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I also have a guest post up over at John Brown’s blog today, about my decision to indie publish.  This was a huge deal for me, because I looked at my other friends who do it all themselves, and couldn’t see how I could fit that much work into my life.  Want to hear about why I changed my mind?  Head on over to John’s blog, and read about it.

One of the most fabulous things about indie publishing EVERYTHING’S FINE was getting to work with my brilliant friends. Indulge me for a moment while I tell you about Melody. Melody was one of my two best friends in high school, and we’ve never lost touch. There may even be a little of that high school friendship in Kira and Haylee’s story. (Though, if there is, she’s Kira, and I’m Haylee.) When I was driving her home from school and crashing on the floor of her room and sneaking into city parks after dark with her at sixteen years old, I never thought some day we’d be publishing a book together. But one thing has always been true about Mel–she makes everything beautiful. From doodles to wrapped gifts to decorating, Melody adds an extra bit of detail and attention to everything she does. So sixteen (seriously?) years later, when I needed a book cover, Melody came to mind. Why? Because now Melody is a graphic designer. It’s pretty much her job to make things look pretty, and she’s good at it.

Melody was gracious enough to answer some questions about the process. If you’re in need of a designer, I highly recommend contacting Melody. (But I don’t need to tell you that. See for yourself.)

Ahem.

So, Melody. What is your role as a cover designer?

The role of a cover designer is to make you think the book is awesome before you’ve even read a page! The designer does that by (hopefully) making a very aesthetically pleasing book cover that will appeal to everyone, but particularly the target audience. Also, since Everything’s Fine was going to be e-published, we needed a cover that would look equally amazing when in itty bitty thumbnail form or when full size.

What was the process like when designing the cover for Everything’s Fine?

Designing the cover for Everything’s Fine was like attempting to kill three birds with one stone. It was my first time designing a cover (bird one). We were trying to find a “look” for Janci’s book covers (bird two) because you will be seeing more of her books in the future—hopefully near future. And we wanted something that really represented the feel of Everything’s Fine (bird three) because as you may have noted, everything is not fine in the book.

Fortunately, once I started to get to the other side of the learning curve, finding things that worked for the cover became really fun. Janci was so great to work with. I gave her a lot of options because we really wanted to be sure of our final decision (it’s sad to think of all the great work that you won’t get to see). Janci did a great job of picking some images that would give me an idea of what she had in her head. I would absolutely say that the process was rewarding and I’m looking forward to doing it again!

I’m still sad about some of those covers we didn’t choose. But, in the end, we had to narrow it down to one. So, when considering stock art for cover design, what are you looking for?

It so depends on what you want to do for a specific piece. For example, for the pen on the back of the book, I wanted something that looked like a teenager would use it, but not so immature that it would start to make the piece appear tacky (like an advertisement for Papermate). Also, I wanted a pen that could have its color edited fairly easily—the color you see on the pen is not the color of the original stock image.

Let’s give everyone a look at the back of the book, so they can see the cute pen that you’re talking about.

Continue.

When looking at potential cover images for Everything’s Fine, we looked at quite a few images with girls who could portray Kira. A lot of these images had other elements in them. If you choose an image where multiple elements are about the same size, the viewer’s eye tends to skim and move on. You want an element to grab the viewer and keep them interested.

Besides stock art, some really important essentials to designing a cover are font choice, element balance, and tints/shading. Fonts are so important. They can really speak for the feel of a piece. I chose a handwritten font for “Everything’s” because of the informal way Kira uses this phase in the story. And I chose a distressed, all-caps font for “Fine” because it clearly illustrates the irony of the statement. In order to make the titling stand out adequately from the image, I used shading around the type. Without that shading, the cover would look flat. Sometimes the smallest details are what give that professional polish to a piece.

Element balance is a little more difficult to explain in writing (this is where I need Janci’s way with words), but you have to be careful in choosing how to arrange your elements on a page. We wanted Kira’s face to grab you. I didn’t want the titling to distract from the face but certainly it needed to be clearly visible and identifiable. I didn’t want Janci’s name to get muddled with the rest of the text, so we took it up. I added a distressed glow behind the titling to add some depth. I made “Fine” pink for some contrast and attention. It also balances out the more muted colors of the cover. And I kept the little promotion for the book in a simple font, relatively small but certainly still legible (because it doesn’t need to grab you, it’s meant to keep you if you already got sucked in by the awesome picture and ironic title).

What advice do you have for authors looking for a cover designer? What questions should they ask? What agreements should they make beforehand? What should they do/not do when working with their designer?

I would look for someone who does something you like—something that speaks to you and the feel you want your books to have. Or just look for someone who has talent. Chances are if they did something great for another project, they could do something great for you. I was fortunate that Janci asked me to be a part of this project because, while I like to think I’m pretty talented, I had nil experience when it comes to book covers (except for that one project when I was in my design program which would not impress you…).

You should definitely have a contract with a designer beforehand—what you’re going to do, by when, cost, delivery (format of delivery), who owns the rights to what, etc. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with your best friend, there should be a contract! (It’ll probably help you stay best friends if that’s the case.)

In case our audience can’t tell, the first thing we did was sign a contract, and we’re still friends. 🙂 What about after that?

Authors should not assume that they know what works—that’s why they’re hiring a designer, designers have (or should have) an eye for what works artistically. That being said, if authors have something specific in mind, they should definitely share that with a potential designer because you’ll want to know if a designer can work with your idea and make it happen or if they have a better idea.

Authors also shouldn’t assume that just because the little sketch the designer shows you looks kind of sparce/flat/uninspiring that the final realization of that sketch will be the same. I’m grateful that Janci had some artistic vision and knew the potential of what I showed her at each step, but not all clients have that vision.

What advice do you have for self-publishers trying to do it themselves? What should they do or avoid doing when designing their own covers?

They should avoid clip-art. Haha, no but really, get a designer. If you’re on a budget, search till you find someone who will work within your budget, but remember that your cover is what is going to get your book bought, opened, and read so don’t slap it together yourself unless you are just that talented.

Melody, obviously, is that talented, and has the training to back it up. I couldn’t be happier with the work she did on EVERYTHING’S FINE. Thanks, Mel!

Want Melody to design your cover? Here’s what to do to contact her:

Holler! She wants to work with you. (Yes, you!)
melodyfender@gmail.com

You guys…

…

…

EVERYTHING’S FINE is now available!

You can find  the e-book on Amazon, or check out the paperback there as well.

Here, one more time, is the cover copy:

Kira thought she knew everything about her best friend, Haylee.  But when Haylee commits suicide immediately after her first date with her longtime crush, Bradley Johansen, Kira is left with nothing but questions, and a gaping hole in her life where Haylee used to be. 

Kira is sure that the answers to her questions must be written in Haylee’s journal, but she’s not the only one searching for it.  The more Kira learns about Haylee’s past, the more certain she is that other people grieving for Haylee are keeping secrets—especially Bradley, and Haylee’s attractive older cousin Nick.  Kira is desperate to get to Haylee’s journal before anyone else finds it—to discover the truth about what happened to Haylee—

And to hide the things that Haylee wrote down about her. 

Squee!

A note: at this time, the book is only available on Amazon.  I know people are mad at them, and with good reason, but the submission guidelines for e-books and such are many and varied, and since this is my first indie published book, I decided to start with one venue, and expand later.  It’s not a political statement–but Amazon right now is a huge share of the indie market, so I’ve focused my efforts there.  Sorry if that inconveniences you.  I’ll let you know when it’s out other places.

But back to the happy news.  Book release!  I’ll have a bunch of blog posts and things about the book up over the next few weeks, so if you want to hear more, stay tuned.  In the meantime, you can totally head over to Amazon and check out the sample chapters for free.  Or, if you’re a Prime member, you can borrow the book from the Kindle Owners Lending Library.  If you want to hear news about future books, sign up for my newsletter.  It’s spam free.

Most of all, I’d love it if you would spread the word: the biggest risk in any kind of publishing is obscurity.  I am so excited to share this book with you.  If you’re inclined, please tell your friends!

Look what came in the mail today!

It’s a real book!

That’s just the proof, but you can order your own copy in a few short weeks.

Squee!

See this?

That would be my cover for Everything’s Fine, my novel that will be out next month.  NEXT MONTH.  I am so excited to show this to you.  IMHO, my cover designer, Melody Fender, did a truly beautiful job.

This is my favorite part of writing novels–the part where they’re all pretty and finished.  This is my book that won the Utah Arts Council Original Writing Competition award for Best Young Adult Novel back in 2007 (under its working title, Haylee’s Journal), so it’s been in the works for a while.  I am so excited to finally get to show it to you.

Release dates are a little squirrely for indie books, but it’ll be out sometime next month.  If you’d like an email when it’s properly released, please sign up for my newsletter.  I promise no spam.  You’ll only hear from me about new books, and maybe sales.

Want more?

Here’s the back cover copy.

I really hope you’re as excited about this as I am.

Kira thought she knew everything about her best friend, Haylee.  But when Haylee commits suicide immediately after her first date with her longtime crush, Bradley Johansen, Kira is left with nothing but questions, and a gaping hole in her life where Haylee used to be. 

Kira is sure that the answers to her questions must be written in Haylee’s journal, but she’s not the only one searching for it.  The more Kira learns about Haylee’s past, the more certain she is that other people grieving for Haylee are keeping secrets—especially Bradley, and Haylee’s attractive older cousin Nick.  Kira is desperate to get to Haylee’s journal before anyone else finds it—to discover the truth about what happened to Haylee—

And to hide the things that Haylee wrote down about her. 

This is another one of those rambling posts.  But it has information! in it!  so you might want to barrel through.  Maybe.

My life has become total chaos lately–the most wonderful sort of chaos where I know everything I’m doing is vitally important and irreplaceable and must! be! done! and I’m so so happy to do it except that there aren’t enough hours in the day.  Love that.  Love when there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the wonderful things.  It’s my favorite.

Some of those things are boring or personal, like chasing my two year old around in circles (like this mommy! just like this!) or taking care of my (seriously needy) yard or the endless march of church responsibilities that called on me a couple months ago.

But some of it is writing stuff.  That stuff you get to hear about.

First, the imminent: I am reaching the very tail end of the task list for EVERYTHING’S FINE.  Layout is done.  My editor is doing one last pass.  The cover is basically done.  I believe that I will get to share it with you next week!  Spoiler: it’s gorgeous.  SO THE BOOK WILL BE OUT IN JUNE!  I’m way excited, if you couldn’t tell.

Second, the tedious: I’m doing a pass on a book that’s already been on submission once, because once I learned all that stuff about beats I discovered I need to revise basically everything I’ve ever written.  This book is no exception, and adding tons of beats to a 70,000 word manuscript is brain frying.   But I’m gaining new skills!  If there’s one thing you should never stop doing as a writer, it’s building new skills.  There are so many possible skills to have in your writing toolbox, your lifetime will not be enough to master them all.

Third, the endless: I’m also revising a book that my agent looked at last year.  It needed work.  In fact, I wrote the wrong book all together.  I am nearing the end of the rewrite now.  Have I written the right book this time?  I’m sitting on the edge of my seat, let me tell you.

Fourth, the new and shiny: I’ve started collaborating on a project with a writer friend of mine, who happens to be a freaking genius.  This may turn out to be a train wreck, but I hope not, because playing with this book is FUN.  I want it to be equally fun to read.  (We’re still in the outline stage.  If it turns into an actual, readable work, you will hear more.)

Fifth, the waiting: I also have a first draft of a YA romance just waiting for me to pause to breathe, so I can revise it into something readable.  I am so excited about that book.  I need to bump numbers one through three off my plate, and then I’ll be digging into this.  I.  Cannot.  Wait.

You guys.  I have not been this excited about writing…maybe ever.  You know why?

Because I’ve stopped caring about how any of it turns out.  I have so little control over what happens to my books.  Maybe they’ll sell to publishers.  Maybe I’ll put them out myself.  Maybe they’ll turn out to be train wrecks that take years to rewrite.  (Um, maybe, all three?  Yes.  I’m going to hope for all three.)

But the only piece I can control is whether or not I show up to work in the morning.

Here I am!  Working!  For the first time in years, I’m really pleased with the results.  I hope you’re excited about them too.

I blogged a while ago about discovering a problem in my writing related to reaction beats.  Here’s my friend Heather’s recounting of the events.  Basically, my character’s reactions to story events weren’t coming through, because I was getting the mechanics of beats wrong.

Since then I’ve done quite a bit of research about beat structure.  What I’ve learned is basically summarized in this post on motivation-reaction units, which is brilliant.  I also like everything that is said about structure in this post.

But.

Let me tell you, it is really hard to come up with beat after beat to show character reactions and emotion.  The character’s heart can only thud so many times before I want to crack my head on the desk.  As I’ve been fixing my motivation-reaction units, I’m having occasion to write (and re-write) literally hundreds of beats.  And mostly, I just want to claw my own skin off instead of writing one more way that my character can express that she’s upset.

So I did some research into how to come up with better beats, which is really the root of all of my problems.  I tend to leave the beats out, which makes it hard for the reader to connect with the character.  I do this because I can’t think of a good beat at the time, so I just kind of wander away and never come back.  Time to learn to write better beats, Janci.

A friend referred me to the work of Robert Olen Butler, whose thoughts on the subject are summarized here.  He suggests five types of beats; let me tell you, for the volume of beats I need to write, five was not enough.  So I did some more research, and some brainstorming, and this is what I’ve come up with.  Ahem.

A Non-Inclusive List of Physical Beat Ideas, for When You Want to Claw Out Your Eyes Rather Than Write About the Beating Heart

1. If you have a magic system, use it.  In Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson gets a lot of beats out of people burning various metals; in Warbreaker, his main character’s hair turns color according to her emotions.  I’m working on a shape shifter book; my characters can show their emotions in the ways their bodies shift, but consciously and subconsciously.   If you’re lucky enough to have something like this, use it.  Your beats will be more unique and interesting when they’re derived from your world, and you’ll be enriching your world to boot.  Reciprocal relationships like that are the best.  Win/win!
2. You do have a setting.  But it looks and feels different, depending on your character’s mood.  Let your character describe people, places and things in emotional language in the dialogue beats; then the reader can tell what they’re feeling through the same words you’re using to get across the blocking, or the setting.  Once again, win/win.
3. This is Butler’s real contribution: you can use quick, one sentence visceral images from the past as a character remembers something, or from a feared or desired future when your character anticipates something.  Not a full flashback, just an image.  These can make really powerful beats, but they have to be pretty seamless in order to work right.
4. I’d add, you can do the same with things the character fears/hopes are happening in the present, in other locations in your world.  If a character is worried about someone else, you don’t need to tell us they’re worried.  Give us a one sentence visceral image of what the fear looks like, and we’ll be worried, too.
5. On the same note of Butler’s “little vivid bursts of waking dreams,” you can also go surreal.  If the character gives us an image of the floor swallowing her whole, we’ll get that she’s scared, or wants to hide.  Just make sure that the surreal images are clearly metaphorical, and avoid them in the first pages of fantasy novels.  Wouldn’t want your reader suddenly imagining carnivorous floors, unless you’re writing about them.  In which case you are awesome.
6. Another good beat is a deliberate physical action that reveals what the character’s feeling.  Just make sure we’re really grounded in the character’s internal thoughts before she slaps someone.  If we are, it’s a great beat.  If we’re not, we’re confused.
7. Then, there’s the oft used physical sensation beats, both the internal and the external.  The wind can blow across her face.  Her heart can pound.  She can grind her teeth.  These are powerful, but super easy to overuse.  I try to exhaust the rest of the list first, and I’m still using too many of these.  Time to cut, cut, cut.  And then replace.  With a better beat.  Dang it.
8. And last, while I don’t glowingly recommend this, you can just tell us what the emotion is.  “He looked angry,” isn’t the most artful sentence ever, but hey, it’s better than leaving it blank.  And as I’ve been researching, I’ve been surprised about how often my favorite authors just tell me what the emotion is a lot of the time.  I put this at the very bottom of the list, because I think other ways are better ways, but if artistry fails you, just tell us what the character feels.  You can fix it later, or if you don’t, most readers will probably forgive you, especially if you don’t do it every time.

You’ve probably heard about this by now, but if you haven’t, there’s an Indiegogo campaign going on for an anthology featuring a lot of awesome authors.  They’re writing either alternate endings/chapters/versions of their own work, or essays and such about mental illness.  All the proceeds for the campaign go to helping Robison Wells pay down the medical and tax debt that he’s accrued as a direct result of his crippling mental illnesses.

I don’t think I can say anything better about the particulars of the situation than what’s already been said, so I’m going to link you to some people.  First, Rob’s description of what’s happened to him can be found on the Indiegogo page, and also on his blog.  I like this one with a Mormon focus, particularly.  Brandon Sanderson is organizing the production of the anthology, and you can find his pitch for the project here.  Dan Wells wrote this post about Rob’s situation.  I also really liked what Shannon Hale had to say about OCD in this post.  (OCD is one of several of the disorders Rob is currently grappling with.)

Mostly, though, I just want to say that Rob is awesome.  He has always been and continues to be an incredibly kind and giving person.  He’s helped me out when I know he had a lot of other more pressing things on his plate to deal with.  He’s a good friend and a good writer and a great person, and what’s happened to him breaks my heart.  I hope that this anthology funds fully, so he and his family can get the relief that they need.

Because I don’t think we can say this enough: mental illness is real.  It’s terrible and dark.  When you have a mental illness, your brain tells you things that don’t make sense, and to me, there is nothing in the world scarier than not being able to trust and depend on your own brain.  I’ve known a lot of people with mental illnesses, and I’ve dealt with them myself.  For a long time I wondered why so many people with these problems crossed my path, but I don’t wonder any more.  It’s because these problems are ridiculously common.  You most certainly know not one, not two, but many people who suffer from them, whether or not they’ve chosen to share that with you.

Rob’s struck a blow against the stigma by talking about his so openly, and I respect him for that.   The terrible truth about mental illness (any illness?) is that there’s nothing any of us can do to fix it.  We can’t take Rob’s problems away from him, and while he can (and does) seek treatment, there’s nothing he can do to make himself better either, at least in the immediate sense.  What he can have, though, is relief from the crippling debt that comes with living in America and having any kind of sudden health crisis that renders you unable to work.

What’s happened to Rob is something that could happen to any of us at any time.  So take a look at the anthology project, and if you can, buy a book.

The money couldn’t go to a better guy.

For the last week I’ve been working on improving my beat mechanics.  I’m going through a manuscript marking all the missing beats, and what they should accomplish.  This, I thought, would be quick work.

But it’s not.  I was bemoaning today how tedious the work is and how long it’s taking.  What was wrong with me, that the work dragged so badly?  Why did my brain feel like I’d been at this for hours after only a few minutes?  Why was I so exhausted?

Then it occurred to me.

It’s because I’m learning things.  My brain is adapting to a different way of thinking.  Learning is hard work, even if the work isn’t hard.  Then later, when the brain is used to the work, it becomes easy.

So it’s actually good that it’s hard.  It means that I’m internalizing the work that I’m doing.

Go figure.