Pitting a vampire against a leprechaun...

Good evening, dawlings!
Well, I've been sooo busy working on another WIP, and I've been neglecting things here. *sorry* I don't want you to forget my fourth Sabrina Strong book is still being worked on. I'm slating it for a possible February release--but don't hold me to that. I'm doing my best working on it along with everything else that's been going on in my life.
Here is the book's cover:

My friend Lucy Pireel helped me with this cover!

With that said, let me give you a sample from the book. You know, what I love to do is place one loose cannon (character) with another. You just never know what the outcome might be. It could be exciting, volatile, might be funny and at the same time crazy. The two in this scene are my big handsome, seven foot tall vampire mogul, Bjorn Tremayne, and the other is Rick, the leprechaun who has a birth defect and left him with almost no arms, but hands situated at his shoulders. Well, these two are such complete opposites in stature and in mannerisms, and I love to throw the two together and see what comes of it. 
Let's go check in and see what Rick is up to right now...

While holding the brush with the toes of his right foot, Rick brushed his hair and aimed the hair dryer with his left foot. His toes were long, and nimble. He could write with both hands, and both feet, sometimes at the same time, but not when he was drunk. He tried that once on a dare and had fallen off his stool—in Tom's Tavern. It had the whole place guffawing. Besides, he thought his handwriting was much better when he held a pen in his right foot, than the left foot, or either of the hands. It was mainly because he could see what he was writing. The kind sisters at the orphanage of Our Lady of Perpetual Grace had helped him develop and work on his disability when he was old enough to learn to read and write. Sister Fred was his favorite nun. She had the disposition of a saint, and put up with his horseplay, as well as the magic he could do. Plus she'd kept his abilities a secret. She thought his magic was a “gift from God”. Well, maybe they were. But he was merely a leprechaun, and not a rich one either. The pile of money had dried up a long time ago from the settlement for the birth defect he was born with because of the drug his mother had taken while pregnant. But he would be fixing that real soon with the deal Tremayne had offered him.

Seated on the toilet, using his hands to keep himself steady holding on to the corner of the sink and the corner of the toilet tank, his hair was nearly dry. He'd slept the whole day, and when he woke up, he felt refreshed—and no longer needed to worship the porcelain god from altitude sickness. It was dark out, too, he noticed. Chris had shown him his room, earlier, and since no one was using the shower, he had ducked in here with his shower supplies. He loved the multiple shower heads, as he could aim the lower ones right where he needed them. He didn't think he'd been so clean in all his life—he felt squeaky clean. He was pretty sure he hadn't sung that well in a long while, either.

I wonder what they might eat for dinner.

His relaxed thoughts were jolted when someone suddenly materialized in the bathroom with him. He cried out. The hair dryer flew out of his toes and clattered to the floor. Rick wound up there with it; the towel that had been wrapped around him, now flopped open leaving him as exposed as a flasher. The headache he'd gotten rid of was now back after hitting his head on the vanity.

“SHIT!” He leaped to his feet, magicked the towel back around him and stared at the huge vampire who had materialized out of nowhere. “What the fuck are you doing? You scared the crap-olla outta me!”

“It didn't work,” Tremayne said, seeming unconcerned about the situation, and chaos he had caused. He gazed down at him, then offered a hand to help him up. Rick took it, but wasn't happy.

“What?!” Rick's face had gone hot and he imagined it redder than it had been a moment ago from the hot shower.

Tremayne sighed and rolled his eyes. “I said it didn't work. That thing you did to keep me from wanting her blood.”

“What do you mean? I did like you told me. You two looked really cuddly-smoochy when I walked in there the other night.”

“I couldn't be close to her without feeling the desire for her blood.”

“Well, you're a vampire. What do you expect?”

“I thought you said you could do something about that.”

“If I take away your need for blood, totally, it would be total. I don't know if I can bring it back. You don't want that, do you?”

Tremayne paused in thought.

“You don't want that. Right? You'd never want blood again.”

“No. That wouldn't work either.” He let out a frustrated sigh, raked his fingers through his golden locks.

“You might as well face it, dude. You need to find a different way.”

“I do have a few ideas, actually. I've just implemented one, and now I need you to go and get me some virgin's blood.”

“You're shitting me. Right?”

“No. I'm not. And I'm giving you less than an hour to get it to me.”

Rick sighed. “How much?”

“How much? Ah...” Tremayne's eyes darted away from him in thought. “A couple of ounces, if you can't do a whole pint.”

“That might cost me.”

“My credit's good. You know that.”

“Done. What will that do—the virgin's blood?” Rick wondered.

“Take my mind off her blood.”

“Really?”

Tremayne gave him a side glance. “You're kidding me? Virgin anything for a man is heaven.”

“Ah. Right, right.” Rick nodded. Vampires, shit.

“Also, I've got to have you get her to cover her ring up. I can't thrall her if she has the ring uncovered.”

“Okay. What if I make it so that she doesn't uncover it? She just thinks she did.”

Tremayne slid his eyes to the leprechaun. A smile bent his lips. “Now I know why I hired you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Now get the hell out of here so I can finish up.”

Tremayne turned to go, but stopped. “I wondered how you managed to... you know, without... you know?” He made hand gestures toward the hair dryer.

“Get the fuck out of here!” Rick snarled and pushed him toward the door. Tremayne ducked out into the hall, and Rick slammed the door as soon as Tremayne was out. He reached down to pick up the hair dryer. He saw bits and pieces of it scattered on the floor. “Aw, fuck.” He shook his head slowly. With a snap of his fingers the pieces flew back together. The dryer came to life and he magically floated it toward his head. “I knew I shouldn't have gotten mixed up with a vampire. I just knew it.”

Spell Books ~ Covers by My Friend Jeremy Hawkins

Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer. I wanted it so bad I drove all the way from my house to Dubuque Iowa (I think it was about two hours drive) to attend a writer's round table/critique forum. That was back in the early 80's. I thought I had a chance to get recognized. The teacher was published, had an agent and one of the women in the group had her historical romance novel grabed up by his agent.

Long story short, I didn't make the cut. I wasn't even considered. My story was so in need of an editor, (spelling, grammar, punctuation), in fact, that it was obvious to my teacher that I had much to learn. But I couldn't afford the class, and couldn't keep on driving all the way out there to Dubuque.

Fast forward to 2013. Here I am, my first self-published book (not the one I'd been writing in 1980's), came about when I was turning 50 and figured I was never going to get so lucky as to be picked up by anyone, let alone be published. So, I published my novel about a sorceress, Zofia Trickenbod, who is hiding out on Earth trying to keep the Stone of Irdisi (the most powerful magical implement on their world) safe from the evil Vesilvod Bood. The black unicorn, not so surprisingly, follows Vesilvod Blood around, hoping (we think), he will change his coloring back to white. Meanwhile Zofia's husband--who was long thought dead from an attack from Blood--returns, but not as a wizard, but a vampire. This paranormal/myster/romance crossover was my first seen by other readers back in 2008, and they loved it. I had people ask when the next one would be out. Yeah. Not at $400/book. Wasn't gonna happen. Now that we are able to self-publish, I felt like it was time to reintroduce Spell of the Black Unicorn to the world again as an eBook.

The original cover was drawn by yours truely. I wanted the unicorn on the cover. I wanted to show that it was somewhat whimsical, but probably made it look like a children's book with the way I had it. *sigh* (The original cover can be seen on my sidebar).

So, I'v been working with a good friend of mine, Jeremy Hawkins http://izombielover.blogspot.com/, who has a flair for retro art deco, and the colors are always paired up nicely. I had this cover that he worked up for me. This is one version. We may have to find a lighter color for the title and all. But this is really something I like for my new cover. There is another version, and I'm waiting to make a decision on whether I like it justified to the left or staggered.


If you want to leave comment on these covers, that would be great. Just so you know I'm going to ask that the lettering be somewhat brighter so it stands out.

Thanks for stopping by. As I get closer to publishing the ebook, I'll have more posts on this story, and some teases up soon.
Have a great Sunday, and rest of the week, my friends!

Judging Books By The Cover

THE SCENARIO:

You're at the grocery store and there's a small stack of paperbacks and magazines in the coffee aisle, and you just can't help yourself but look at all the nice covers. Some authors you may know and maybe you've also read one or two of these. But a few might stand out and you wonder... "Should I get this one?"

Then one cover blasts you. There's a cool chick on the front cover holding a gun and she looks like she could kick ass. Maybe that's your style of reading. But here we have Kim Harrison's novel. I happen to be a fan of hers, and I know that Kim's main character, Rachel Morgan is a witch and she has some pretty cool friends including a fairy and a "living" vampire, and her character is wonderfully flawed.

Let us move to a very different front cover. This one has a half-dressed man and woman and we can see that he looks like he's about to take a bite out of this hapless woman and maybe do some other nasty things to her and we would love to see how that works out, wouldn't we?

Sure we would.
I happened to read this one, after winning it from a contest. It turned out that Jeannine Frost is very good at writing paranormal romance. P.R. doesn't happen to be my cup of tea for reading, but the story was gripping enough that I felt satisfied at the end, the writing was superior to most writers of this genre.

This novel I saw on some site, offering to win it. I didn't win it, but after investigating it I thought it sounded really good, so I ordered it and read it. I thought it was a very good YA novel by Anne Spollen. This was one of those novel where the story was credible, I wasn't stuck in some school with the youth for very long, because the actual story didn't take place in school, but outside of it. The writing was smooth, wonderfully paced. I didn't skip a word. When writing is prose this good, you can't skip it because your mind is absorbing these wonderful images.  And when you look at the cover of "Light Beneath Ferns" you get a little glimpse of what the book might be about, but not totally. The main character reminded me of myself when I was her age--only not quite like her, but I had curiosity brimming as most teenagers do. But, the cover doesn't lead you astray too much. Pretty? Yes, it is a nice cover.

This cover is typical of most paranormal romances where you find a half naked man and woman together. There's no denying you think this looks like it would be good. And as far as covers go like this, these are a dime a dozen. It really tells you very little about what you might find inside. Again, I do not buy paranormal romances (I'm not a fan of romance books in general, but I've given a few a chance). This one was a free-bee. And it was disappointing. I couldn't get much past the first chapter.

The writing was rife with a lot of adverbs and adjectives. The lure of the story moves me to the end of the chapter where I see two paragraphs where the writer has used the word "violently". One line went, "he shrugged away violently from her touch..." I thought that "jerked away" would have been a better word choice (I get an image of him slapping her in my hand away, but he didn't). When I began the next chapter I wanted to get into the scene, but I just simply couldn't. I grappled with the next paragraphs and then the next pages trying to get past over-used words like "quickly" (3 times in one page). We'll just sum it up that the writing was less than stellar, or even well-done. Being that it was published by a big house, you would think this would have had a panel of editors going through it, striking out a lot of the over-used words like "quickly", and making better suggestions. I felt the writing simply gets in the way of the story. I'm seeing the author trying very hard to sound like a romance writer--maybe in the 70's and 80's. Thank goodness I didn't buy this one.

I like book covers with faces. Nothing gets your attention better (except for the half-dressed man) on a cover than someone looking out at you. It's like someone looking at you in a crowd. It does grab you. "Sunlight" by Jamie Wasserman was a great read. "Cold Magic" by Kate Elliott was one of those thick books that you can wrap yourself around (at least for me) for several weeks just before bedtime and want to get her next book. It's on my TBR list.

And they are beautiful covers, but you have no idea what might be within. Many people read the back covers and learn what the story is about. If that passes mustard, then you may open the book up and see if the first page pulls you in. If it does, then, I think you'll be happy to pay for the read.

There are a lot of great covers out there... and you really can't just look at a cover and figure out that the book is going to be good. Could you judge a book's worth by looking at the cover?