New paperbacks – dates

As promised, the new paperbacks are on their way.  Subject to some tweaking of the covers and Dani’s schedule, I’m aiming for May 15th.

I have already set up the new version of Book 1 – still needs the cover finalising, since I did a full circle last week of ‘oh no, the cover doesn’t come out in the colours I thought it would’ which I found so disappointing when I produced the Trilogy in a single volume.

I decided after I looked at the publishing software version of the colours that, no they weren’t the same… but they were great!  So Books 1, 2 and 3 have new covers, which you’ve already seen here in various stages of completion.  We’re still working on the new design for book 4 Traveler; books 5 and 6 will have the same covers with some minor tweaks.

Since the Trilogy and Traveler were already out in paperback two years ago, when I sold all the copies I took with me to a conference, I decided I’d better start with getting Talent Seekers and Bravo Victor out in paperback for the first time.  So, with Book 1 ready, I’ve switched onto editing those two latest books.  And with what I learnt about setting up these books with Book 1, like replacing all the smart (curly) quote marks before saving the file to rtf for the publishing software, I reckon it should go more quickly.  I am going through them all doing a minor edit as well.  Would you believe that after all this time I still found a missing ‘had’ in a past tense construction in the first book?!

So fingers crossed for 15th May – and if it looks like it’s going okay, I’ll do a giveaway of some new paperbacks during Children’s Book Week, (2-10 May).

Progress on the new editions

It seems like I’ve been working on new paperback editions of the Princelings books for ages, but I put them aside for a while to work on other projects.  In January I asked Dani, my illustrator, to have another look at the covers for the first and fourth books.

POTE_NewDraft03We’ve pretty much got the idea right for Princelings of the East, I think; now to get the colour scheme right.  This is the greyscale draft.  We are going for a similar colour scheme overall, but Dani’s given me six backgrounds for the castle, which I’ve only managed to narrow down to three so far – a dark blue (very moody), sky blue (striking) and cream much like the current cover.  It’s the lightning that makes the difference – I’m trying to indicate an electrostatic discharge that the tunnel draws from the Princelings world to create the energy drain.

TravellerRoughdraft01For Traveler in Black and White, I’ve decided try a cover without a guinea pig on the front.  It really hurts to lose Mariusz in his Bogart fedora, but the mixed feedback over whether to abandon the explicit guinea pig characters and just leave them as they are tends to suggest a more neutral cover.  We’re working on a noir approach to the more gothic castle that he comes across in his travels.

These are works in progress, so any suggestions are welcome, as always.

The new editions will come out in paperback from Blurb, once I’ve finished my other hardback project with the company.  The aim is to make them available in physical bookshops and non-Amazon online stores.  I’ll also be doing some minor editing on them, bearing in mind my younger reader Becca’s comment “I like the long words, just not in such long sentences.”  As I’ve found with my flash fiction: I can always tighten the prose!

 

Traveler ebooks updated

When I put together the paperback edition of The Traveler in Black and White I added a Cast of Characters, updated the picture of Castle Buckmore, and made about six or seven minor editing changes.

I remember changing ‘leave’ to ‘leaving’, adding or subtracting a few commas, replacing Spain with Iberia, since I used Iberia as a better country name in the Mariusz & Rajah short story.  On the whole I’ve tried not to use proper country names in the stories, or place names either, although a good map or atlas will identify where I mean!  For some inexplicable reason the second to last paragraph of the book had half a dozen double full stops in it. . Like that.  I have no idea why, but they are there no longer!

You can update your ecopy of Traveler by synching with your Amazon site (I think – check Kindle help if necessary) or if you got it from Smashwords you can update to the new edition if you go to the book page there and choose ‘download’.

If you are planning to buy it from one of the other online stores, it may take a few weeks to be applied, as the stores do their own checks once a new file is received.  Check the preview feature to ensure it is edition 1.3.  There was no 1.2 in the Smashwords version, but it was too confusing to have the same content in different edition numbers for Kindle and Smashwords.

Children’s Book Week Day 4

Traveler - original cover

Kid-Lit-Giveaway-Hop-Button-May-2013-draft-2

Read any good children’s books recently? Stuck for ideas?  Well, this week is your big chance to hop around the world in search of good reads for kids.  You may even win copies, too!   Children’s Book Week is a celebration of the best books for children. 

Every day this week I’ll be posting here, talking about my books, my characters and other books that inspired me.   There will also be some extra activities and on every post there will be a link to my Giveaway.  You can enter some of the options every day you visit.

Hugo and Mariusz – the mystery guinea pigs

All the characters in my books, The Princelings of the East and the rest of the series, are guinea pigs.  They have a complex world, live in castles and other communities and have work, school and all the usual things ‘people’ do. They are based on my real guinea pigs, the first of whom were Fred and George, then along came Victor and Hugo about eighteen months later.  Then we were on the Guinea Pigs – Rodents with Attitude forum one February when DawnC arrived – and she had two guinea pigs,  a beautiful sheltie type called Saku and a big bold chap called Mariusz, who was just like Hugo!

Now here’s a puzzle for you: which is Hugo and which is Mariusz?  The picture on the cover of the Traveler in Black and White was done by Dawn using pastels and working from a photograph.  Which pig is it, hers or mine?

What books do you know where two characters look alike?  I can think of quite a lot.  Many of them swap places, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad.  I can think of three where one of them is a prince or king and the other a commoner or visitor.  I’ve listed those at the bottom of the page, below the Giveaway, along with the answers to the picture puzzle.

Tomorrow is Friday and I’ll talk about Victor, who appears in the first four books, and I’ve been writing another starring him ever since I finished Traveler.  It still isn’t finished, though.

Things to do

Mariusz and hatToday’s picture is one of Mariusz or Hugo with his nice hat.  Download it here and print it out.  You don’t have to use the same colours as the cover, but you can if you like.  It’s your picture!  I once did a snow scene in pink and pale green.  It looked surprisingly good!

Enter my Giveaway

KL Giveaway

Thanks to Mother Daughter Book Reviews and Youth Literature Reviews I’m taking part in a worldwide promotion, the Kid Lit Giveaway Hop. My Giveaway is part of that.

The prizes are:

  • one copy of the Princelings Trilogy (paperback) to a winner in the EU (plus Norway and Switzerland)
  • a bundle of the first three ebooks (as pictured) for a winner elsewhere in the world.
  • one copy of my latest ebook The Talent Seekers (or another of the series if preferred) to a winner (worldwide)

It’s open now and it will close at midnight 19th May (New York time). Click the Kid Lit Giveaway button above to enter – and you can enter every day!

Even more – you can go to other blogs with more books and competitions! Let’s go hopping…

Click here to find more participants and view this Linky Tools list.

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Answers

Books: I’m thinking The Prince and The Pauper, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Prisoner of Zenda, but there are loads more – and plenty of more recent films, too.

Guinea pigs: Mariusz is on the left, Hugo on the right.  You can’t tell from those pictures, but Mariusz’s white lip and cheek, which you can see on the book cover (yes, it’s Mariusz on the cover) were unlike Hugo’s.  Hugo had black cheeks, and a white lip stripe that went down his throat and broadened out on his chest.  Hugo’s white in his crest (on top of his head) started slightly further back than Mariusz’s.  And although they both had a white left foot and a black right foot at the front, Mariusz’s back feet were both black whereas Hugo’s were both white!  And in truth, Hugo was really a dark chocolate colour rather than true black.  It depended on the light, really. But they were both big, bold and very beautiful buddies.  Always up to mischief. I’d better stop there…