times of misery

 by Rain Trueax

 

September was a tough month for me with the disastrous fires in my home state. Some of my favorite Cascade Mountain areas to camp or hike were destroyed. People lost their lives. Small towns like Talent and Phoenix were burned almost to the ground. My daughter said half the children in those school districts had lost their homes. California has suffered the same devastation. It's hard to get your head around the misery,.

Then came October and I made a big mistake. Tuesday, we ordered a chicken enchilada dinner from a nearby Mexican restaurant. Delicious.I knew that for me there was some risk as I learned a few years ago that I am nightshade intolerant.  I mentioned it in the last blog I wrote for here. When the symptoms hit you, it's one or two days after the meal. You have just taken something toxic into your body-- in short poisoning yourself. It got me Thursday which led to physical weakness, terrible headaches, throwing up-- in short, misery, a day mostly in bed as nothing helps-- well, except your partner sometimes also lying in bed to keep you company. Yes, misery does love company.

In researching nightshade intolerance, we did learn it's genetic and comes most to those who live or migrated from certain parts of Europe (happens to fit my ancestry).

Having invited a bout of it myself, always hopefully it won't be so bad,  that basically meant another day or two, when the worst of the misery subsided, that I have little energy. I am hence going to use something I wrote in September for a group blog. The one plus I can say about such a miserable experience is first, it makes a person very sympathetic to people with longer lasting illnesses and second it makes one appreciate of feeling normal. It is something that it's easy to take for granted.

You might think what do you care about covers for books if you haven't written one yet, but you might someday decide to write a book of poetry, a memoir, the great American novel, book on nature, photography, painting, etc. The tips apply. The covers below will change for their title fonts (we bought some new ones to try), but my energy is depleted again. I'll  write more about them next Saturday when I will have been a lot smarter about what I eat.

For what happened in terms of positive, I do have one thing I can share regarding one of the workshops I attended virtually with RWA's August convention. It was on the subject of using Photoshop to help you sell books by Regina Wamba. She had a lot of information but one thing in particular inspired me to look at my covers although not yet my profile picture.

She said, as part of your brand, keep the colors consistent all the way through. So if you are using warm colors, yellows, reds, don't suddenly have a cover that is bright blue. Keep it so it is your brand. (I think that's the gist of that one point. She had others). Not sure I am going to do it with so many books to change, but I think it's a logical idea in the future.

Then, from another source I'd gotten another tip-- actually two. Don't have a title that confuses readers, a word they don't know. Uh oh.  That was Vislogus, a perfect title given when the book was about-- the power of the word. But also something people would only know what it meant through the blurb or book. If they don't have enough interest to look beyond the title-- lost potential reader. I changed that title to Capturing the Wolf, which also fits the book but just simpler. Will it work better? Who knows. At this point though, I have to go with what I do know and try to please myself and my editor.

 

The second tip was to be sure your covers let the readers know what they'll be getting with your story, I'd had my paranormal romances with the couple and the landscape behind them for where they lived. That did fit in a way as these books are about ordinary people born with supernatural powers. Where in the landscape was the magick? It led me to redo not just the Hemstreet witch books but the first two in the Mystic Shadows series Will adding a more mystical background help connect with readers better than those original covers had? Again, I don't know as I haven't yet put out a push for them.

After the five stories of the family, I have two novellas that I want to add to the series before I do much of a push. Plus I need to decide whether to pull this series from Kindle Unlimited. The time for change is open again toward the end of October. The books have found few borrowers (of course, I haven't advertised them much either) but maybe wide will be better. I have until a little later in October to decide on that.

Making a poster for the Mystic Shadows series, as well as redoing covers gave me something creative to do when I really was not feeling it for the words. The poster has the novella covers I also will use when my brain comes around to feeling I can write them. Also the first two in the series that are not directly connected to the characters in the next five. The connection is through mysticism and how we gradually learn more about what is actually possible.

I do though have one of them with the heroine's name. Another word readers won't be familiar with. I may have to reconsider that.

Getting the cover with colors that fit is still a work in progress as will be the decision whether to do that with my historicals. Ach! And that is added to the complications of the new Blogger, which definitely is not as easy to use as the original.

More about my books and me:

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B006UX64X8

https://raintrueax.blogspot.com/

http://rainydayromances.blogspot.com/?zx=89962bd99c32be05