This is being done in advance again because I’ll be at a petting zoo with the toddler by the time this goes live. Same thing with all the tweets this weekend. It’s been quite a few weekends where I’m busy and don’t touch WordPress beyond my own blog. By the time I get home from these excursions, I’m so burnt or simply sleepy.
The Defensive Driving course didn’t happen, so the cover art for ‘The Hopeteller’ is done and ready for opinions. I posted it yesterday, but I’m putting the revised version at the bottom of this post because these seem to get more attention. The plan is to do a little more editing and release the novella next Sunday. I’m not going to do a blog tour this time and I don’t think I’ll have the time for a Cover Reveal. Mostly because the cover has already been revealed and I need to get all my ducks in a row for it. Going for a $1.25 pricing to see how that goes since my beta readers gave big thumbs up. It’s going to be weird considering the following:
Normal Charles Writing– 3rd Person POV, Present Tense, Action/Dialogue Heavy, Fantasy
The Hopeteller– 1st Person POV (Journal sections), 3rd Person POV (Fairy Tales), Past Tense, Narrative Heavy, Post-Apocalyptic World, Fairy Tales
Needless to say, I’m nervous about it even though it’s a small project that I came up with on a whim. More of a deviation from my norm than ‘Catalysts’ because that was nothing more than a genre swap.
Beyond all that, it was a week of . . . I have no idea. Things happened like a haircut and a few meetings. It’s a strange haze for some reason. I think I went food shopping at one point. All I know is that I finished 3 chapters of Book 8 of Legends of Windemere and I’m about 2.5 weeks away from finishing it. Then it’s an editing run through Books 5-8. More to reacquaint myself with what I’ve done. Books 1-3 had the benefit of being edited for years, so I know those well. Book 4 got a similar treatment over half a year. The others haven’t been touched since completion.
A REMINDER: The posts for this week are the debuts of the heroes in Legends of Windemere. The first scenes of Luke Callindor, Nyx, Sari, Fizzle, Timoran Wrath, and the 5th Champion. That means that after next Saturday, I’ll be using the 5th Champions name in posts. I won’t be doing an origin of the character until August when I’ll do a week of them since I’ll have 6 revealed characters to work with by then.
So here are the week’s goals in no specific order:
- Finish 2-3 chapters of Book 8. Monday is a holiday, so I probably won’t get any of it done then.
- Edit and prepare ‘The Hopeteller’ for debut.
- Buy a box of paper reams for the ‘Back to Back to Back to Back’ read through run I’ll do after I finish the current book. I’m going to go through all of them on paper and then do it all again when I type in any changes. Though I might stop to do the changes to ‘The Compass Key’ after my editor gets back to me. Still aiming for a late July/early August release.
- Write up posts for month of June. Already have Week 1 and Week 3 done. This way I don’t have to worry. Any topics that people want me to field at some point?
- Design characters for other series when time permits and is too short for book writing.
- Continue watching ‘Once Upon a Time’ Season 1.
- Biking, eating, and showering.
- Enjoy petting zoo with toddler on Sunday (today).
Here’s the cover for opinions. Still need to trim and fix it. The export seems to make a mess for some reason:
The Hopeteller
Legends of Windemere 
Best of luck with your writing this week Charles. Hope you achieve all your goals. 🙂
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Thanks. I hope time works in my favor.
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That’s much clearer. I can read the title. I would go with a softer blue background though, like the sky with clouds. Maybe. Background seems too busy. Please do shower. I’m guilty of not doing that, especially when Greg’s OOT and I can be lazy. Pool helps some.
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Not sure about a sky background. It’s a post-apocalyptic setting in a forest/cave region.
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I like this one better – it looks neater when it’s more straight. Best of luck with your goals, Charles. 🙂
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Thanks. Took us a while to get everything to convert and remain straight. Glad it looks good.
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I love your stories and I’m finally into volume 3 of your series, but, if I may be candid, this cover isn’t working for me. It’s hard to make a low-budget cover in many fiction genres, which doesn’t look low-budget (keep in mind I would describe a few of my own nonfiction covers as looking like low-budget covers). I wish I had some easy-to-carry-out ideas for how to make this concept work better.
As a thumbnail, it’s going to be very dark (nothing bright to contrast), hard to grab attention, hard to make out. Full-size, the lighting didn’t come out right (I’ve taken thousands of pictures of books, as I used to sell books online, and I never did master this lighting issue). It looks a touch fuzzy, too. If I just look at the color scheme, that doesn’t seem to be working either.
Unfortunately, I don’t see anything specific to offer. I’d like the central image to stand out better, to see better contrast. Just press the magic button… 🙂 On the bright side, your fan base (myself included) is probably anticipating your new book. I look forward to it and hope it works out well. Good luck.
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I’ll see what we can do. The software we were using is rather limited. We did try to put an aura around the central image, but it looked terrible. We can see if there’s a way to lighten that image. For color scheme, do you mean the green lettering on black background or all of it?
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I was thinking of the central color scheme, not so much the border.
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Ah, I’ll see what we can do. We took that because it was muddy and dirty like a cave or trodden ground, which is connected to half of the story.
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I love how you plan your week and make your goals a reality. Good job with the cover of The Hopeteller as well. Looks great!
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Thanks. We fixed it up a bit with coloration, but we hit a point where doing anything more makes it look wrong or cluttered. Oh well. Fingers crossed.
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