Calling Vicki, The Rejected Cover

 

    One of the most important things when trying to sell an ebook is the cover.

I wanted a very simple cover for my suspense novel, Calling Vicki. The cover I wanted had to be something like a James Patterson novel. I am not completely happy with the cover, but I do like it. Well I actually almost love it after the first cover that I commissioned.

    Let me explain what goes into purchasing a cover online for your novel. You can either allow one of the book distributors like BookBaby or Lulu to do a custom cover for you at a cost of a few hundred dollars. You can hire a freelancer to tackle the problem at a cost of about a hundred bucks or you can use one of the great online sites like Fiverr to commission someone for five to ten dollars to do the cover. If you prefer a simple cover then I would suggest Fiverr as a place to get your first cover. If you are publishing short stories then I definitely would not spend more than five dollars for the cover.
 
    There is also the option of doing it yourself. This is harder than it may seem and you just cannot go online a steal an image for your cover. You must buy one. Taking an image that does not belong to you can get you into trouble. What I would suggest is signing up on sites like Fotolia where you can pay as little as a dollar an image. They even have free photos available. Then all you have to do is use Gimp or any of the online image editors to add the title and your name along with resizing the phone for your  cover.  The good thing about this is that if you have a hosting package from a site like godaddy then you probably already have free credits for Fotolia. Check you account and you will find them with the credits for yahoo and google adwords.  

 
    A basic image on the cover of your book will always be better than something that is too over the top or has nothing whatsoever to do with the story inside of the book.

    Here is a look at the first cover I got back for this novel and once you read the book I am sure that you will have the same, what the hell, reaction that I did about the first cover.

 



Now my actual book cover.

  


A world of difference I think. In closing I would like to say that the book is available at Barnes and Noble. You will find a link in one of the photos on the right side of this post.   The next post will be tomorrow and it should be about Smashwords and the topic will most likely be about allowing characters to drive the story.

Now please take a moment to share this post on your social media. I believe that I have a quality thriller in Calling Vicki, but so far it has been difficult to get the general public to take notice. I feel like panicking and I am only three days into the release. There are at least some half dozen more venues in the states for the release of the book before I go national and international with Amazon. The paperback will come out on Amazon a few weeks before the ebook. Maybe I will do a post about why the modern author prefers ebooks to hard copies of their work.

Thank you for visiting and have a nice day.

Calling Vicki, Story Telling Notes

    If all I did with this blog was to constantly say buy my book, buy my book and did I mention I think you should buy my book I would be doing each and every reader a disservice. When I am not writing ebooks I can be found running a blog on film making or a second one of screen writing. Both of those blogs are teaching blogs so I thought that I would share some lessons that I have learned along the way about writing.
 
    Most people who read novels dream about writing one someday. I would like to offer some advice to you in that area.
    Let’s begin with something simple. The most important rule that I have ever learned was taught to me by Stephen King. If you want to be a writer you must read a lot.  Read a lot and write a lot. By reading, particularly in the genre that we intend to write, we learn how it is done.
 
    Before sitting down to write Calling Vicki I read some James Patterson and Dean Koontz. I learned that it is okay to write short chapters from Patterson. My book is 51,000 words and features 63 chapters. Most chapters average about four pages. While from Dean Koontz I learned how to pace a story. When you wish to speed up the action you must write short sentences and short paragraphs. 

    I would like to thank you guys for visiting my blog again. You will find that the first and now the second chapter from the book are available above to read. If you would like to purchase a copy of Calling Vicki you will find that now it has been published on Kobo. The link is the picture along side this post. Itunes, B&N and Smashwords will be coming soon. I will try to do a post on how to become a self published author during the next few weeks.
 
Okay last thing before you go please take a moment to share this post. You can do so on Facebook or Stumbleupon. Social media is the number one way that self published authors get the word out about their work.

The Vicki Novel Series

         

    I plan this series of suspense novels to be a trilogy. When writing a series of books in the thriller genre there is always the chance that these characters may surprise me. That they may require more books to tell their story, but right now I am looking at three novels to cover the story that Victoria Winters and her loved ones have to tell.

    The first thing that you should know as an introduction to the books to come is that they will be about Victoria and her sister Elizabeth. No matter where these characters go on planet earth the story will always come back to the bond between these women. A bond stronger than that of normal siblings due to having witness the murders of their parents when they were children.  Despite being taken in by relatives that loved and cared for them at the age of nine in the case of Liz and twelve in the case of Vicki they have maintained an us against the world attitude ever since. This bond between them has known only two existing fractures. One is Liz’s husband Daniel who Vicki has never approved of and the other is Vicki’s childhood best friend Cash who Liz had disliked when she was a child and still does not get now that he is back in their adult lives even though he is the only man that Vicki seems to drop her guard around.

    If I am making it seem as if these novels are only about relationships I am sorry. The relationships are the core, but there will be a great deal of action and suspense in these novels.

    In the first book, Calling Vicki, we meet the ruthless leader of a Drug cartel Carlos Reyes. A borderlines sociopath who is hunting Daniel, Liz and their two daughter Diana and Courtney because of some property stolen from him, by Daniel. Carlos is perhaps the most brutal character that I have or will ever write about. He is a monster at times while at others he is reasonable and charming.

    Then there are the professionals (hired killers) that Carlos has employed to aid him in his quest for vengeance. A man who likes to be known as Mr. Riddle or just plan Riddle. He works with a female partner named Jackie. Although both of them are skilled killers Riddle usually does the hands on work while Jackie does the tracking and researching of any given target.  Of all the characters in the first novel the ones that I would like to revisit (excluding the sisters) are these two characters. I get the feeling that there is a huge back story there. Depending upon how well these characters are received I may do just that.

    Okay that is it for this first post on the Vicki Series of novels. Tomorrow I will be posting the first chapter.  I plan of posting at least the first five chapters here.

If you become a fan of the first book I would like you to share this post and the sample chapters (Chapter One is Available above). Maybe take the time to stumble this blog on Stumbleupon or to pin it on Pinterest. Thanks for visiting and feel free to send me any questions that you might have by leaving them as a comment or directly through google plus.

If you would like to purchase the book using paypal before it is available at B&N or Amazon, please visit below. If you share the books with others via twitter or facebook there is a 40 percent discount off the cover price of 3.99.  Click Here.

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