Stepping into YouTube

Wow, busy day today.  I decided last night that I wanted to put something together and make a YouTube video trailer for my novel The Exiled.  Now, in all honesty, book trailers are not the most popular things on YouTube, in my experience.  And if you've read my other blogs, you know that I am certainly no Picasso... even though I can draw a mean stick figure with a big round head.

But I made the decision to give it a try, and spent most of last night coming up with what I wanted to do.  Needless to say, halfway through the day today, that idea got tossed out the window because it just didn't feel right.  The basics remained the same, but I'm pleased to say I like the end result far better than I think I could have made the original idea.

And in the process I found that in some ways it was very much like writing.  A need to want everything to flow right, and of course trying to be a perfectionist (yes, even though this is my first attempt at making a book trailer video!)

So without further ado, I give you the book trailer for The Exiled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h3SveCJlv4

 

 

 

A New Look

One thing that every author will almost certainly agree on is that a good story needs to have an attractive cover to go along with it.  An attractive cover catches the reader's eye.  It's the first thing they see, and what draws their initial attention to it.

With the amazing talents of another author and amazing cover design artist at http://www.smashwords.com, Jess O'Connell, I am both pleased and truly humbled to say that the first book in the Exiled trilogy, simply titled The Exiled, has a new look.

I wanted to share both the original cover, and the new cover.  I am honestly awed at the talent that Jess has, not only as an author who I highly recommend for her writing ability, but also as such an amazing artist in cover design.

This was the original cover for The Exiled:

And here is the new cover that Jess O'Connell created:

Absolutely amazing.  So this blog is not just to show the new look of the novel, but also to give my most heartfelt thanks to Jess for the beautiful cover design that she created.  Here's a link to her own works at Smashwords:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JessicaOC

Some Things Are Better Left Unwritten

It's been almost two weeks since my last blog, and in that time I've been hard at work on my next novel.  I'm excited to be back to doing what I love to do, even more so because I've changed gears somewhat for this next novel.

While the Exiled trilogy revolved around more modern times, and required quite a bit of research for some spots, my new novel is taking a different path, one of pure fantasy.  So for those of you who loved playing Dungeons and Dragons, or just enjoy that type of fantasy setting, this next novel will be right up your alley.

I did take a break from it over the weekend however, to go back to the Exiled trilogy for a short while.  For several days it was difficult to work on my new novel because I kept thinking back to the Exiled books, particularly Continuation and Infinity.

One comment I'd had from a reader of the first book, Exiled, had said they were hoping for a little more sensuality.  In the second and final books of the trilogy, there were a few places where I expanded on a few particular places.  It's been bugging me for a few days, and I finally realized why.

Sex sells, of that there is no doubt.  There are quite a few movies out there today that intentionally toss in some kind of scene like that - it has absolutely nothing to do with the storyline, it's just thrown in there for no other reason than to have some kind of nudity or sex in it.

I came to the conclusion that certain parts in Continuation and Infinity had done that same thing, to a point.  Sure, I could certainly keep it in there.  Unlike some movies that toss a nude or sex scene in just to have it in there, the added scenes in the two books did make sense, they were part of the story.  But ultimately, I decided that I felt more comfortable simply leaving an impression of the act, rather than detailing it.

The point of all of this is not simply focusing on the sensuality aspects, but an overall observation of the story in its entirety.  I'm sure each of us can think of a book or a movie where afterwards there was a moment of 'why was that in there... it had NOTHING to do with the story!'  Certainly there are times when a little more detail is needed to reinforce the reasoning something is done, but sometimes just leaving the impression without going into detail is enough.