The Chronicles of Emberstone: Now Available on Medium

Yup, just like the title says, I've decided to share "The Chronicles of Emberstone" first draft on Medium as well as Wattpad. Check it out here!

While you there, don't forget to read, submit, and vote in time for the next chapter of "Assassin in the Tower" to go live this Saturday. Find it here on the CrunchySerial page!

Real Big News! "Assassin in the Tower" Serialized Fiction with CrunchySerial

Hello Everyone!!

I am VERY excited to share my next big endeavor with you today. It's been several weeks in the making, and now I can finally tell you all about it!

My next official story is "Assassin in the Tower," a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale in a fantasy setting. This story will be published in conjunction with a brand-new serialized fiction platform called CrunchySerial.

CrunchySerial is a platform that will feature a hand-picked slate of authors writing stories with you, the readers! Think of it like a live-action "choose your own adventure" novelette. Once a week, a new chapter will go live with a question for readers to answer. Readers (that's you!) will submit answers and vote on the direction they want the story to take. Then the author (that's me!) will write the winning choice into the next chapter.

The platform is in beta testing right now, so join us over on the official website and on Medium to check out my first chapter and get in on the voting from the beginning! Make your voice heard and help me give CrunchySerial a great opening weekend!

Check out Chapter One of "Assassin in the Tower" on CrunchySerial's official site and on Medium.

Happy Reading and Voting!

Britain

Announcing the "Glass Roses" Audiobook!

It's here! It's here!

After many long months of waiting, I am very excited to announce that "Glass Roses: A Victorian Fairytale" is now available as an audiobook from Saga Egmont, the digital imprint of Danish publishing house Lindhardt and Ringhof.

Because my publisher is based in Europe, there are several places where you can listen and obtain copies of the audiobook. Here are all of the links in a nice little list:

Audible.com -- Amazon's Audiobook service

Storytel.se -- Swedish, Finnish, and Danish Streaming Service

Saxo.com -- Danish Sales Channel

"Glass Roses" is now available in print, ebook, and audio formats. When I began writing the book in late 2014/early 2015, I was not thinking far enough ahead to imagine this day. Now that I'm here, I almost can't believe it. Thank you for being part of this journey with me. I'm eager to see where the road takes us next.

Happy Listening!

Kindle Promotion for "Glass Roses"

I am closing out March with a Kindle Promotion for "Glass Roses." Beginning tomorrow, you can purchase the e-book for $0.99 on Amazon!

The promotion begins at 12am Pacific on Sunday, March 25th and ends at 12am Pacific on Friday, March 30th.

Happy Reading!

Spring 2018 Writing Slate

Welcome to Spring 2018!

Here is a quick look at my current slate of projects for the new season.

New Stories

Available to read on Wattpad

Editing Stages

Original drafts available to read on Wattpad

Happy Reading!

Making Over "Princess of the Peas" : A Design Story

Hello Again!

After a long break, I'm ready to do some major overhauls of the manuscripts I finished last year. We begin today with a complete redesign of the cover for "The Princess of the Peas."

I've struggled with the design of this cover for a long time. Since I'm not a huge fan of using real models on my self-designed covers, it has been hard to find a "fit" for this one. The themes of the story combined with the odd nature of the title only add to the difficulty.

My covers are almost all self-designed or designed by my friend Adelyn Sterling based on original design concepts of my own. For photos, I like Pixabay as a great source for free images that can be used commercially without attribution. The fonts come mostly from FontSquirrel, another great resource. You have to be a little more aware of what their licenses require, but I always give credit to everyone in my front matter anyway.

Here is my first iteration of the "Princess" cover. You'll notice I began with a modern foodie photo focusing mainly on the "peas" part of the title with a font that attempted to evoke the royalty of the word "princess" and the curly nature of pea plant vines. Believe it or not, this cover was designed entirely in Microsoft Word using this tutorial I found.

There are things I still like about this cover. The colors, for one thing... the green really pops, and I love that particular shade of grey in the background. The lines are lovely too. It is a beautiful photo, but the text placements and colors leave the viewer in no doubt that I am an amateur. :P Still, I loved the photo so much that I stuck with it through two or three different edits. By now I had purchased an Adobe Photoshop subscription and had designed a real book cover with Adelyn's help. That cover is the one I used for "Glass Roses" when it came out in print.

Here are my next redesign attempts:

Clearly I've learned a thing or two about font sizing, not to mention more streamlined ways to highlight the text and make it legible. ;) I think a part of me will always love the idea of this design for its colors and clean lines. Still, as the story evolved, I felt there was a need for a change of some kind.

This is where I got a little experimental... and since I was only experimenting for myself, I decided that grabbing any image I thought might work from the Internet was okay. Obviously this is bad practice for any graphic design project, but since my Wattpad and blog are not monetized in any way, I figured it was fine for a placeholder project. Here is the cover I eventually settled on:

Well... it's definitely different! You can see that I kept the green color, but darkened it significantly. This is one of only a few covers on which I have a physical model in the photo (something I'm still not sure I like doing... except for this cover I slapped together on Canva for my most recent project... I like this one). The original font choice is still present, but I'm leaning a little more heavily into the "princess" idea with the more ornate details. Notice that I placed the words "a modern retelling" about where a logo or company name would be printed on the chef's uniform. The little border between text and image is meant to resemble parsley... have I got you convinced?

This is honestly a bit cringe-inducing to me, especially after looking at the lovely, clean lines of the earlier image I was using. Those cringes and my decision to start tearing the manuscript to shreds with much-needed edits paved the way for my most recent cover overhaul.

I began with almost no idea what to try that I hadn't tried already. So I started skipping around through the original draft, reading snippets here and there until I suddenly had a spark of inspiration... why not make the cover look like an old cookbook? Off to Google I went to search for cover designs used on antique French cookbooks. Eventually I found one that looked the way I had been imagining it and set to work. There is probably more I could do, but for now I am happy with how it has turned out.

Here are the two covers, the inspiration piece on the left, and the new design on the right:

So... what do you think?? Leave me a comment below and let me know if you like the new design, or if you think I should keep trying. 

Happy Reading!