Rayne Hall's Blog: Rayne Hall, Fantasy and Horror Author, page 6

Have I Added my Trailers the Right Way?

I'm still finding my way around GoodReads. Yesterday, I discovered that I can post videos, so I added my book trailers.

http://www.goodreads.com/videos/list_...

Have I done this right?
It looks like they're playing ok. Have I offended against any written or unwritten Goodreads rules, or netiquette?

Since each of the anthologies (Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft) has stories by several authors, I'd like to show the other authors' names as well, not just my own. Is this possible? How do I do that?

So far, all I've done is list them in the description. But it would be nice if their names would show as "author" as well, so it doesn't look like I'm the sole author. Can I do something? Or can they?

1111 Friends :-)

I have exactly 1111 friends on Goodreads. That's a nice number. I wonder if I'll have 2222 friends one day... or would this number be outside the realistically possible?

New Book Cover in the Works

I've commissioned the illustration for the book cover for the Storm Dancer sequel. Do you think that's premature?

I've only written the first six chapters of the book.

Maybe I'm crazy? What if the novel goes in a direction I hadn't planned, and the cover no longer fits the story?

On the other hand, seeing the cover may inspire my writing.

Besides, having a handsome male magician to look at can't be bad.

I love working with artists. It's so much more exciting than using stock photos. I can actually tell them "Yes, this looks nice, but make the heroes eyes darker... his shoulders broader... and please open two more buttons on his shirt."

No buttons for this book, though. Storm Dancer and the sequel are set in a fantasy world based on the Bronze Age, and people didn't have buttons then. Indeed, the hero isn't wearing much anyway besides a collar and kilt. There'll be abs and pecs on display. Very tastefully, of course.

Yay! Writing About Villains is published

It's the latest one in my Writing Craft series, joining the bestsellers Writing Fight Scenes, The Word-Loss Diet, Writing Scary Scenes.

I based the book on my class "Creating Great Villains" with some of the lessons forming book chapters, and additional material added.

The book is on Amazon for Kindle. Here's the US link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BWYEGX0
It's also on Smashwords. Kobo, Apple, Barnes& Noble etc will follow eventually.

Now, onto the next book in the series. I've started Writing Dark Stories, Writing About Magic, and Twitter for Writers. Which do you should I focus on next?

10 Random Facts about Rayne Hall (video)

I've created a (short!) youtube video with ten random facts about me.
It was fun to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXv4Ei...

Making youtube videos, book trailers and such is my favourite form of procrastination when I should be writing, cleaning the bathroom or doing paperwork.

"Writing About Villains" - to be published soon

I'm excited. 'Writing About Villains' is in production. It's the latest in my Writing Craft series and will join the bestsellers 'Writing Fight Scenes', 'The Word-Loss Diet' and 'Writing Scary Scenes'. It has come back from the proofreader and will go to the formatter soon.
Yay!

(And it will have British English spelling and punctuation. Yep.)

"Six Scary Tales" Books Get New Covers

I've commissioned an artist to create a new cover for the Six Scary Tales books.

As before, each volume will have the same cover picture in a different colour.

The old cover was something I cobbled together from two stock photos. The new one is painted by Erica Syverson, who has also painted the cover illustrations for Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies, and collaborated on the cover of Storm Dancer. She's good with dark and creepy images.

Original art is so much more exciting than stock photos.

The new cover will reflect the flavour of horror readers will find inside the book: atmospheric and creepy.