Hello, everyone!
New and exciting things are happening with Ice. Other than drawing closer to the end of the sequel, I am giving the first Ice book a makeover (and hopefully this blog, too, in the near future). As you may have figured by the lackluster, and just downright dull cover of Ice, I did it myself. I am by no means a photographer, and creating the cover was a long and agonizing process. I had a few different visions, only one of them was within my capability, and because I could never seem to get the text clear, I wasn’t even able to do that right in the end! I had to settle for a design in Create Space’s Cover Creator and have my vision diced down to a letterbox and my font chosen for me. For a cover absolutely free of charge, it wasn’t terrible. (Doing this did however mess with the quality of my image in a way I still haven’t figured out. I just know Kavick wasn’t pixel-y until I did the Cover Creator). I knew that I wanted a better cover in the future…future being hopefully in time for the holiday shopping season.
Enter Micheal Lowther, the savior of my book cover!
I met Micheal Lowther at my book launch party. She was very excited to read my book, which made me worry that my writing would be a let down. So I warned her Ice might seem slow, but that I like to think of it as a “slow burner”.
Despite Misha’s busy schedule, she liked it enough to find time to read it through to the end! I was shocked. She messaged me personally to ask me when the sequel was coming out. So, it was after that I asked her if she wouldn’t mind helping me with the cover. She had told me at my launch party that she would love to work with me on any future books. I wanted help with Ice first, and I had been worried about asking her before to work on a book she might not even like!
Misha, as she likes to be called, is very professional, and also very friendly. I wanted a new photo for my author bio, so we did that first. She chose Downtown Tulsa, where there are many great places to shoot. Misha’s not afraid to think out of the box. In fact, she’s a genius at it. We were just walkin’ along, her camera in her hand, and she said, “Since they have the sprinklers on in the park, why don’t we go over to this mural?” She explained the mural to me just as we were coming up on it, and it blew me away. It was awesome, and we got some amazing shots, of course. There were several Day of the Dead murals all connected to each other. And one of them was in the style of Alice in Wonderland in the scene of the Mad Hatter’s tea party! It even had a quote by Lewis Carrol next to it! It took all my strength not to squeal at it…which I still did, just a little, in the form of, “OH MY GOSH!”
Here’s the photos from that:
We shot in front of a mural of the Blue Dome district, which was cool since the Blue Dome district is, you know, cool. And blue, my favorite color.
We shot in front of windows and water for cool reflection effects. In front of beaten old buildings, and newer buildings, and even on some train tracks. At last, we rounded it up at the park, where we had originally intended. When she announced that she had about a hundred photos to work with, I was blown away. It hadn’t felt that long, and if memory serves me right, it had only been about an hour. Everything had been within walking distance, and Misha made it such an enjoyable experience. It didn’t feel like work, or like a stuffy old photo shoot; it was actually FUN!
Later—that same day— she already had my photos ready for me to select ten for her to burn on a CD-ROM for me. They were all amazing. She blew me away again. She even gave me some extra photos, too.
Here is a link to Misha’s website, and her blog. She is wonderful to work with. You will not be disappointed. As you’ve gathered, I highly recommend her. I’ll include photos at the end of the post, of course. And soon, I will unveil the new cover for Ice! I am so excited for everyone to see it! And soon, I will be back to working on the trailer for Ice. I really want to amp up Ice’s exposure. So, if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment! It would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you so much, guys, for reading!
EL
Here are all the many places you can buy Ice: Create Space, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and you can always order it from your local book store.
Also, I noticed the Kindle version of Ice is free right now if you have Amazon Prime!
Commence more photos!