Affordable cover art for your self-published novel

We self-published authors are on a tight budget, and we have to cut a few corners in the business of getting our books into print. More often than not, one major corner we cut is the cover: we can’t afford to pay a professional graphic designer, so we use our limited Photoshop skills to design our own cover.

I rarely plug another company’s work on my blog, but this time I’m going to make an exception, because I think the other indie writers who drop by here will appreciate this. Irish Eyes Creations is hunting for business, offering to design your cover for a mere $75. Technically, the company is offering to design film posters, but it’s the same difference. Have a look at the examples on the company’s site.

I’m giving serious thought to a reprint of my out-of-print novel Ulterior with a spanking new cover.

"These aren’t the droids you’re looking for"

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a piece of technology so amusing as this. While it looks like a robot, it is actually little more than a bizarre hybrid of a webcam and a radio-controlled car. Think of it as “video conferencing extreme.” No longer do you have to sit in front of your computer in order to confer with your boss who’s out on a call; your boss can now come walking right up to your desk, courtesy of this man-sized contraption that comes with an LCD screen where the boss’s face resides and a speaker just below his mouth. Naturally there is a camera and mic, so that he can see and hear you, too. And, of course, the device can rove about the office on wheels. So much for “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.”

The product is called the Giraffe, and if that’s not hilarious enough, it’s made by a company called HeadThere. But for me, the real amusement is in imagining myself sneaking up behind it and toppling it over face-first while it’s trunding along, then watching the real boss storming into the office later demanding that the culpit owns up. Better yet, throwing a bag over its head and watching it walk into the walls. Oh, what fun the workplace of the future may be!

I’d love to see what a pet dog would make of this metallic monster advancing on it with Master’s face and voice. Or how about the reaction of a young child to a virtual Daddy? Oh, it’s true; I’m a wicked, wicked man.

Further adventures in the Chion-verse?

Chion has received numerous comments of praise, which you can read for yourself on the Chion page. One negative aspect that a few people have commented on it that it’s too short. The novel is just over 40,000 words long, which translates to 145 book pages. My friend Chris Winter pointed out that this attitude is not necessarily a criticism; it expresses a desire to stay in the world I created; the disappointment is mainly in an enjoyable experience being over too quickly. Conversely, when you’re reading a novel you don’t like, you want to get it over with as fast as you can, don’t you?

As a writer, my policy is always to let a story find its own length. Anything more is padding. I had a discussion about the shortness of the novel with Michael Quayle (who wrote a script for a sequel to Saul’s Pupils). Mike made me realise that, had I been willing to let the story stray away from the perspectives of Jamie and Tara, there was a lot more scope for interesting sub-plots. I still believe I made the right decision, because the novel is much more intimate (and claustrophobic) when the perspective is so restricted, but it’s good to realise that the novel’s premise holds the potential for so much more than I tapped into. Others have expressed how they couldn’t help imagining themselves trapped in their houses by the phenomenon in the book, wondering how they would go about saving themselves.

This request might fall flat on its face, but I would like to put the word out that I am interested in reading “sister stories” to Chion, with a view to publishing them on the site, either in written form or podcast. Can you think of an interesting situation to be in when the calamity struck, or an interesting sub-plot involving an incidental character from Chion? For instance, what happened when the two gunmen held up the supermarket? Did Mr. Darrow try another stunt, or perhaps get a chance to redeem himself? Imagine being a helicopter pilot during the disaster: would you run? Were other parts of the world affected? Here’s my favourite: can you imagine what might have happened at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel connecting Britain to France? I would love it if a few people wanted to take a shot at something like this.

Cycling vs. driving

I reckon one of the best things that happened to my dad (in terms of his health) was when he lost his driver’s licence a few decades ago. Dad belongs to that generation of people who never had to take a test before being issued a licence. Unfortunately, when he lost his licence, driving tests had become mandatory, which meant he would have to subject himself to one before being allowed to drive again. He never did. And so began a few decades of cycling to work on a bicycle, come rain or shine. As a consequence, he is pretty fit for a man in his late sixties. I know another lady who’s in her late seventies and fit as a fiddle due to a lifetime of cycling (I actually remember her from my teenage years, long before I knew her in person; an old lady riding a Chopper is not the sort of image you forget).

From childhood to age twenty-six, I didn’t own a car. When I worked at Lismore Comprehensive, I thought nothing of the four-mile journey by bicycle. In fact, I enjoyed it. Even when I worked twenty-five miles away in Belfast, I would take my bike on the train, then cycle the remainder of the way to work. In my early teenage years, probably the only thing that saved me from ever increasing obesity was my regular paper round. Bikes are great.

So, last weekend, I got the mountain bike out of the garage for the first time since last summer. I feel like I really want to make a go of things in two-wheel fashion again. Maybe get stuck into cycling to work on a regular basis. But the car is such a temptation. You can stay up later in the evening, knowing that you can spend extra time in bed the next morning, because it only takes ten minutes to get across town by car, whereas it’s twenty by bicycle. Then there are those mornings when it’s raining, or when the roads are covered in ice. Worse still, the thought of cycling in last summer’s heat wave is more horrifying than the thought of a bitter winter cold.

The thing is, if you don’t have a car, you find a way to overcome these circumstances, whether that means bussing it on certain days, or walking, or whatever. Transportation for the weekly shopping is another problem. However, one solution would be to do the shopping twice a week instead of once, carrying what I need in a backback. You see? There’s always a way - as long as you don’t mind a little extra effort.

Am I seriously contemplating getting rid of my car? On the one hands (and assuming I can resist the temptation to drive it to work), it’s terrible to spend so much money every year on insurance, tax, MOT, repairs, if you end up using the vehicle for only 10% of the time you did before. On the other hand, there’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning to the sound of torrential rain beating on the window. So, I don’t think I will be rashly selling the car anytime soon. My main concern is my health.

The modern trend is that we spend a portion of our leisure time doing exercise, but this strikes me as slightly freakish - even though I do it. It’s like we’re making up for something that our bodies should be doing in a more general sense over the course of a day. I’m always questioning the culture that I live in, and I think we could learn a lot from the way things are done elsewhere in the world, particularly from the Chinese, who have a lot more respect for the idea of cycling to work than we in the west do.

Well, I’m not going to make any drastic decisions. In true lazybones fashion, I’m going to break myself in gently and wait for warmer weather before experimenting with cycling to work.

For cycling fans, here’s a great blog I subscribe to: Free Advice on How to Fix Your Bicycle.

Chion feedback and 100 sales so far

Chion has received its first proper review, on the None May Say book reviews site. I like this review; it’s mostly positive without being afraid to mention a few warts. In addition, I’ve received a lot of feedback from readers, the majority of which I’ve now placed on the Chion page.

A fifth bookshop, Eason in Donegall Place (Belfast), is stocking Chion. I’m pleased to report that, between bookshop sales, internet sales, and personal sales, I’ve now sold over one hundred copies in the 1.5 months since publication; small potatoes if your name’s Stephen King, but for an indie author a great start.