Monday, July 27, 2015

Cover Reveal: Veritas, Shadow of the Rose: Book Two...

Okay, this is it. I've finished book two and all that is left is to get it formatted and up for sale. Easy peasy!

This will currently be an e-book only format, available on Smashwords for $2.99. This is the second book in my Shadow of the Rose trilogy.

I'll be holding some contests, giving away some e-books, hopefully some swag, but that will be later on. In the meantime, as promised, here is the cover reveal:



TADA!



Now, book two will be available July 31, 2015. Again, it will only be available as an e-book for awhile.

I'll also be making a change to the Adversarius cover, simply because I found 3 images that work so well with each other and it only makes sense to have all the covers in the trilogy look similar.

At least, that's what my OCD is telling me.



All right! I hope you enjoyed my cover reveal. Have a great rest of your week!

Friday, July 24, 2015

Missing My Old Groove...

I have to say... I'm missing my old blogging groove. I think it kept me a little more focused and organized that I am right now.

I'm doing a lot these days. Working part-time, babysitting the grand-kidlet, finishing up book two and beginning a new book. I'm doing critiques, teaching myself how to do book covers, because I just do not have the cash to hire someone! Oh! And I am taking an online course for Medical Transcription.

But I miss the randomness that was my usual blog posts. Talking about everything, telling people what was going on. Holding blog hops, participating in the A-Z challenge, IWSG posts...

I could go on, but I might cry!

No, not really.

But I do miss you guys!

Blogging was more therapeutic than I care to admit. The flash fiction, the funnies. I miss the funnies. And I have so much fantasy art on my Pinterest page I should just start up with it again.

But I think the biggest reason I stopped, to be honest, was ... I got burned out. I didn't know what to post about anymore and you guys could only deal with so much stress and whining. You all have your own issues.

So maybe I will get back into this. I have more to say, I have one new book coming out the end of next week!

Whoa.

Gotta get that cover done...

But I also have another story I'm working on, then it's on to book three of my trilogy. And then, from there, who knows! I have so many ideas to choose from.

So, I suppose, keep an eye out next week for my cover reveal and then, book two!

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Cliche Fantasy Names...

I've been working on the glossary for my second book. I wanted to do a cover reveal this week, but discovered I hadn't purchased the rights to the image yet. Apparently, I was waiting. So now I have to wait some more and purchase said image tomorrow.

Then I can do a reveal.

Book two, "Veritas" will hopefully be ready to go by July 31st. In that time, I need to work on my glossary of names, pronunciations and a map.

I'm doubtful about the map. I have GIMP and have gone through one of the only good tutorials I could find, but my map still doesn't come out the way it should. So I don't have much faith in getting a map done in time. It may be something I add later on to a new page here on my blog.

What I do have plenty of, is hard-to-pronounce, cliche fantasy names.

I'm going to tell you right now. I'm PROUD of this fact, even though it garnered me some bad reviews.

I'm old-school. You all know that. I write what I want to read and for me, those names are challenging, fantastical and imaginative.

I don't like reading fantasy where the name of the character is Karen or Bob.




So how do you come up with those tongue-twister names? Well, there are random fantasy name generators out there. There are your Dungeons and Dragons manuals to peruse and garner ideas. But if you are creative and love the challenge of coming up with names, like me, wing it!

Some of the names of my cities and kingdoms came from generators, but if I didn't like the name, I changed it until I liked it. I have a city called Ouldris (Ool driss) and the sea located near it is called Au-Ouldris (Ow Ool driss). Granted, my pronunciation technique isn't the best, but you get the idea.

I have to say, a lot of my names did just pop into my head. There were times I felt like I was channeling Tolkien. Other names I came up with using Latin translators or even going to the Elven to Common website. I'm not allowed to use any of the Elven language created by Tolkien, but I could mix it with Latin (sometimes I didn't even use the Elven) and came up with my own. That is what I like about a lot of the names and titles. Using your imagination. Isn't that what writing is about?

I have lots of tips and tricks for coming up with names. Baby name books came in handy for characters, sometimes. I would switch around letters, add letters. People would often ask me how I came up with the name Kayta, back when Kayta was a paper Dungeons and Dragons character. Kayta is the product of me. My middle name is Kay, I just added the 'ta'. It worked. Right?

So how do you come up with names for your characters and other things in your books?