HOW IS YOUR COVER LIKE A BIKINI?

Your eBook cover is like a Bikini ...

Covering the bare essentials while teasing with promises of mysteries to be unveiled.

A compelling cover design that captures your story and genre while still standing out and being special is a must!

The cover and blurb power combo will get readers to pick you your book.

Your writing should get them to see it through to the end.

The cover has to still look good and be readable in thumbnail size since people will be browsing on their phones, their e-readers, online etc.

Cover art is one of the most effective marketing tools an author can use.

You brand yourself with that image and it will be seen over and over again in conjunction with whatever promotion you do for your work.

Buyers WILL judge your book by its cover - because they have to!

Apart from the sales copy on your web page, the cover of your ebook is the only thing they've got to go on when deciding whether or not to buy.

1: The Title
Your ebook title needs to be short and punchy.

Thumbnails are cruel to long titles. I, of course, have to be different!

But you, my friends, have to write tight!

2: Choice of fonts
Ebook covers are small so you need to use fonts that are compact and easy to read.

3: The Illustration
An ebook cover that's just plain text can be pretty boring.

An image will liven up your design.

Whether you use a photo or some other graphic, the image you use needs to key into the theme of your ebook and help to get your message across.


4: Color
Color is another useful tool in the design of your ebook cover. Colors have their own energies - red is forceful, blue is conservative, green is calming, yellow is exciting, and so on.

Pick one main color that ties in with the theme of your ebook and use other colors sparingly. Like fonts, using too many can obscure your message.

5: Image quality
Your cover image must be razor sharp and crystal clear to sell your ebook! Too many of the ebook images you see on the Internet are fuzzy and flat.

One way to get good image quality is to design at a larger scale that the final image size. it's easier to work on and reducing the design to the required size will enhance its clarity.

People WILL judge your ebook by its cover so design it well. Remember, the better the cover, the bigger the sales!

So?

What do you think of Leonora Roy's new cover for ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM?

http://www.amazon.com/ADRIFT-THE-TIME-STREAM-ebook/dp/B004XZUY4U

A GHOST ADRIFT

Come. Sit with me at McCord's table. He will arrive eventually.

Who am I? Once that question would have disturbed me.

But since my friendship with McCord, I understand that the artist should have a different ambition than to be remembered.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history,

leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books.

I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago,

and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them.

It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too,

shall be them both: He made the books and he died.

Who am I?

I am William Faulkner,

and much of my perceptions were shaped here in McCord's legendary jazz club, Meilori's.

Meilori’s :

the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in the center of the French Quarter’s circumference

like a single cloud in its ring of horizon,

laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim of horizon; musing, brooding, symbolic and imponderable,

tall as clouds, solid as rock, dominating all: protector of the weak, judge and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and hopes of the helpless.

Here, McCord and I would talk about everything :

How words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless,

and how terribly living goes along the earth, clinging to it,

so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other.

That sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they have forgotten the words.

The world in minuscule would be scoured by our words. The shadows themselves seemed to gather around our table to listen to us where glass and bottle clinked.

The three potted palms around us hissed like dry sand in the dark moving air.

I can hear him still :

“All life asks is to look at it and listen to it and understand it if you can. Only the understanding it isn’t really important.

The important thing is to believe in life even if you don’t understand it.”

I can hear him laugh.

“Not that you’ll ever get it quite right. But that’s all right. Because tomorrow

Life is going to be something different, something more and new to watch and listen to and try to understand …

and even if you can’t understand, believe.”

Believe.

Know.

I thought I knew what I believed in about life. Until that night when McCord asked me to his table to talk of a mysterious 75th year anniversary.

He talked of impossible things in such a way that I believed. He held his tale fixed yet vibrant so that seventy-five years later, when I, a stranger looked at it, it moved again since truth is living.

If you would be caught up in his narrative as I was caught up, read ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

If you would gaze upon the timeless beauty of Meilori, alas, you cannot. But one mortal woman comes close ...

WHEN DEATH COMES FOR LUNCH_FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

“I haven't trusted polls since I read

that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour.

I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.”

- Erma Bombeck.

“The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.”

- Samuel McCord

On this day in 1522 Captain Sebastian del Cano returned to Spain, completing Magellan's first circumnavigation of the earth.

Of the five ships and approximately 270 men who set out, only one ship and seventeen men returned.

Captain Sebastian del Cano is the captain of the DEMETER in 1853 when McCord boards her in my historical fantasy, ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

Denise and Francine has set us the prompt, LUNCH DATE, for the FRIDAY ROMANTIC CHALLENGE.

And so I give you the deck-side lunch on the day of the BALL OF LOVE AND MADNESS whose almost-ending you read in last week's entry. This entry is 400 words exactly :



The only good thing about lunch was the orange juice --

and the way Meilori’s sorcery let it stay untainted in my mouth for as long as I wanted. Missy was taking a nap under the watchful eye of her mother.

Ralph Waldo Emerson couldn’t have made the day better by following Missy’s example. He showed up at the table. But the presence of Margaret Fuller at his side made up for his dour addition to the company.

Daniel Webster sat across from me, wearing his gloom like a shroud. Horace Greeley sat next to him, fidgeting worse than if ants had decided to take up residence in his pants.

Lady Lovelace, Ada Byron, looking like a happy cat with a mouthful of canary, told the new additions to our company what was suspected of the coming evening.

Horace looked even more fit to itch himself to shreds. Ada warned everyone that Maija might have thrown in with Nyx. And when Lady Inari showed up, arm in arm with Maija, the atmosphere of the table felt like a storm about to boil over.

Meilori seemed too reserved. She barely spoke to either sister.

I leaned in towards her and whispered, “What’s going on between you two?”

Lady Inari, showing her ears were as sharp as her teeth, smiled, “You are, Captain. I told her she had to choose between us this morning. She chose you.”

“I’m not your rival, Inari.”

“So you foolishly believe.”

Maija smiled. It was an insane thing, devoid of warmth or anything resembling reason. It gave me shivers.

“The good captain is full of so many deceiving illusions.”

To everyone’s horror, Maija plucked a wiggling worm from her noodles and popped it into her mouth, lustily chewing then swallowing. “Like free will, for example.”

Ada looked troubled. “Sea Sprite, you are only as free as you assume your will to be.”

Maija snorted, “You know the cliche about assume, do you not? I choose not to be an ass.”

Meilori reached over, gently squeezing my hand. “The heart asks of life more than it can give. But that does not stop me from asking.”

I winked at her. “Smart. If you don’t ask, how would you ever get?”

And as Inari watched with feral eyes, Meilori kissed me soft and long. And I was wrong earlier. The orange juice wasn’t the only good thing about lunch.
***

HEART STOPPER

Love.

What is its color? How much space does it take up in our heart?

Doesn't your heart feel near to bursting when you first spot the one you love?

And when it dies, the Grand Canyon seems small compared to the hollowness in that same heart.

Francine and Denise have given us the prompt, HEART-STOPPER, to use this Friday :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My entry is from ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

Many have emailed me asking what could possibly destroy such a one as Samuel McCord as Maija threatened last week.

Before she fell in love with Samuel, Meilori had made a pretense of assisting DayStar for her own purposes. But she learns even the pretense carries a steep price.

DayStar has taken possession of her body after the BALL OF DEATH & MADNESS, and he sends her against her beloved.

Samuel is seemingly without a single weapon. We join the festivities at that point :

DayStar studied me like a steak he was about to eat.

“You are weaponless.”

I pulled King Solomon’s knife from its neck sheath. “Not completely.”

He smiled. “Ah, so you want the dying to be up-close and personal, do you?”

His eyes grew dreamy. “Let us slow the pace to this last dance, shall we?”

Meilori spoke low. “You must kill me, beloved, for if you should die by my hand, I would kill myself anyway.”

I locked my eyes on hers.

“This is not going to work out like he plans --- beloved.”

DayStar murmured, “You simply have no idea.”

“Keep telling you. I usually don’t.”

He smiled, and Meilori spun elegantly, holding her bone sword up high with both hands.

And it began.

Eyes.

I felt them on me.

Meilori’s : weeping with an aching love, a hollowing sadness, and utter terror.

Fallen’s : bruised, fearful, yet whispering an unreasoning hope.

Renfield’s : dark, filled with remorse and regret.

Maija’s : blue pools of icy regard in whose depths swam uncertainty and longing.

Meilori wheeled gracefully around me as if to some melody of death only she could hear. Me?

It seemed as if I could hear the trumpets of a bull fight as it reached its bloody climax. I was under no illusions who was the bull in this fight.

I was bone weary, moving with all the skill and stealth of a wounded moose. Meilori was as the wind given life, light, ethereal, and full of death.

And DayStar could move her with even more speed than I could muster.

My gloved hand clutched Solomon’s blade tighter, my fingers feeling numb and sweaty.

Meilori danced about me, meeting my each body shift easily, gracefully.

Her jade eyes seemed to swallow me. Her voice was a wet husk.

“I love you, my Samuel.”

“And I you.”

Fallen whimpered as the tears bled from her hollow eyes. Renfield turned his eyes away.

Maija looked first at me, then at her sister, her blue eyes slowly turning to DayStar with hate. DayStar began to smile wider.

The trumpets only I could hear started to crescendo. The dance was nearly done.

Meilori’s lips worked wordlessly as she fought the possession of her body. Black tears seeped from the corners of her eyes.

“We will meet again where the shadows never fall.”

DayStar laughed. Meilori's jaw firmed. My right hand suddenly became stone.

With uncomprehending eyes, I saw Solomon’s blade in it fly impossibly fast straight into Meilori’s heart. DayStar cursed.

Fallen sucked in a breath. Meilori fell into my arms that were once again mine.

No!

She had taken control of my body as DayStar had taken control of hers. No! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. No!

She lay limp in my arms. Her eyes rolling up, she tried to speak but couldn’t.

Only a wet gurgle came out. But still I heard her voice murmur within my mind. One word.

One last word.

‘Beloved.’

I heard an animal wail. Wail as if its guts had been scooped out. Then it came to me. No animal was wailing in pain.

It was me.

Me.

And DayStar laughed.
***
Not part of my entry, but this poem by Stephen Crane begins the next chapter. I add it for Andy and my other friends who enjoy poetry.

“Places among the stars,

Soft gardens near the sun,

Shed no beams upon my weak heart,

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Not your golden days

Nor your silver nights

Can call me to you.

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Here I stay and wait.”

***

FRIDAY'S Romantic Challenge_THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

It is midnight. The moon's face of shadows coyly hides most of it from me.

As the ghost chimes from the distant clock tower toll, she masks even that small glimpse with the SMOOTH SAILING of storm clouds.

SMOOTH SAILING. The prompt from today's romantic challenge from Denise and Francine :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My entry :

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM (from ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM) --

Samuel McCord is alone. Meilori is off selecting her gown for the night's festivities, the Ball of Love and Madness. It is to celebrate the DEMETER entering the legendary Devil's Triangle.

Samuel is admiring the molten, sleepy head of the dawn peeking up over the horizon. Dr. Stewart, the ship's doctor, approaches him.


Footsteps to my left. I turned. Dr. Stewart. He looked gutted.

“Maija,” he said and explained everything.

“What about her?”

“I - I thought we had become --”

“Maija is like the sea. You never know all about her.”

“I was an old fool.”

“Lot of that going around.”

“Lady Meilori is her sister. I thought you would have some idea of how -- I mean -- just what I might have done to offend Maija.”

“How do you know you offended her?”

“She told me not to come to tonight’s Ball.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“She actually does care for you, doctor.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Things are set to get awfully ugly tonight at that Ball.”

“Maija knows this?”

“She’s part of it, doctor.”

He paled. “I knew she had a dark past.”

“Her present’s rather black, too.”

He looked anguished off into the horizon. “I sensed that. Good Lord, how can I be attracted to such a woman?”

“People are never one thing, doctor. There are always several faces behind the mask they show you.”

I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “One of those faces cares, truly cares, for you. Just be glad it exists -- and that whatever you two share is real.”

He swallowed hard. “But if something criminal is being planned for that Ball, I should be there.”

I shook my head. “No. Let Maija have the knowledge that she saved you, and that in your heart she is still someone worthy of being loved.”

He smiled as if that heart were breaking. “You are not the typical policeman. You are a romantic.”

I put my forefinger to my lips. “Shhh. You’ll ruin my reputation.”

He straightened as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll stand in for you.”

He nodded and walked away. Soft footsteps behind me. I turned. Maija. She looked at me intensely for long moments.

“Thank you.”

“De nada.”

“This changes nothing between us. You will still be destroyed by the end of this evening, and I will play my part in it. Play it most wholeheartedly.”

“I would expect nothing less from a future empress.”

She looked hot into my eyes. “Fool! You will hold back against me for my silly attachment to the good-hearted doctor, will you not?”

“I imagine so.”

“It will be your undoing.”

“Probably will.”

“Then why do it?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know any other way to be.”

She studied me. “I shall feel the emptier tonight after what must be done is accomplished. Yours is a face I shall miss, strong without the cruelty of toughness, kind without the bruise of weakness. When I have rid the world of that face, I shall have deservedly earned the hatred of my sister -- and of myself.”

“Then don’t do it.”

She bled a smile. “I know of no other way to be.”
***
Below is the evocative STANDING THE STORM by the piano genius of William Joseph. Endure the darkness at the beginning, and you will reap the light and beauty of the tune -- much like what happens when you find the courage to "stand the storm." Reading my post to the music adds to the enjoyment I think.
For a fascinating interview with

classical pianist and composer Fiona Hawkins :
http://fabulositynouveau.blogspot.com/2011/08/interview-with-australian-pianist-fiona.html
***

LOVE NEVER WALKS ALONE_Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_VOICES

It is Friday once again, and with its arrival comes the Romantic Challenge of Francine and Denise_VOICES.

Blog address : http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html

My 395 word entry is LOVE NEVER WALKS ALONE from my historical fantasy, ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

It is 1853 aboard the cursed transatlantic steamer, DEMETER. To save his love, Meilori, and the LAST FAE, Fallen (yes, she is in this novel as well), Samuel McCord has walked through the Door of Nasah (‘testing’ in ancient Hebrew) into utter darkness :



The light of love slipped through the black shutters of this strange realm. It was warm and emerald. The light I saw in the eyes of Meilori. My torch that I would carry in this darkness.

I kept walking.

Meilori’s eyes seemed to waver. I remembered her anger, her warnings, her despair. I clung to our bond, our love bruised but enduring, curling about my spirit like perfumed smoke rising from the embers of our hearts. I would endure. I had to endure. For her.

Laughter. Cold. Brittle. Knife sharp.

DayStar.

I slowed but kept moving ahead. I shivered. Not from the cold, but from a sudden growing warmth within me.

Meilori. Her velvet words spoke inside my mind.

‘Beloved, wherever you are, know this -- you are a great man.’

I started to protest but her soft words stopped me.

‘Hush, I do not have long before DayStar senses I am talking to you. You are Samuel Durand McCord, beloved, and you are a great man.’

I could have sworn I felt the lingering caress of tender fingers on my cheek.

‘You turned your back on war to save innocents. You fought cruel laws, usually to no avail. You have written no symphony save that of your deeds. You have written no poems outside words of comfort to those in pain.’

This time I did feel her invisible lips on mine.

‘Yet you are greater than any general, any composer, or any poet I have ever known.

You are great because you are kind when you could have so easily learned to be cruel. You are great because you love when so little has been shown you. You are great because you are humble when you have the power to be a tyrant.’

I felt my nose tweaked.

‘And finally you are great, not because you never fail, but because you never quit. Now, do not make me a liar!’

And suddenly the blackness was colder because my sense of her was gone. Snatched away like life by a pistol shot. DayStar must have sensed her talking to me.

I burned to go back to her. I knew better. With life in general, and with DayStar in particular, there was no going back. No, I had to bull this one through to the end. Through to my end if everyone’s warnings were right.

***
What I think of as the love theme for Samuel and Meilori :

***

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM

Come. Sit with me at McCord's table. He will arrive eventually.

Who am I? Once that question would have disturbed me.

But since my friendship with McCord, I understand that the artist should have a different ambition than to be remembered.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history,

leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books.

I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago,

and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them.

It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too,

shall be them both: He made the books and he died.

Who am I?

I am William Faulkner,

and much of my perceptions were shaped here in McCord's legendary jazz club, Meilori's.

Meilori’s :

the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in the center of the French Quarter’s circumference

like a single cloud in its ring of horizon,

laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim of horizon; musing, brooding, symbolic and imponderable,

tall as clouds, solid as rock, dominating all: protector of the weak, judge and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and hopes of the helpless.

Here, McCord and I would talk about everything :

How words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless,

and how terribly living goes along the earth, clinging to it,

so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other.

That sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they have forgotten the words.

The world in minuscule would be scoured by our words. The shadows themselves seemed to gather around our table to listen to us where glass and bottle clinked.

The three potted palms around us hissed like dry sand in the dark moving air.

I can hear him still :

“All life asks is to look at it and listen to it and understand it if you can. Only the understanding it isn’t really important.

The important thing is to believe in life even if you don’t understand it.”

I can hear him laugh.

“Not that you’ll ever get it quite right. But that’s all right. Because tomorrow

Life is going to be something different, something more and new to watch and listen to and try to understand …

and even if you can’t understand, believe.”

Believe.

Know.

I thought I knew what I believed in about life. Until that night when McCord asked me to his table to talk of a mysterious 75th year anniversary.

He talked of impossible things in such a way that I believed. He held his tale fixed yet vibrant so that seventy-five years later, when I, a stranger looked at it, it moved again since truth is living.

If you would be caught up in his narrative as I was caught up, read ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

If you would gaze upon the timeless beauty of Meilori, alas, you cannot. But one mortal woman comes close ...

A KNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS

A KNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS by Victor Vasnetsov has long been a favorite painting of mine.

It speaks to me now.

This morning I queried an agent for my Urban Fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

Thirty minutes, yes that's right, thirty minutes later,

she said she would have to pass as she has recently SOLD an Urban Fantasy SERIES set in post Katrina New Orleans.


A colorful metaphor came to mind and a dense fogbank of depression rolled across my chest.

Someone else was going to publish a New Orleans Urban Fantasy set after Katrina before me --

if ever I would be picked by an agent and then a publisher.

But I told myself that four agents had asked me to send them my novel : two asked for partials and two for complete manuscripts. That said something positive, didn't it?

I sat in front of my computer brooding when Vasnetsov's painting appeared in my mind's eye.

I was at the crossroads. Did I choose the path of my fears? Or did I choose the path of my beliefs?

Following my fears would lead me nowhere I wanted to go. Choosing to believe in myself had seen me out of a burning home, dragging my 80 pound unconscious Elk hound across a blazing floor,

my own face and hands badly burned.

In fact, believing in myself had led me through so many dark valleys, I couldn't picture them all.

This unknown writer might have lived through Katrina on the streets of New Orleans as I had. But he/she didn't have my voice, my perceptions, and my take on human nature.

It takes more than details to paint a moving picture of a locale. I saw the ragged edge of New Orleans during Katrina through my own filter of meaning and worldview.

Then the soft voice of my protagonist, Samuel McCord, seemed to whisper a reminder that the man who cleared leather first in a gunfight wasn't always the one to hit his target and live.

Besides, the adventures of my undead Texas Ranger, cursed with the blood of Death in his veins, aren't limited to just New Orleans of 2005. I have finished two earlier novels already --

You can buy them on Amazon and read them on your computer or your Kindle. I have many more in various stages of completion:

RITES OF PASSAGE -

My Kindle historical fantasy details the haunted voyage of the DEMETER in 1853 from New Orleans, its destination Paris, a city it never reaches.

A fantasy TITANIC, it details how McCord's blood mingles with the blood of the angel of death and his first meeting with the great love of his life, the immortal Meilori Shinseen, and with DayStar, the being fated to be his life-long enemy.

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM -

the sequel to RITES where the DEMETER finds itself becalmed in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, where every door to the ship leads to a different time, a different place. And McCord must learn how to tap into the power of his altered blood to bend the fabric of time to save those he can. This dark historical fantasy you can also buy from Amazon.

IN A WORLD OF SHADOWS -

describes the prison breakout of Oscar Wilde from Reading Goal and the literal Hell which ensues.

Of course it is McCord who does the deed, aided by his life-long friend Samuel Langhorn Clemens {Mark Twain}, the two having met Wilde during his American tour of the West in 1882.

And the adventures that follow Wilde's rescue give birth to Twain's famous saying : "No good deed goes unpunished." I have completed the synopsis and first three chapters of this fantasy.

HITLER's HERO -

set in 1929 Venice, it details the adventures of a reluctant McCord, Father Renfield, and Meilori attempting to derail a plot by Heinrich Himmler to switch souls with the Fuhrer based on a strange verse handwritten by Wagner himself on the composer's original notes for THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. I have completed the synopsis and first chapter of this fantasy.

FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE -

I have completed this Urban Fantasy,

detailing McCord's struggle with politicians, revenant empires, and his lifelong enemy, DayStar, closing in for a final revenge on the days following Hurricane Katrina.

CREOLE KNIGHTS ELEGY -

NOCTURNE's sequel that details the encroaching war between the American and European revenant empires

as McCord deals with a New Orleans struggling to survive the aftermath of Katrina and DayStar setting into motion his grand scheme to destroy the species of Man.

McCord must rescue the Angel of Death herself from the clutches of his lifelong enemy, DayStar, in the realm some call Hell. This urban fantasy is already completed.

THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH -

is a Young Adult fantasy told through the eyes of ten year old abandoned Viktor Standish as he is befriended by McCord and the Ranger's undead circle of friends in the days prior to Hurricane Katrina.

Picture it as AUNTIE MAME meets HARRY DRESDEN meets JANE EYRE. This YA urban fantasy is also completed.

VICTOR'S NOT JUST MY NAME -

The adventures of Victor Standish and his Victorian "ghoul friend" continues as Victor battles evolved raptors, Empress Theodora, the ghost of President John Adams, and the revenge of the Old Ones for his killing of one of their hybrid children. I am half-finished with this YA urban fantasy.

So, all in all, the scope of Captain Samuel McCord's adventures

spans over two hundred years, criss-crosses the major continents, and delves into the arcane reality of most of the world's diverse mythologies.

So I am going to follow the path of belief in myself. I truly feel that whatever publisher decides to pick up my series will more than get their money's worth.

And speaking of Cowboys clashing with genres :

W is for WOW!_Isn't WENDY TYLER RYAN something special?

Wasn't that a fantastic, mind-blowing book trailer?

Not because of my book. {Well, maybe a little. LOL.}

But mainly because of the artistry and extraordinarily hard work of :

WENDY TYLER RYAN!

Her Papyrus Productions --
http://lemontwistpress.com/BookTrailers.aspx

An off-shoot of her Lemon Twist Press -- is a fledgling Book Trailer cyber business.

But her creations are the polished, fine craftsmanship of a seasoned professional.

Let's face it :

Book Trailers can sweep up the on-lookers into the world of your novel.

A GREAT book trailer can have the viewer saying out loud, "I WANT that book!"

Such a dynamic, riveting book trailer as you've just watched is the result of intensive, time-consuming work.

Long days are put into such a creation.

Can you imagine laboring ten hours days that grow into a week's worth of finding just the right images & music, paying license fees for them, and then crafting them together dramatically into a hypnotic whole?

That is what Wendy Tyler Ryan did for me.

That is what she can do for you.

Check out her web site --
http://lemontwistpress.com/default.aspx

V is for VOYAGE as in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM

{ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM is now available to buy!}

{The cover for ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM, part II of RITES OF PASSAGE,

is courtesy of the creative genius of the British award-winning artist, Andrew Simmons.}

Can you remember how you felt when you ended FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING?

I wanted to give those of you who finished RITES OF PASSAGE quick access to Book II. It should be out this Thursday.

Book II of RITES OF PASSAGE {ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM} :

Like a ghost through a wall, Captain Samuel McCord, Texas Ranger,

has slipped from one year to the next, leaving a bit of himself with each hunt until he feels as hollow as his childhood's illusions.

It is the year 1853,

and he has tracked the only lead in a gruesome murder to the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER.

A young girl he raised from a baby has been murdered on the docks of Galveston, her face removed.

She was last seen in the company of someone only known as the Gray Man.

Now, McCord is on the hunt for this mysterious man aboard the steamer.

But hunter becomes hunted. McCord discovers that fully a fourth of the steamer's passengers are supernatural predators :

revenants ( the truth behind the myth of vampires),

Kali's nymphs (flesh-eating insects),

Kali herself,

the Amal (living shadows who drain men of their life force),

Coyote (Native American trickster and chaos bringer),

the Gahe (soul-drinking demons of Apache myth).

As the DEMETER enters the Bermuda Triangle,

each person and entity McCords meets assures him that discovering the identity of the young girl's true murderer will destroy him.

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM is an epic historical fantasy, whose major players are --

Captain Samuel McCord :
His are haunted and haunting eyes.

He has seen too much and understood more than he wanted of it.

He appears in his late forties though his hair, turned moon-white by the trauma of seeing his parents and sister murdered,

makes him appear older to those who only glance at him. He is lean like the hunting wolf he is ...

hunting for the peace and love that always seems to elude him.

Lady Meilori Shinseen :

Born of stardust and the sea,
the alien from another dimension has lived longer than most nations.

She is on this voyage to end that long life, having lost all hope of love and peace ...

until she meets the haunted Texas Ranger that reminds her of the noble samurai she lost tragically centuries before.

There are disturbing depths of sad wisdom in her slanted jade eyes.

Depths in whose darkness swim the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both. They both call and warn at the same time.

Elu :

The Apache shaman who has been mentor and brother to McCord.

His mother is the dreaded Turquoise Woman, living projection of Earth's consciousness.

Becoming blood brothers to McCord cursed him to an existence in the Mirror World, a parallel dimension to ours.

The blood mingling also cursed McCord into becoming a drainer of the life force of others ...

if he touches them with the bare palm of his right hand. Hence, McCord always wears gloves.

The phrase "taking my gloves off" is only heard once by the outlaws who force McCord into saying them.

The Gray Man :

Many have been his names.
So many he has forgotten most of them. Dragon. Abbadon. DayStar. He goes now by Lord Hassatan.

Tall, eternally young, endlessly evil and cruel, possessed of a vast, complex intellect that makes the term "genius" pale by comparison.

A Hannibal Lector of supernatural beings.

He claims to be older than even the earth,

being the Darkness which existed when all was Void ...

until the arrival of Light and the Creation of all that is.

He wants his home back.

This voyage of the DEMETER is his way of either ending his tormented life or bringing an end to all life.

Only McCord, one lone cursed mortal, stands in his way of both goals.

The last voyage of the DEMETER is not a pleasure cruise.

It is not even the stocked pond that the undead aboard believe it to be.

It is the beginning of "The End of All Things."

Unless one cursed Texican can fight and win his own personal Alamo --

even though winning it will cost him all he holds dear.

Come aboard the doomed DEMETER

and sail with her into the depths of madness in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

{Of course, a review of this fantasy of mine will also garner you 5 entries in my Autographed Book Contest. So if you review all 3 books of mine, you will receive 15 entries in my contest. How cool is that?}
***

HAIKU BLOGFEST_PART II_ZOMBIE HAIKU_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

Haiku to you from me,

ghost of Samuel Clemens.

http://hatshepsutnovel.blogspot.com/2010/08/announcing-haiku-blogfest.html

For part II of this shingdig, I thought I'd give you four more of Roland's haiku's

which are written in the Word Lune style (the split is 3/5/3 words not syllables) :

Meilori quotes three haiku poems at different times when she believes Samuel dead in RITES OF PASSAGE :

1.)

"Black moon watches,
Questions bleed from my heart,
Stars keep silent."

{Ghost of Samuel Clemens here. I think the Word Lune style is plumb looney. The bejiggered thing would sound much better like this :

"Black Moon watches,
Questions bleed from my heart,
The stars have no answers."}

2.)

"Night seas murmur,
My arms are empty, cold,
You are gone."

{Yep, it's me again, ghost of Samuel Clemens. This Looney style is killing me. Wouldn't this sound better?

"The sea kisses the night,
My arms are empty,
You are gone."

{All right, I was never one for following the rules of anything. But being as I'm the beloved literary genius here, I declare my Zombie Haiku's to be better. (I call them Zombie Haiku's 'cause they've got more brass than brains.) So there!

But even I couldn't improve on Roland's last one.}

3.)

Whispers of wind
Sigh in the listening sky,
Love has died.

Here is one Samuel McCord writes to his love, Meilori Shinseen, in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM

(understand that being a Texas Ranger, poor Samuel writes terrible poetry and doesn't follow the rules any better than me -- but he is in love -- and well, you know how that goes.) :

4.)

"Your eyes drink mine,
The sea drifts by,
Both the same green."

***
Now to something truly horrendous : Zombie Haiku's. We ghosts get so bored, we'll read anything -- even comic books.

I found a great one published by Marvel Comics and written by Ryan Mecum :

A KNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS

A KNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS by Victor Vasnetsov has long been a favorite painting of mine.

It speaks to me now. This morning I queried an agent for my Urban Fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

Thirty minutes, yes that's right, thirty minutes later, she said she would have to pass as she has recently SOLD an Urban Fantasy SERIES set in post Katrina New Orleans.

A colorful metaphor came to mind and a dense fogbank of depression rolled across my chest.

Someone else was going to publish a New Orleans Urban Fantasy set after Katrina before me -- if ever I would be picked by an agent and then a publisher.

But I told myself that four agents had asked me to send them my novel : two asked for partials and two for complete manuscripts. That said something positive, didn't it?

I sat in front of my computer brooding when Vasnetsov's painting appeared in my mind's eye.

I was at the crossroads. Did I choose the path of my fears? Or did I choose the path of my beliefs?

Following my fears would lead me nowhere I wanted to go. Choosing to believe in myself had seen me out of a burning home, dragging my 80 pound unconscious Elk hound across a blazing floor, my own face and hands badly burned.

In fact, believing in myself had led me through so many dark valleys, I couldn't picture them all.

This unknown writer might have lived through Katrina on the streets of New Orleans as I had. But he/she didn't have my voice, my perceptions, and my take on human nature.

It takes more than details to paint a moving picture of a locale. I saw the ragged edge of New Orleans during Katrina through my own filter of meaning and worldview.

Then the soft voice of my protagonist, Samuel McCord, seemed to whisper a reminder that the man who cleared leather first in a gunfight wasn't always the one to hit his target and live.

Besides, the adventures of my undead Texas Ranger, cursed with the blood of Death in his veins, aren't limited to just New Orleans of 2005. I have finished two earlier novels already --

You can buy them on Amazon and read them on your computer or your Kindle. I have many more in various stages of completion:

RITES OF PASSAGE -

My Kindle historical fantasy details the haunted voyage of the DEMETER in 1853 from New Orleans, its destination Paris, a city it never reaches.

A fantasy TITANIC, it details how McCord's blood mingles with the blood of the angel of death and his first meeting with the great love of his life, the immortal Meilori Shinseen, and with DayStar, the being fated to be his life-long enemy.

ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM -

the sequel to RITES where the DEMETER finds itself becalmed in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, where every door to the ship leads to a different time, a different place. And McCord must learn how to tap into the power of his altered blood to bend the fabric of time to save those he can. This dark historical fantasy you can also buy from Amazon.

IN A WORLD OF SHADOWS -

describes the prison breakout of Oscar Wilde from Reading Goal and the literal Hell which ensues.

Of course it is McCord who does the deed, aided by his life-long friend Samuel Langhorn Clemens {Mark Twain}, the two having met Wilde during his American tour of the West in 1882.

And the adventures that follow Wilde's rescue give birth to Twain's famous saying : "No good deed goes unpunished." I have completed the synopsis and first three chapters of this fantasy.

HITLER's HERO -

set in 1929 Venice, it details the adventures of a reluctant McCord, Father Renfield, and Meilori attempting to derail a plot by Heinrich Himmler to switch souls with the Fuhrer based on a strange verse handwritten by Wagner himself on the composer's original notes for THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. I have completed the synopsis and first chapter of this fantasy.

FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE -

I have completed this Urban Fantasy, detailing McCord's struggle with politicians, revenant empires, and his lifelong enemy, DayStar, closing in for a final revenge on the days following Hurricane Katrina.

CREOLE KNIGHTS ELEGY -

NOCTURNE's sequel that details the encroaching war between the American and European revenant empires

as McCord deals with a New Orleans struggling to survive the aftermath of Katrina and DayStar setting into motion his grand scheme to destroy the species of Man.

McCord must rescue the Angel of Death herself from the clutches of his lifelong enemy, DayStar, in the realm some call Hell. This urban fantasy is already completed.

THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH -

is a Young Adult fantasy told through the eyes of ten year old abandoned Viktor Standish as he is befriended by McCord and the Ranger's undead circle of friends in the days prior to Hurricane Katrina.

Picture it as AUNTIE MAME meets HARRY DRESDEN meets JANE EYRE. This YA urban fantasy is also completed.

VICTOR'S NOT JUST MY NAME -

The adventures of Victor Standish and his Victorian "ghoul friend" continues as Victor battles evolved raptors, Empress Theodora, the ghost of President John Adams, and the revenge of the Old Ones for his killing of one of their hybrid children. I am half-finished with this YA urban fantasy.

So, all in all, the scope of Captain Samuel McCord's adventures

spans over two hundred years, criss-crosses the major continents, and delves into the arcane reality of most of the world's diverse mythologies.

So I am going to follow the path of belief in myself. I truly feel that whatever publisher decides to pick up my series will more than get their money's worth.

And speaking of Cowboys clashing with genres :