GIVEAWAY! WIN Lily Adile Lamb’s new book-The Nameless One

I’m super excited to welcome my friend Lily Adile Lamb who’s here to promote her newest masterpiece. You’ll find the rules for how to win her e-book, The Nameless One, at the end of this post. Happy reading!!

          One day, I was on Facebook and saw a photo of a creature who with its wings, resembled a bat, albeit with a human face. I was drawn to its beauty with the figure looking utterly lonely in a cave far away from civilization. I literally felt hurt from what I saw. I imagined how many of us feel utterly alone in crowds and I felt very sad. I instantly visualized him as a male-being longing for his loved one. The next day, I was on Pinterest looking at photos of beautiful places in the world. There was this photo of an amazing mountain under the stars… voila! I suddenly envisioned the character in both my head and my heart, along with the mountain he would call his home. I then instantly knew who would be his other half.

As I wrote this story, I imagined the scenes in my head and tried to write them down. At some stage, I was crying at what my characters were going through. I was caught up in their tale, all I could hope for was to finish their part for all of us. It had a universal message about unconditional love, acceptance and our human frailties.

The day, I released my story; I was up until the early hours of the day, anxious and excited.

The Nameless One

Blurb:

He was the only nameless one among his kind, the result of his mother’s forbidden affair with a human. He was the only one the others teased and tormented, the only one who longed for his own sex – a crime among his kind. And when he repeated his mother’s mistake with a human male, the punishment was terrible – his wings were broken, his body was crushed, and he was imprisoned in a bottle, freed only to grant the wishes of whichever greedy human found him next. And there he stayed, alone.

Faine was born different, too, his legs withered at birth, his little body left at the edge of the woods for the other abandoned ones to take in. Sylvonna the wise woman raised him in kindness, and the sheep he tended were patient with his slow, painful gait. It was a good life…only he longed for a lover of his own sex, and while there was no shame in it among his people, there were none among them who shared that longing. And so he was alone.

The forest whispered to Faine, that he would find love…that his true love was coming soon.

And when the nameless one was at last freed from his prison, his release would come on a mountain, near a forest…a forest where the world’s other outcasts dwelt. A mountain where Faine would bring his sheep to graze…

“The Nameless One” is a fable, a fairy tale, a love story about two broken creatures who are made whole at last.

Tags– #NamelessOne #Fable #Gay #LoveWins #Romance

Available at- http://smile.amazon.com/THE-NAMELESS-Lily-Adile-Lamb-ebook/dp/B018ZP5JN4/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

For a chance to win Lily’s new book, all you have to do is share on your social media pages the link from right above ⇑. Add to your post the tags from above ⇑, then come back and post the link to your share here along with your e-mail addy. The winner will be chosen through random.org . I will post the winner’s name next Friday, December 18th, at 8 PM my time zone (GMT+2). You have until then to comment. For any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. Good luck!

Author Promo – M. E. Sanford

Remember, M.E. Sanford, guys? Not long ago, with the occasion of our free anthology release, Hunting Under Covers, I interviewed him regarding his story in the antho. You can find that interview here: 

Interview with author M.E. Sanford

Now Mitchell is back to talk about his latest release, which has an awesome title: The Wind Your Voice, The Rain Your Tears. The title alone makes me crave this story. So, without further ado, I’ll let Mitch tell you about his book himself.

When I came up with the story in The Wind Your Voice, The Rain Your Tears, I had been working 16 hour days in a gas station. When you work in a gas station, there is no filter of customers. Everyone and anyone gets gas, or buys snacks. I knew after some time that somebody would be so hurtful and cruel to me that it would be very painful emotionally. Sure enough, I was left in tears after an incident that directly inspired the interaction between Vinny Shields and Tristan May, my main characters.

But why stop there? I turned that incident into an entire novel. Vinny is very much like I was during the period in which I began writing the book. He is trapped in his life with no drive forward, he grew stagnant. But then he meets Tristan May, the flamboyant gas station attendant that represents that much needed catalyst to inspire Vinny out of his dull life. 

The constant ridicule of his new relationship was something that I came up with during a phase of loneliness. Having lost so many of my closest friends I really felt the need to give someone a person that will appreciate Vinny unconditionally. Thus, the character of Tristan May. There is a lot to the novel, including tragedy and even situations of suicide as I believe mimicking the human condition is one of my greatest inspirations.

I want people to be inspired by the story. And I want them to finish reading feeling that even through all hopelessness there is somebody out there that will be your savior without them even trying. 

 

The Wind Your Voice, The Rain Your Tears – Blurb:

Small town mechanic Vinny Shields doesn’t have much going for him. He has a girlfriend that seems to chase every man that crosses her path. His father and mother are consistently unimpressed with his lifestyle. And his younger brother just dropped a bombshell that will change the dynamic of his family.

Vinny then meets the flamboyant gas station attendant, Tristan May, and learns more about what it means to love and be loved.

Purchase links:

Amazon

Smashwords

Lulu

About M. E. Sanford:

A life long writer and storyteller, M.E. Sanford has always pursued creative careers. One of his passions is writing novels and other short stories.

Just recently he made a major move cross country to pursue a dream that includes publishing his stories that he’s been working on the past several years. An entertainer at heart, M.E. follows the pull of his ambitions and turns his experiences into touching works of literature.

If just one person is touched by his stories he can consider himself a success.

Contact info:

Twitter: @thesleepinggods

Facebook: M.E. Sanford

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7777211.M_E_Sanford

Shayla’s (Mis)Adventures in Coverland PART 2

As promised, my friends, here is part two of my adventures in Coverland.
Last time I stopped at the point where I decided I needed to see my cover from a different approach. As a result, I oriented towards a more abstract/vectorish looks. No more stock photos for me.
At first I wanted to have a microphone as the focus of my cover, but I soon changed my mind. I didn’t find microphone illustrations for commercial purposes, I didn’t find brushes that I liked. So I said “Never mind, i’ll just do something cute, even though it might be unrelated with the story.”
That’s how this cover was born:

I used a free commercial font, a free music notebook texture and flower brushes that I made myself.

After I shared it with my friends, they all commented on the pink. no pink for us, lady, thank you very much.  *Sigh*

No biggie, I’ll make it purple.

Basically all I did was play around with layer modes, hue-saturation, curves, etc. I liked it a lot. Deb commented on the flowers though. now that they popped, she suddenly realized they had no place in the pictures. It made no sense for them to be there.

I didn’t really understand her logic, I admit, but I’d rather trust someone else’s opinion than my own when it comes to unexplored territories, and this was definitely an unexplored territory for me.

So I took the flowers out and came back to the main idea of my book. What was my book about? Two best friends. One of them is singer that uses his unrequited love to fuel his passion for music, the other one comes out for him in the end. It’s that simple.
I thought I could convey this with the use of the rainbow’s colors and some music notes.
I made various versions of the cover, some of which I have deleted . Here’s what I kept.

I apologize, but I’m too tired now to modify the damn HTML so the pics show in one row. I swear I’m sick of blogger. It may be easy to customize sometimes, but other times…

Anyway, end of rant, back to topic. I again showed these to Deb. She pointed out that having some guitar picks and drums would be better. I didn’t agree with this one because they had very little to do with the story. She even showed these covers to her students and they all agreed on the third from those above I believe. I’m not sure exactly because I deleted a few.

At this point I showed the cover to Vess. Vess immediately said she thought it was too dark. She suggested I enlarge and right (righten?) the heart in the middle. cange the layer mode a bit. This is how I came with the above fifth cover.

Well, Deb was very very helpful. But I felt that the cover had a too many things thrown on top of each other. I returned to the initial idea of something simpler.

It was then that Vess saved me again. She showed me a wallpaper with a rose and a text in a circle. It looked gorgeous, simple. Beautiful. I thought about it a little and I decided I could do something similar. With the use of a rose picture I had with my own garden roses and a few free brushes, I made this:

Vess loved it. But “What’s the blood got to do with it?” she pointed out. Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t so obviously point at bleeding heart. some might take it literally and confuse it with a mystery story.

So I changed it. unfortunately I deleted the last file. I had a few falling petals, but they fell upside down. I noticed it thanks to Vess again. In the end, I corrected the mistake, deleted a bit more of the gray area, and ended up with this:

So, this is my final cover. I did not write “an LL story” or something like that as other authors did, simply because I forgot. I wanted to be done with it, otherwise, knowing me, I knew I’d end up tweaking it endlessly.

So, this was the story of my first self-made cover.

What I learned from this experience?

First and foremost, NEVER do it alone. I had three awesome friends who helped build this: Louise, Deb and Vess, who all pointed out my mistakes and gave priceless advice. I would have ended up with a mess if not for them.

Secondly, go with your first instincts.
From the start, I wanted something simple and minimalist. No matter how many ideas I bounced back and forth with everyone, no matter how many versions I came up with, I was still attracted to the simple cover. I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort and spared my friends a lot of eye rolls and huffs if I’d just stuck to my first thought and worked around that.

Third, if you don;t know what you’re doing, go with simple. I might not have the greatest cover. But for a beginner, I think it looks good. As long as it’s simple, your rookie mistakes will be reduces to a minimum. It won’t be so noticeable that you have no idea what you’re doing. Monochromatic is also a good way to avoid bad result. As you can see, I went with both to minimize my risks LOL

If you can make it free, go with it. You can have a cute cover even for little or no money. for this cover I made my own rose brush from a photo. I used free for commercial use font from 1001fonts.com (click the green dollar button) and free for commercial use brushes from Obsidian Dawn .

Lastly, don’t forget to give credit, even if it’s not required, for the resources you use. It’s common sense.

Well, thanks a lot for following me through my adventure. I’d be honored if you’d like to share your covers with me.

Lots of hugs and kisses,
Shayla

Shayla’s (Mis)Adventures in Coverland or How I learned making covers is not that easy (gah!) – PART I

Sorry for the long title 😛

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. Huge apologies to everyone who’s following. In case you were curious, yes, I’ve been busy writing. My story for Love’s Landscapes, Only you, is complete. Edited, revised, revised again, and again, and again, you name it. I really hope you guys will enjoy it.

So, this year I wanted to put a lot more effort into the process and decided to make my own cover as well. I didn’t want to hire anyone to do it. I wanted it to be much more personal than that. However, I never expected it would be so hard to decide on an actual cover. And some point I was so frustrated I was ready to give up. Let me show you why (and keep in mind that this is the abbreviated version :D):

First, I thought I should buy stock image that would fit the mood of my story. Since my prompter was inspired by this song, Say Something (I’m giving up in you) by A Great Big World ft. Christina Aguilera – a super sad song in case you don’t know – I figured I would use a photo that would give off that feeling. So I searched pics with guys walking away, autumn inspired pics, depressed guys, and, generally black and white backgrounds.
Here are just a few I found particularly inspiring:

Of, course, there were a lot more to choose from. But as I started writing , I realized it wasn’t my thing. I would never be the kind of writer that would write something particularly dramatic or angsty. I’m all for the cute and fluffy. No matter how sad the subject of unrequited love was, I knew I would eventually end up with a fun and cute story. A depressing cover would definitely not be fit.

On to plan B then. I figured I needed something to suggest the pain of love and loneliness, but at the same time have a hopeful message. So, I thought the best way to go about it was to find a cover with a heart somewhere in the middle. 

My scavenger hunt for lonely hearts proved to be very rewarding. It turns out there are hundreds of images with hearts as the focal points.

Here are some I really liked.

This is where I got serious. I really loved the pic with the rose petals. even though it was in low resolution I could really see its potential once I would buy it. I did a Google image search and confirmed it hadn’t been used as a romance cover before so I made a mock cover. 

 I wasn’t decided on the title and just put something in there.
I posted this mock cover on the writers group on Goodreads and got lots of advice.

I used those pieces of advice and tweaked my cover some more:

 And then some more:

Still, I wasn’t satisfied. Like several peeps from the group pointed out, the writing was too small. However, the image was already way loaded. If my typing would have been bigger than that, I felt that the beauty and simplicity of the image would have been lost. Sadly, as much as I loved the pic, I had to let this one go  T_T

I reoriented myself towards another image and made this cover:

Again with the same issue. My typesetting just didn’t fit. Too small. It didn’t pop out. It didn’t leave a strong impression. In other words, amateurish. I was definitely not satisfied. 

But I’m a stubborn person.

Switching to plan C, the most radical so far. I decided I’d make two totally different covers and ask my friends for help in choosing the right one.

The first one was meant to be cute, but also very minimalist and airy, so there would be enough space for the typesetting to be big without crowding the picture. 

I wanted to convey the image of a guy giving his heart to another guy. That, however, wouldn’t have fit the minimalism criterion at all. Not to mention it would have been way too hard to find an image like that. I could have tried painting the guys, but I suck at digital art, so, I immediately dismissed that fleeting thought. 

The best alternative I could come up with was to concentrate just on the hands. By this time, I also had my title picked. This sounded promising. I searched for some hands pics, one holding a heart and another one receiving it. Unfortunately, at that time I didn’t find the best stock ever (after a couple of weeks, I did, but it was already too late) and here’s the result:

At this point, like I said, I was consulting my friends. One of them, Vess, said she didn’t like the font. She also suggested putting my name under the title or, either way, make it centered. I followed her advice:

Much better, right?
The problem was that this cover did not satisfy my other two friends, Deb and Louise. Deb, especially, really disliked the hands at the bottom of the cover.

Meanwhile, I had the second option available. I thought to myself, “Ok, cute doesn’t seem to work. Let’s try sexy.” So I picked a really gorgeous hunk image. But I, again, wanted to connect the image with the title of the story. So I decided to put a heart on his chest, make it look like a tattoo.

It was guaranteed this would turn out awesome. I mean, who doesn’t love a naked guy? Sadly, like Deb pointed out, naked guys are so last year. Plus, my tattoo wasn’t very convincing (that was not my fault; his chest is way too flat. No matter how much of a distortion filter I applied it would not stretch further).
Vess loved this one, but she also agreed that between the naked hunk and the previous cover, the one with the hands, the most original one was the first choice.
Louise was the most smitten with this one. She only suggested changing the font. Just to please her, I did.

But, I had pretty much figured it out that this cover was hopeless too.

Ok, sweet pics wouldn’t work. Naked hunks were outdated. What was I going to do? Give up ad hire a pro, or stick with the group cover, which was guaranteed to be gorgeous?
But, how could I give up when I had already reached so far?

It was all or nothing. I decided to completely switch gears and try a vectorish look. My last chance at making my cover. I was determined if plan D would also not work, then, and only then, I would give up.

In part II I’ll talk about my next series of misadventures in coverland. That is, if you till haven’t gone insane by the time you’ve reached the end of this post 😛

Hugs and kisses,
Shayla

How to write proper reviews (my way) – a mini tutorial

I really felt the need to write a post about reviewing because of many reason.
I have recently become a reviewer at Read the Rainbow Reviews, managed by Caitlin Ricci. Ever since reviewing for her, I’ve paid a lot more attention to reviews in general and especially to those of books I like. Some of them really enraged me, not because of their honesty or cruelty, but because the reviewers seem to completely miss the whole point of rating a book.
I’ve also stumbled upon a very interesting topic on Goodreads that refers to ” fake” reviews (maybe I’ll write a post about those at some point too), and that, coupled with a low review of a series I have recently rated very high, prompted me to really speak my thoughts on the subject or reviewing author’s books.

So you bought a book, you read it and you feel the need to speak your mind about it. Where do you start from?
First, you should think of the whole reason why you want to review. Was the book that fantastic that you want to share this with the whole world? Was it so bad that you felt like warning everyone?
Both may be the case, but, honestly, why should anyone care what you think? People have the right to their own opinions. What you think of a book shouldn’t weight at all on their minds when they make the decision to pick that book up. Wanna know something? I could have missed on reading some amazing books if I had paid any attention to low reviews. Why didn’t I pay attention to them? Because, with the risk of sounding like a pompous bitch, I consider myself a smart person. And some of those reviews didn’t convince me at all.

Writing a good reviews, guys, a review that will influence people’s opinions, is more than just saying what you think of a book.
Writing a  good review is about saying your honest thoughts about it and then coming up with arguments to support your opinion.
Ultimately reviewing a book means recognizing that every written thing has its value. Even the worst book will teach you a lesson. Maybe it will teach you that even you could write a better book, but that’s still a lesson, right? And for that reason alone, no book should be dismissed.

I’m sick of those reviews where people just say “This book sucked” or something along those lines. Are those worth being called reviews? Of course not! Those are just the opinions of narcissistic persons who think the world revolves around them and everyone should care that they “wasted” time reading a book they didn’t like. Well, newsflash for those kinds of people, we don’t care!

All that being said, let’s move on to the real mini tutorial.
In order to write a proper, meaningful review, these are a few things you need to take into consideration:

1. Don’t be a selfish asshole. People don’t really care what you personally thought of the book, but what the book is actually about, what goes beyond the small blurb they read on the publisher’s site. So, what is the book actually about? In order to properly explain it, ask yourself the following questions:

2. What is the theme of the book?
-what does the main plot revolve around?
-what do the secondary plots, if any, revolve around?
-is it a happy book? A sad book? A book that transmits a message of encouragement, love, positive energy etc?
No matter how short a book is, there’s always something that the author wants to convey. Find that, and you’ll find your theme.

3. Are the characters three-dimensional?
-do they have goals? Are there any obstacles that stay in the way of these goals?
-what do they have to lose?
-what do they love the most? What do they hate the most?
-do they have flaws?
-do they have issues? Do they surpass these issues along the way?
-how do they react to the plot? are their reaction exaggerated or too mellow?
-if this is a romance book, is the chemistry obvious? Do the characters connect naturally or does it seem forced? Etcetera.
Does the author do a good at depicting all of the above? If so, then you have a book with real enough characters.

4. What about the action?
-does the action flow or is it stagnant?
-do the characters do something or just eat, grin, chuckle, and sleep for the whole book?
-does what they do have a point,do chapters connect to form a linear plot in which every scene is the cause for the existence of another or are there chapters that seem to have no reason to be there?

5. Continuity, balance and grammar
– are there any major plot holes or silly errors (like mistaking names or eye color etc)?
– is the grammar really insufferable? (Please check a dictionary first and foremost before accusing an author or editor of stupidity, and bring the evidence to the table; for all we know, you might be the stupid one!)
– is the vocabulary or the phrasing too unclear? Are the phrases too long or too short for the entire book, making it irritating to read?
-does the author repeat too many words or do they use too many pompous words?
-is the humor exaggerated or does the opposite happen?
-are there too many descriptive moments as opposed to narrative moments; equally, is there too much dialogue, or too much sex on page, or too much action?

6. Finally, given consideration to all of the above and anything else that I might have neglected to mention, would you consider recommending the book?
Now, and only now, after you have actually deconstructed the book, it is the time to give your own opinion, based on your tastes.

7. Don’t forget to mention that, in the end, this was just your personal opinion.

I could go one like this forever, but, to recap, in my opinion, a meaningful reviewer should act like an editor. Bring objective  arguments to the table. Don’t just say you liked a book or you hated it.
Obviously, you don’t have to state everything. you don’t need to share the whole process through which you have reached your conclusions, but bring solid, believable arguments that readers would care about. I, for one, don’t give a rat’s ass that you didn’t like the book just because you said so. But, if you say “I didn’t like the book because: the humor was forced, the language was too vulgar [give examples], there was just too much sex and no character development, the dialogue was ridiculous [again, examples], and there was absolutely no descriptions; I didn’t even understand what planet was the action going on, etc,” then, yes, I might really consider you opinion. Get my point?
I really hope so, guys, ’cause I’m seriously sick of idiotic reviews.
Hope you’ll spend a couple of minutes during your precious holiday thinking of my post and pay more attention next time you review a book.

Happy holidays and lots of love from Shayla.