Rhoda Baxter's Blog, page 6

Love on the brain by Ali Hazelwood

I loved The Love Hypothesis, so I expected that I’d love Love on the Brain too. I did – it’s got a scientist heroine. I love the lab related dynamics and the sausage referencing (because they’re very true to life). The whole thing with the engineer who did one term of neuroscience patronising the woman who has a PhD and a whole bunch of papers in actual neuroscience is also very relatable.

The story is great. My only quibble is that Levi seems to be very similar to Adam from TLH. Come to ...

Book review: Do You want to start a scandal by Tessa Dare

Sometimes, you’re just in the mood for something light, fast paced and funny. This book delivers on all of those promises.
Charlotte is the youngest of three daughters and her mother is basically Mrs Bennett from Pride and Prejudice – anxious to marry off her daughters to rich men. Charlotte tries to save Piers from her mother and inadvertently stumbles into a scandal and an arranged engagement.
Piers has his own secrets, which means that he is in danger. He can’t protect someone like Charlott...

Canva for Authors: How to Make bookmarks in Canva

When you go to book events (or even just when you nip in the book shop), it’s handy to have something with your book cover on to give to people. I usually carry little business cards, but I find that people like bookmarks better. Besides, you can get more info on a book mark (like a QR code!).

A few weeks ago, I did a tutorial on how to create these bookmarks using Canva and then get them printed using a service like Bananaprint (whom I like because they’re reasonably priced and rel...

Book review: His grumpy childhood friend by Jackie Lau

This book has been on my Kindle for a while and I finally got around to reading it. I love that Charlotte is a grumpy, caffiene obsessed, social awkward weirdo. I also love that Mike is a ray of sunshine, who has loved her forever and is exactly who she needs.

It’s a quick read. There’s quite a lot about food (which is one of the things I like about Jackie Lau’s books). I didn’t love this as much as I loved some of her other novellas (You should all read Only One Bed for Christmas), but i...

Canva For Authors: How to Make a short animated Ad for your book

I made this YouTube video just before Christmas when I was putting one of my novels down to 99p as part of a Christmas sale. It walks you through the process of making a short animated video to advertise your special offer. It’s really not as hard as you might imagine.

Here’s the video on YouTube. As always, if you find it useful, please share. You know how all YouTubers ask you to ‘like and subscribe’? That’s because the number of subscribers and the number of likes makes a big difference t...

Premade romance book covers (with titles generated by ChatGPT)

Over the Christmas period, I spent some time playing with ChatGPT, just like everyone else did. I wanted to challenge myself to make some book covers, but I needed inspiration. On a whim, I asked ChatGPT to give me some chicklit/ romcom titles. It came up with a huge list.

Eventually, out of 200 titles, I picked 25 which sounded like they could be on real books and made book covers for them all.

One of the reasons for setting myself this silly challenge was so that I could practi...

ChatgPT and the romance book covers

Over the Christmas period, I spent some time playing with ChatGPT, just like everyone else did. I wanted to challenge myself to make some book covers, but I needed inspiration. On a whim, I asked ChatGPT to give me some chicklit/ romcom titles. It came up with a huge list.

Eventually, out of 200 titles, I picked 25 which sounded like they could be on real books and made book covers for them all.

One of the reasons for setting myself this silly challenge was so that I could practi...

Book Review: Vera Wong’s unsolicited advice for murderers by Jesse Sutanto

I loved this book. Vera is such a great character – elderly, lonely, fearsome, interfering – an all round force of nature.
Mostly though, she’s lonely. Life is dull and colourless. No one comes to her tea house and nothing much happens. Until she comes downstairs and finds a dead man in her shop.
Vera decides that the man has been murdered (even though the police don’t think so) and decides to solve the mystery herself. We then get to see a group of very different individuals, all of whom coul...

Canva for Authors – How to Make a cover reveal teaser image

Cover reveals are tremendous fun – you get to tease people about them for days before the actual cover reveal. You could post for five days on the run up to the event saying things like ”only four more days to go’ … or you could show people elements of your cover in isolation to build up some excitement. Here’s how you make an image that shows only part of your book cover at any one time.

Want to know more? Head over to my YouTube page and find out how to make these images in Canva. If yo...

Canva for Authors: how to make a trope graphic for your novel

Trope lists are hot right now, thanks to Tiktok. You might have seen graphics outlining tropes all over social media. You can use these to tell readers what’s in your book in bullet point form. You can use them for both fiction and non fiction. Ideally, you’ll be using this type of image alongside other sorts of images (like images with review quotes) so that you have some variety in your marketing.