Spell of the Black Unicorn & A Little Help from Friends

Back in the day, as a writer I had very little help, absolutely no feedback, except for when I was in a writer's critique circle-which was way long ago. Now, with the Internet, I'm connecting with other writers all over, and other people who can do things I simply cannot. You've got your beta readers, people who can do covers, and also someone to format the manuscript.

There's no way I could have gotten Spell of the Black Unicorn ready to put out as an ebook without my friends, and I'll name them here and give them all a shout out and have some links where you can find them.

Shelly Arkon is my awesome beta reader. I don't know how I could get a better one. I don't believe I could. I'm not sure if she rolled her eyes at my use of the word "peer" so many times in the manuscript, but yeah, it was one of my "crush" words. She often said something encouraging, telling me I was an awesome story teller. You can find this talented author here at Secondhand Shoes (also the name of her own book)

Since my novel was origninally published as a paperback in 2008, it sort of went by the wayside. I wanted to allow the story to see new light, because a lot of people bought and said nice things about it. It also needed a new cover. Something that looked interesting and that might give it the look of something trendy, with the fantasy undertones it needed, without looking too much like a children's book (or YA), which it is not. Well, answering the call for creating a great cover was my good friend Jeremy Hawkins. You can find Mr. Retro-Zombie at this site. Here is the cover, in case you've missed it.


Isn't that a nice cover? It really caught me by surprise. I didn't know what Jeremy would have in mind when he said he could do this for me. We had to work on the lettering, a little to make it brigher, but it's perfect!

Now I don't know how many of you out there can format, or know what you're doing, but I've got no idea about it. Although I did format the original book for the publishers to put it out as a paperback, I had very good instructions (and still had to pay $400 for them to get it printed). So, I needed a formatter. I have a friend in Carole Gill, and she offered her husband, John's help in this area. His services are called White Rose Ebook Formatting. His service is straight forward and he's excellent. I highly recommend him. He also does book covers, and has helped me with a few of my short story covers. I had pictures, and he put in the lettering, got the correct size of the cover/picture and so forth. He was also able to up-load one for me, as I had trouble doing it. So, he's very reliable and flexible in what he can do for anyone in need of formatting and covers and so forth.
This weekend I will be getting the ebook to Amazon. Wish me luck. I was unable to get the high speed Internet service. It's too complicated to explain here. Suffice it to say I'm still on dial up. Yes. I'm as patient as a fool, I guess. I had a feeling I this was not going to work for me.

Hopefully the next post I will write will be where you can get your hands on the ebook copy of Spell of the Black Unicorn. Untill then, my friends!