Blurbs for Nic Silver

Apparently, it's a long weekend, which is always a little disappointing for me, since as a freelancer the whole concept of "weekend" or even "days off" is a sort of mythical thing that other people have.

But sometimes I pretend weekends are real and use them to take time off from the work I have to do to get a paycheque, and switch to the work I want to do, the work that brings in dribbles of money now and might (I hope) get me more in the future.

So this labour day weekend, I have some things -- some non-freelance paid work things -- that I aim to get done. Or at least worked on thoroughly. And most of those things relate to the books I write under the pen name Nic Silver.

I started today working on book covers. Though I kind of like the cover I did for Vixen, I've never been entirely happy with it, because my main character is half Asian (and looks mostly Chinese) but my cover model is very white (and is me, actually). And the cover for Hexen was meant to be a placeholder until I could get something better done (also see comments on Vixen cover). Now that I'm getting ready to put Familiar up as a pre-order (it's written but needs final editing), I need another cover, and I figured why not re-do them all at once?

So I used the same layout and images I already had, except I took the person off the cover. Originally, I intended to find or paint new images of Su to add on there, but now I'm thinking that might not work so well with the lovely classic paintings and prints of foxes I'm using (except book 2, and some future volume, which use my own prints). I may do versions with characters on the front, too, just to see how they look. After all, these covers don't really scream "urban fantasy" and I do rather want people to know at a glance what they're getting.

On the other hand, I find a lot of urban fantasy covers annoying and implausible. So.

Anyway, I now have five covers on my computer, more or less done (e-book versions only -- I'll have to re-tool them a little for print). Well, on one I used the wrong image, so I'll need to swap that out, but otherwise... New covers for Vixen and Hexen, and a cover for Familiar, plus covers for the next two books that I haven't even written yet, with the working titles Koldun and Sister.

The other thing I'm working on this weekend is blurbs. Again, re-writing the ones for Vixen and Hexen (again), and doing one for Familiar. I'll leave the ones for the unwritten books till they're written, since I won't know what actually happens until I write them.

I suck at blurbs, but I'm trying to improve. I'm very seriously considering taking Dean Wesley Smith's "Blurbs and Pitches" online class, but I have many things to pay for in the next few months I'm not sure I can swing it (damn house insurance!). But maybe. It would probably pay for itself eventually. Maybe even quickly.

Anyway. My next few posts will be new covers and new blurbs. And hopefully that will get me into writing on the blog more often again.

And now, here is a picture of some tomatoes from my garden, just because.