, then worked with 8 layers to manage text and image. A professional would have found an easier way to achieve the same result, without drowning under a sea of layers. Because of the typeface I used, this cover doesn’t work well when scaled to thumbnail size, but I like its overall feeling. The image conveys a sense of playfulness with just a hint of dark memories lurking under the title. At least, that is what I wished to achieve with this project. And now, I want to write this story.
In my attempt to create new covers for my stories, I have been hard at work and must confess I am having fun. Below, is an example of what I have done for the past three days. I have yet to master Expression Design and Gimp, but I feel I am making progress toward the right direction. I had a few images left over from earlier projects and I used them to create a series of mock book covers. Maybe I’ll write this story one day.
My cover artist and dear friend Alessandro Fiorini has started a new exciting career, and I know it is going to be hard to replace him. Therefore, in case I won’t find his replacement soon enough, in the last two months, I have tried to learn how to use Expression Design 4 and Gimp to create book covers. Not an easy task, but I have been busy working on it every day. As I wrote in a different post, I wasn’t happy with Elios’s cover. I didn’t like the model’s face and the overall palette. I worked on the cover Alessandro had created for me, using Painter to tinker with the image, but the result wasn’t of my satisfaction. At that point, I was ready to publish the book, but Alessandro was in the middle of his transition to the new job, so I couldn’t ask him to remake the cover and I uploaded the image anyway. Meanwhile, I started a new cover from scratch, using Gimp, Expression design 4, Paint.NET, and Painter. Yesterday, helped by my patient husband, I finally reached a level I could be happy with. And if only Amazon would upload the new covers, I would be happier still.
Those below are the old covers—which, much to my chagrin, at the moment are still displayed on the Amazon page. Among other changes, I had to decide on a different typeface because Trajan Pro, the one Alessandro originally used on Photoshop, didn’t look the same on Expression Design 4. Also, I worked with a different Etruscan alphabet for Gaia’s cover because I couldn’t find the one Alessandro used.
Marie’s Journey, the fourth title in The Ginecean Chronicles, and my first young adult story, is officially out. Although I announced it the day it was published, life and other accidents got in the way of proper celebration. Usually, the holidays remind us of our loved ones who don’t walk on Earth anymore, but during those festive days I also lost a dear friend. I wasn’t in the mood to give my latest title the spotlight it deserved, and I let it gather dust for almost two weeks. Meanwhile, and despite my lack of enthusiasm, one copy was sold in Germany, and one in the USA. Today, I was reminded that publishing a book is never a solitary effort, and the people involved in its process should be properly acknowledged. Therefore, I wish to thank my awesome team, because without them my painstakingly written words would have never become a published novel. So, here they are: Amy Eye, my editor; Cassie Kelley McCown, my proofreader; Alessandro Fiorini, my cover artist; and Roberto Ruggeri, my strongest supporter, knight in software armor, and formatter. Grazie mille.
Marie’s Journey, the fourth book in The Ginecean Chronicles, and my first young adult title, is out.
The core of this novel was written during Nanowrimo 2012, and since then it has changed title several times. The original idea was to depict what happened between the last two chapters in The Priest, but the character of Marie, a young fathered woman, demanded a different story. So, while I was writing this book, titles changed to reflect the overall atmosphere of the novel. The City of Men became Journey to the City of Men, and finally I surrendered to the evidence that I was never going to center Marie’s story around the City of Men’s wars, and I decided that the best title would be Marie’s Journey.
Or the ceaseless quest for that perfect image.
As it had already happened a few months ago when I published Prince at War, I hit the button to release Elios into the Amazon wild with a temporary cover. The image I wanted had the wrong measures and wouldn’t fit the required parameters.
The preliminary stock images I bought for the cover:
Temporary Cover:
Image I wanted in the first place:
Alessandro Fiorini, my cover artist and miracle worker sent me a mix of the two:
I decided I had bothered Alessandro enough already, opened Corel Painter and added the lapis lazuli accent to Elios’s eyes, plus a little bit of turquoise here and there on the sky.
The end…?
Monica La Porta 