Cage of Skin and Bone: Change of Plans

At the strong advisement of two folks whose literary opinions I greatly respect, I have been contacting publishing houses for interest in taking on the novel as a publishing project. No luck yet. Going in without an agent is about like crossing Cuba without a boat: I'm in for a tough swim.

Still, success is remotely possible, especially with smaller publishing houses who still consider quality over mass appeal. The difficulty with contacting publishers is this: most frown upon simultaneous submissions, take longer to respond to submissions than do agents, and often do not respond at all. The result is a slow process that threatens to break my will.

Because I don't know how long this process will take before a) success, or b) raging impatience, I have started on the sequel to Cage of Skin and Bone. Nothing like writing to take my mind off of ... err ... um ... writing.

Going Forward with Publication: Cage of Skin and Bone

In early January I promised a valiant effort to find representation for the novel Cage of Skin and Bone. Today I reached the 5 month mark of that attempt after having contacted 21 prospective agents. Three agents requested part or all of the manuscript before politely declining. Eight more declined the query outright, again very politely. Ten never responded. The response / no response split is typical of what I've encountered before.

Let me just say this: I very much appreciate those who took the time to respond. I know agents are slammed by a million queries on top of the time they must spend serving their existing client base, so anyone taking the time to respond, no matter how briefly, has my undying respect!

Anyway, having exhausted my pool of patience for this particular work, I am proceeding with self-publication. The last round of copy editing is nearly complete and the cover is ready to go. Expect to see the novel in publication by the end of June.

One positive side effect of the five month hiatus is the time it provided me to outline the rest of the series. Crissa's story will go on! For three novels, anyway. A mammoth undertaking, but I am ready! (A mammoth undertaking ... get it? Mammoth? Undertaking? And with the image of a mammoth? You see how I did that? Pretty clever, huh!)

The Run is Over for Cage of Skin and Bone

Alas, my new novel failed to advance to the quarter-final round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. I can only assume that the judges lost my entry. How else could you explain the lack of inclusion?

Actually, I'm certain that the remaining novels are mind-numbing miracles of literature and worthy of advancement. In the meantime I take heart in history. Einstein's theories were originally mocked, President Truman failed at business, and Edison made one thousand failed light bulb designs before inventing one that worked. And Jennifer Hudson did not win American Idol, for crying out loud. You go, girl!

Back to the old pen and inkwell!

On to Round 2 of ABNA 2013: Cage of Skin and Bone

Cage of Skin and Bone has advanced to round 2 of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 contest. What does that mean? It means that I'm the second coming of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen all rolled into one. No? Actually, it means that my pitch was good enough to merit a further read from the judges. That's all.

Four-hundred novels in the young adult category advanced to Round 2. In this round, judges will read 3000 - 5000 word excerpts for each entry, and identify the 100 that will advance to the quarterfinal round. My submission last year, The Shore of Monsters, also advanced to the second round, but did not make the quarterfinal round. I'm hoping for a better result, but, hey - every novel is a longshot at this point.

The Shore of Monsters Duology: Re-Released

I finished overhauling The Shore of Monsters and its sequel, Fall of Darkness, and posted both to multiple e-book sites. By converting the story from third-person to first-person, I was able to expose more of the heroines observational nature. And, to reinforce the need for professional copyeditors, I found and fixed a number of mistakes. To meet Smashword's new resolution guidelines, I had to quickly assemble two new covers for that site only. Here they are, simple and not so subtle.

Self-Publishing: Producing Original Cover Art, an Example

My newest work, Cage of Skin and Bone, features original artwork. For my previous novels, I or a digital artist created covers by blending stock photos. This time I decided to step up the quality of my product. After trolling the internet for cover artists, I found a great source at deviantart.com. Tons of artists advertise their services, and offer samples of their work. While searching the site, I stumbled across the work of Mark Bulahao. His work in the fantasy/sci-fi area is stunning. Check out his work at his website:

Furnacehead: Mark Bulahao Art

Click on "Portfolio" at the upper left of the homepage to see what attracted my attention. I contacted him, and gave him the gist of my story as well as a basic idea of what I might like on the cover. From that he sketched two rough concept images:

The first shows the story's heroine, Crissa, in a cage with the wolf she raises. The second is more of a movie poster style rendering, showing Crissa, her nemesis Bayna, and a woolly mammoth (who feature heavily in the story). I was leaning toward the second concept, but upon seeing the sketches, was struck by the quiet poignancy of the first. We went ahead with that. Mark asked me what well-known person or actress might represent the "look" I had in mind. We settled on Elisha Cuthbert, seen below.

She's obviously gorgeous, but I did say that I didn't want the cover girl to appear too sexy. Mark re-sketched that one with Elisha in mind, and sent me this as a modified concept.

After some feedback, and a couple refinements of the concept, he produced the final spectacular cover art below.

Fantastic! Mark was great to work with, and I tried not to over-specify or nit-pick details. Given freedom to express his artistry, Mark produced a final cover that is far better than I anticipated, for an extremely reasonable price!

Shore of Monsters Modification

I've about decided to modify Shore of Monsters and Fall of Darkness to render Sky's story in first-person. My decision is driven by a recent Wattpad experience that blew me away. I'll post more about that soon. Stunned, I am. How's that for a tease?