SBD

Since I got the new cover for my upcoming novel over the weekend (scroll down to check it out), I’ve been giving some thought to what makes a good cover and what a cover says about a book’s contents.

Personally, I’ve bought books based on the covers many times.  I’ve also not bought books for the same reason.  And I’m a writer – you’d think I’d know better.  I blogged once before about Joanna Bourne’s latest novel, The Spymaster’s Lady, and man oh man, is that a bad cover over a really good read.

A cover is supposed to do one thing: Convince the reader to buy the book.  But before you can get that close, you have to seduce the reader to pick it up.  Essentially, you have to make them want to touch it, to want to hold it, and hopefully, they’ll flip it over, read the back copy, and maybe open it and take a peek at the first few pages.

I have to say – I’m really happy with my back copy, and as for the cover itself, I like it.  I think it’s pretty and sensual, though seriously lacking in blurbs from well-known authors.  (Damn me, why don’t I network?!)

My only worry is that the cover is SO sexy.  It might make the potential buyer think the book is loaded with sex, which it isn’t.  This could scare off the reader who doesn’t want lots of nookie, and disappoint the reader who does.

We ran into the same problem with my first novel, VEILED PROMISES.  Behold:

Looks nice, right?  Pretty in pink.  Probably got a sweet romance, a pampered heroine (maybe even a hoyden!), and some indulgently doddering secondary characters.

Wrong.  This book is about manipulation, control, and power struggles gone wild.  In fact, when it was reviewed by TheRomanceReader.com, the reviwer noted in the first line, “Veiled Promises by debut author Tracy MacNish should come with a warning label. Certainly the soft pink cover gives no indication that the book’s content would include the most vile, under-handed, vicious, psychotic villain the reader is likely to ever encounter. ”

My opinion was that because the book was dark, the cover should be dark.  This way the reader who wants and prefers such will be drawn to it, and thus you’ll have a better shot at meeting a reader’s expectation.  My editor felt differently (and she certainly has more experience than I), and felt that a dark cover would sink us, because though the content of the book is at times very graphic and painful, ultimately the novel is about hope and the joy in finding ones true purpose and place in life.

My second book, VEILED DESIRES, has a brilliant cover:

 Lovely.  Sensual, dreamy, and evocative, but also bold in its own way.  I love this cover.  It captures the essence of the book, and I think it’s very touchable.  This book sold very well, and while yes, I do think it’s a solidly good story (ahem), the cover is ultimately the reader’s first contact with the book, and I think it did its job.

So we’ll see come October – if some angry chicks start bagging on my book on Amazon, bitching that the book doesn’t have much sex… well, it’ll mean that the reader expectation wasn’t met, that’s all.

Ultimately, I think VEILED PASSIONS is a good book.  I say that without fear, or even egotistic pride.  As its writer, I feel like I got really close to saying what I wanted to say, and when I reread it, I’m happy with it.  I know saying such things opens me up to more criticism, because people really like to find fault with things that an artist says is finished, or done, or dare they admit it: Good. 

And as the creator of the books, I have to come to peace with the fact that while the cover is out of my control; the content is not.  So with that in mind, I have pages to write.  Feel free to weigh in with your opinion about the new cover – scroll on down and take a gander at the full-size image.        

VEILED PASSIONS

 

 

My new cover:

 

What do you think?

6 Words

Smith Magazine is calling for people to submit the story of their life in 6 words.  It’s a fun concept, elegantly limited and limiting, following up their bestselling book titled Not Quite What I Was Planning.

During an interview, Hemingway was challenged to write a story in 6 words.  His answer: ”For sale: baby shoes.  Never worn.”

My life story could be:

Witnessed evil.  Wrote books about love.

Or:

Had fun.  Tried hard.  Learned lessons.

Or perhaps:

Untapped potential: Writer seeks meaningful work. 

Or maybe it’s more like:

I should have gone to college.

 

 

 

 

 

I am alive

But so very very tired.  Forgive the lack of blogging.  Between copy edits and insomnia lies madness, and beneath my under eye concealer lies the purplish rings of sleep deprivation.

It hurts.

BUT, the copy edits are done, and I took myself to NYC to deliver them – and took my son and my mom along, too.  We had a great day in the city.  I still have not recovered, though.  Fatigue + insomnia + an entire day walking NYC + more insomnia = Baby Tracy Has Bleeding Eyes.

I am off to write a few pages before I have to go see the TAX MAN, yeah, the tax man.  Then I will return, and once I finish with my primordial wailing over our dearth of funds, I will commence writing fiction until it’s time to go to the driving range and pick up the boy.  All of this I will do whilst stoked on what is likely death hastening quantities of coffee.

So come this summer when I have to Get A Real Job (see the TAX MAN above), I’ll look back on these days when I suffered for my passionate love of writing, when I tried to make a go in the book business, and I won’t remember the bleeding eyes, right?  I’ll look back and I’ll long for these days.  This Day.

So since it’s Thursday, here are 13 things I am grateful for about This Day:

1. The sun is out.
2. My daffodils are blooming.
3. I am here, present, and I can feel the vibration of the fictional world I am creating, ready and urgent.  Today will be a good writing day.
4. I have three new kinds of incense to play around with while I write, some from a head shop in Greenwich Village, and a provocative scent I found in Chinatown.
5. My back doesn’t hurt.
6. I’m going to hit a bucket of balls at the driving range later.
7. I enjoyed ginger and molasses flavored coffee this morning.  Yum.
8. I’m making fish on the grill tonight, and so will fire up some roasted veggies, too.  More yum!
9. I love my kid completely.  I’m really really good at loving him.
10. I have built-in bookcases.  (Strangely, I’m grateful for this almost every day.  It never gets old.)
11. I am reading three good books right now, and can hardly choose which one to dip into in the evening.
12. My husband is an amazing lover.  I’m going to be especially grateful for that tonight.
13. The scents of cardamom, bergamot, amber, and musk.  I can’t seem to get enough.

Have a good day, people.  Make it count. 

 

On The Job

I dig cops.  Cops are hot.  Today’s Thursday 13 is devoted to things I love about cops:

1.  Cops have guns.

2.  Cops have an attitude.

3.  Cops are always prepared.

4.  Cops can drive fast, and they have groovy cars.

5.  If you’re nice to a cop, he’ll let you turn on his lights.

6.  Cops are tough.

7.  Cops have handcuffs.  And horses.  Which don’t go together but are both so hot.

8.  Cops have cool dogs. 

9.  Cops get the bad guys.

10.  Cops are frisky!

11.  Cops kick ass and take out the trash.

12.  When the worst happens, the cops come and deal with it.

13.  Cops have bicycles.  Cops + Bicycles = super cool.

The Value of Self-Pity

You know, usually it’s seen as a bad thing to indulge in a round of gloomy, self-indulgent pity partying for yourself.

I couldn’t disagree more.

I think it’s actually quite healthy behavior, as it allows one to fully feel their suffering and to become outraged at all the wrongs they have endured.  After all, life’s NOT fair, and sometimes you really did get a raw deal.  Acknowledging this and validating how you feel about your raw deal is part of the process of overcoming adversity.

Self-pity is economical, too.  Think about it: If you can feel really bad for yourself, you don’t need to pay a therapist to:

1. Tell you it’s okay to feel bad.
2. Feel sorry for you.
3. Care about your feelings (because mired as you are in your pity party, you care enough for 10 people).
4. Encourage you to take good care of yourself.
5. Nod sympathetically and help you toss your loved ones under the proverbial bus.

But all good things must come to an end.  At some point you have to get up, get moving, and face the oncoming of many new days that will probably, at some point, deliver yet more disappointment and regret.

If you’ve had a childhood anything like mine, you either get really good at moving forward or you don’t.  I got good at it.  So the past two days I’ve been hard at work thinking, making plans, being grateful, and trying to find something to look forward to.

I also went to the driving range and drove a big bucket of balls.  Hitting a golf ball just right, club square, arms straight, wrists hinged, feels so damn good.  Hearing the metallic thwackof the driver, and watching that ball fly high and straight and long – it is a singular pleasure.  Therapeutic.

 

 It’s time for me to let it go again.  That’s the problem with forgiveness and gratitude.  They’re not something you give once, but things that must be practiced over and over again.  Sometimes it’s hard, and giving in to the downward spiral is inexorable.  And then you have to get over it.

 The biggest part of that is finding meaning in everyday tasks, remembering that how you treat people is more about you than them, trying to bloom where you’re planted (even if you desperately long to be re-potted somewhere else), and really really really thinking about this:

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.  Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me.  It is a sort of splendid torch that I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to a future generation.” – George Bernard Shaw

Amen.

Anyone just ever feel pointless?  Hopeless?  Like choices of the past have painted you into a corner from which you feel you can’t escape and will bring you nothing but regrets?

Me, too.

I’m having a pity party.  We’ve got ice cream and alcohol, flannel jammies and trashy films.  Self-loathing is required and weight gain is expected.  Too much chatting, however, will result in immediate expulsion.

Forget Everything I Said

Remember my last post, in which I waxed on about breaking through my block and being energized?

Yeah.  That was fun.

Block? What block?

I had a productive writing day yesterday, about 10 pages, which is really good for me.  I’m a slow writer by most standards.

But yesterday, people, I broke the barrier.  I made it beyond the hard part, and now I get to write the part of the novel where I actually have an idea of what’s going to happen.  Granted, it’s a vague idea, but a far cry from the last bit where I was lost and floundering.

The downside is I am short on words.  I can’t remember the name of that doohickey you use to open a can, or the thingie that turns on the car, or my dog’s name, or where I put my glass of . . . what’s that clear stuff that comes from the tap?

The other downside is that I had to abandon a hot tub of soaking salts to rush to my office, dripping and wrapped in a towel, to add to a scene and begin a new one.

These are really good problems, people.  In fact, these are the problems I long for.  Too many words rushing to the page, not enough coming from my mouth.

The German doesn’t like it, though.  He keeps asking me, “What’s wrong?  Why so quiet?”  He doesn’t seem to understand that I only have so much space in my cranium, that I can’t turn the voices off, and even if I could, I wouldn’t.  It’s scary-quiet when they shut up, and bad things happen in my mind without their noise. 

They were pretty silent during the last chunk of the book, and I was pretty scared.  It’s hard to go it alone, and slogging through can mean some heavy lifting without their input.  But it seems that they liked where I took them, because they’re chatting again, all perky and rested from their time off.

And like a chump, I welcome them back without the slightest recrimination.  The prodigal characters, returned home without the least bit of shame for their absence.  They find me happy to see them, smiling and chipper, their beds turned down, mints on the pillow.  Come, come, be comfortable, stay awhile, would you care for tea?

Basically, this means I’m happy because I’m back to doing what I was made to do: Putting words in a line and feeling good about it.

It’s going to suck when the ride is over, but for now, I’m buzzed and riding high on the thrill of this thing, this writing thing. 

No Image Available

My next novel, Veiled Passions, is due for release on October 7 of this year and I’m so excited – I love this book.  It’s funny, but I didn’t when I wrote it.  I was fraught with angst and worry and fear that it wasn’t good.  And now?  I go back and see what I have, and I like it.  (This should comfort me as I suffer the same angst now.  It doesn’t.)

Anyway, the book went up on Amazon and a few other booksellers’ pages – including Target, which makes me ridiculously happy for some reason.  But here’s the thing – I haven’t seen the cover yet, and all the places that show my book’s listing say ‘No Image Available.’

I’m busting to see this cover!!!  It’s killing me, the not knowing what it’s going to look like, what it’ll say on the back, and if I’m going to get what I want (red and gold and perhaps something really classic and elegant) or if I’ll get the Dread Clinch Cover.

I can’t wait.  Seriously.  I am all atwitter to see it.

In other book news, I’ve renamed the current novel I’m writing to Veiled Surrender.  It’s far more accurate, I think, as the book is all about the surrender to love, to the truest desires of the heart, and mostly, to the inevitable truth of who we are.

On a personal front – I looked at the photos of my vacation and have decided that further dieting is needed.  Nothing quite compares to a bikini picture in urging one forward to their fitness goals.  Unless one counts the photos where upper arm fat and a thick middle conspire to make one appear pregnant when one is most certainly not.  These, too, make the elliptical machine in my fitness room a priority.

I’ve also decided to attend the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference this year.  I’m pretty excited about it.  It’s a really nice, small conference that offers a lot of encouragement and inspiration, which are both things I am seriously lacking.  I am hoping it’ll give me a boost to my flagging spirits.

So there you have it, people.  I will post the photo of my book jacket as soon as I get it, or if it’s the Dread Clinch Cover, as soon as I’ve made peace with it.

To illustrate my worries and my point, follow this link http://www.romances.com.br/site1/autoras_detail.asp?offset=190&codautor=196 to get a little taste of my Brazilian cover, as WordPress won’t let me embed the photo.

On that note, people, I’m going to get back to work.  I hope you all are enjoying a great Sunday!