Overpowered Cover Reveal

Fleeing a terrible crime, Taliyah bat Shammai makes her way toward a city of refuge.  Yet can even a band of seven outlaws protect her from the Avenger of Blood? 

This week I'm excited to share the cover of my new novella!  I really love it.  While the designer and I were going back and forth about it I kept using each new version as my desktop background.  On more than one occasion, my brother came into my room to find me staring at it on my computer.  He thought that was pretty funny.

So here it is!  Now you all can stare at it too!  :)

The design is by the wonderful Bulbous Squirrel.  You can find her other covers here: https://www.bsquirreldesign.com/

Looking through designer portfolios always makes me want to order covers for all my stories... even the ones that have been sitting unfinished in my computer (or even worse, in my head) for lo, these many years.  What about you all?  Do you have an unfinished story whose cover you can just see so clearly in your mind's eye?

News on "Overpowered" (Stormbird Cycle)

Fleeing a terrible crime, Taliyah bat Shammai makes her way toward a city of refuge.  Yet can even a band of seven outlaws protect her from the Avenger of Blood? 

I'm excited to announce that my new novella, "Overpowered," will be releasing in October!  I've been working on this story for a while, first for the Five Poisoned Apples contest, then with my wonderful beta readers.  Set in the same fantasy version of the ancient Near East as my previous story "Guardian of Our Beauty," "Overpowered" deals not with Syrian kings and pirate invasions but with Israelite criminals and forgotten wars.  Think "Snow White meets the Book of Judges."

Cool updates, including the cover reveal, coming soon! 

Formatting Ebooks

Hi, all!

I'm prepping a story for e-publication, so I asked the folks over at Realm Makers Consortium about their favorite online resources that discuss ebook formatting.  I got a lot of responses, and I thought they might be useful to some of you!  Keep in mind that I haven't tried these myself yet...

Apparently, automated formatters are evil (who knew?) and will make your ebook look bad.  They may also may your book look different on each type of device.  Kindle for PC, notoriously, ends up looking different from regular Kindle.  The CreateSpace formatter is apparently Extra Evil.

Amazon has its own directions for how to format your ebook:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201723070#prepare_ebook

Smashwords also has a guide, which the folks in the RMC were pretty excited about.  You can download it as a free ebook (which seems appropriate).

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52

Two blogs have useful information.  Annie Douglass Lima wrote a blog in 2013 with directions for how to format your initial file in Microsoft Word. 

https://anniedouglasslima.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-prepare-and-upload-your.html

Guido Henkel prefers the hard-core approach, taking you through preparing your book as an HTML file in his lengthy blog series.  

http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/

The folks on RMC also recommended two YouTube series.  Derek Murphy has step by step directions on how to format your book starting from Word here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ileJXCJpiXc

Wordwave has some basics regarding formatting for Kindle Direct Publishing in this video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21__QirFrak&feature=youtu.be

What do you guys think?  Do you have a favorite formatting method or formatting resource?

Let me know if the links above break--I'll fix them!