Olga Godim's Blog, page 35

My character and I on the web

Painting by Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée

This week, my character Eriale from my novel Almost Adept and I, its author, stand side by side. We have both been interviewed by Alexandra Butcher on her blog. I think Eriale’s interview is way more interesting than mine, but then I’m biased. Like Pygmalion, I’m in love with my young and charming protagonist.

Thanks, Alex, for featuring us both.

Interview with me

Interview with Eriale

 

 

 

Promotion – ready, aim, fire

When a writer promotes herself, how should she target her promotional arrows? Does my promotion aim in the heart of specific readers, so those readers will fall in love with me as a writer? Or the aim is to make them interested in one selected title?

I’ve been putting my short stories on wattpad, one at a time, and letting people in my social media circles know. One of the sites where I posted this info was a readers’ group of my publisher. I published two novels with them and I thought that any promotion of their writer, even for an unconnected title, will be considered a promotion of that writer’s every title, including the novels published with them. My publisher disagreed. She asked me to refrain from posting the info about my wattpad stories on that group. Of course, I won’t do it anymore. But it started me thinking. Isn’t any promotion of my fiction a good thing? I’m promoting my name – my brand. It could lead to my novel sales too, right? At least in theory. Or am I wrong? If I market one of my stories, doesn’t it mean I’m silently promoting all the others?

A post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group

 

Dream Frigate on Wattpad

I posted another story on Wattpad – Dream Frigate. The story genre is magic realism. In 2008, it was included in the anthology of lesbian stories Toe to Toe: Standing Tall and Proud.

Diana thought she would pay any price to get rid of her breast cancer, but there is a price she is not willing to pay.

You can read it here.

The painting of the frigate bird on the cover is by John James Audubon, although the cover design was mine.

John James Audubon (1785 – 1851) was an American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He studied and documented all types of American birds. He painted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book The Birds of America (1827–1839), is still considered one of the finest ornithological works in the world. Audubon also identified 25 new species.

 

 

Most witches don’t…

Olga Godim:

Love this quote! So true.

Originally posted on MacKENZIE's Dragon's Nest:

Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Dragons with Witch

View original

Eagle En Garde on the web

Carmen Fox interviewed me on her website about Eagle En Garde. Read the interview here. Thanks, Carmen.

I also got a nice review for the novel on BookLikes. You can read it here. Below is an excerpt from the review. It makes me happy.

“I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did.

…

While all the characters were wonderful and seemed to come alive in the text, easily my favorites were Amba the dwarf, Yagoslav the Elf, and Darin, of course. Amba won my heart with his bookstore; I need it so badly to be a real place! I swear I could smell the scrolls and see the loaded shelves. Yagoslav was an interesting character, more complicated then most Elves I’ve seen, particularly since he was the wise mage Elf. I really enjoyed his discussions with Darin. And what of the main character? Darin was a complex character who may kill people but also has a deep sense of justice and right or wrong. He was…real, which is extremely important in a fantasy novel. Through his eyes, the fantastical world is introduced to us as normal and understandable. One of my favorite parts was the sword dance he did at a festival, it was described succinctly – not too much but enough for you to be able to picture it perfectly.”

Art-inspired story

My new short story on Wattpad, Sylphid’s Legacy, is not a fantasy. Unlike most of my stories, this one is general fiction. It was inspired by the painting on the cover.

Zinaida Serebryakova, the artist who painted the picture, is one of my favorite Russian artists. She has several paintings dedicated to ballet and ballerinas, and this is one of them. It was painted in 1924 in St. Petersburg. It’s called Girls Sylphids. You can read the story here.

Cover art at Wattpad

Another of my short fantasy stories found its way to Wattpad: Winter Choice. The blurb: Princess Svetlana, Czarina Marfa’s own sorceress, must choose between love and justice.

The story obviously has some Russian flavor, and I was looking for a cover to reflect it. I found the image among the vintage Fedoskino boxes.

Fedoskino is a village near Moscow. Since 18th century, the artists of the village have produced miniature painted lacquer boxes. Even now, Fedoskino is well known outside of Russia. Together with Palekh and Hohloma, Fedoskino represents the best in Russian folk art.

Some of the artists working for the Fedoskino art factory are amazing. Of course, they haven’t been born in the village, they just found a job there after completing their art education. Employment at Fedoskino is one of the best and most prestigious places for a Russian artist to work.

The themes of their miniatures range from Russian fairy tales to reproductions of old masters to amazing floral or landscape compositions, to the original and unique paintings of such fantastic artists as Nadia Strelkina. I love her art so much I couldn’t resist putting the image here, although it has no connection to my story.

 

 

 

Social media insecurities

A post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group

All the marketing gurus say one thing: to sell your books you must participate in social media. But there are so many of those media sites around. Which ones should I use? Which ones are vital? What could I do to sell more books?

Facebook – this site is probably the most popular, but for me, it’s a black hole. I don’t know how to use it. The site seems simple, even intuitive but it’s also unstructured. I even took a class to learn it but it didn’t help much. I don’t use Facebook. Do I miss on some marketing opportunities? Undoubtedly, but I think it’s important to feel comfortable with the site to use it effectively.

Twitter – I don’t use it much except I tweet every time I have a new post on my blog or another bit of news. What am I missing? What do people do with Twitter?

WordPress – this is my blog and website platform. I post on my blog, although not regularly but at least a couple times a month. I follow several blogs of other writers on WordPress. If I like their posts, I press the Like button, to let them know I read and found it interesting, or comment sometimes, when I have something to contribute. More often, I’m just a silent reader. Should I comment every time? What if I don’t like what I read? What if it’s boring or inane?

Blogger – this platform doesn’t have the Like button. I follow some blogs on Blogger but if I don’t have anything to comment about I can’t even let the writer know I’ve been there and read her post. I really want the Like button everywhere.

Google+ – I don’t even know what it is. How do people use it?

SheWrites – I have been a member for a few years. Recently, it stopped being truly active. I still post some info there about my new blog posts or other news. So does everyone else. Most conversations in the groups I’m a member of have fizzled out some time ago. Does the site do me any good marketing-wise? I’m not sure.

GoodReads – I practically stopped participating, especially following the Amazon takeover and the uproar with censure. I still post my reviews there, but many interesting readers have fled the site, and not much is going on in groups. It’s mostly rehashing of old discussions for new members. Also, the moderators make it impossible to self-promote there. Of course, there are designated places for self-promotion on GoodReads, but nobody but authors ever checks there. It’s useless in my opinion. My particular issue with the site – they don’t allow giveaways of exclusively ebooks. You need printed books to have a giveaway. As my publisher is primarily an e-publisher, I don’t have printed books to offer for a giveaway. How else can I use it?

BookLikes – my favorite book review site at the moment. I log in every day, check my friend’s posts, post my own, and not only book reviews either. There are no moderators, and the site can act as a blog. I can and do self-promote there, although I don’t abuse the privilege. I posted giveaways of two of my books there. It’s mostly a book review site, and we exchange opinions on book-related news, reviews, and pictures. I love the site but I doubt it generated even one sale of my books.

Wattpad – I started posting my free short stories there and discovered that the count for my readers climbs slowly but steadily. Does it generate new readers or new sales for my novels? Not sure, but I like it that people can read my fiction there.

What to do?

Migrating to Wattpad, part 2

I put another of my short stories on Wattpad. For this one, I used a different source for the cover. Actually, I used several sources. So what free images are available on the internet to create your own covers outside of classical paintings?

Photos of figurines

Among art nouveau figurines or older porcelain statuettes, there are many fascinating items. Whenever they are sold at auctions or on ebay, the sellers put up photos on the web. Nobody claims those photos’ copyrights. What is important for the owners is the item itself, so I figured the photos are free. Unfortunately, not too many good photos exist, but you can find one to fit your story if you look long enough.

Abstract images

I sometimes use those images as backgrounds for my covers. I don’t use the entire image, just fragments of it. Sometimes I make tiles to cover the area I need for the background and then copy and paste my main image on top. You can see both elements – a figurine and an abstract background – in the cover for my short fantasy story Pony Exchange. Read here.

This cover looks funky, almost childish, with a trace of humor. It might be a tad too gaudy. I think it echoes the feel of the story. I first went with a different cover – of a real life pony. It was a beautiful image from a private blog. I don’t have rights to it and I’d definitely give the photographer credit. But upon consideration I decided not to use it. It was too much ‘real life’ while the story is pure imagination.

Sometimes, abstract pictures can serve as covers themselves. Not the ones painted by an artist but the abstract images you see on a slice of rock. You can find them if you look for certain minerals and stones. Pinterest has many amazing images. I used one of amber (cropped) for my older fantasy story Amber Spirit. Read here. The story had nothing to do with amber but it has the word ‘amber’ in the title and it mentions the color. And the image is amazing.

Landscapes

The internet has galore of outstanding images, starting from the paintings from the middle ages and ending with the photos of now. It’s kind-of cheating to use a modern photo from a blog, but if the photographer is not a professional, he doesn’t really care. Besides, in many cases, you might have taken the same photo yourself if you traveled to the same destination. To tell the truth, I haven’t used such photos. But I’m going to use an old landscape painting for one of my future stories.

Computer wallpaper

Many are free. You can use them as backgrounds as well or as the main image. I haven’t tried those.

FotoFlexer

To add more professional looking texts for the titles and author’s name, I started using FotoFlexer. I use it online. It’s a free mid-level image manipulating software. The results are not perfect bit the texts added in FotoFlexer look better than the ones from Paint. FotoFlexer also has some image editing capabilities. You can smooth wrinkles, fix blemishes. I just started using it so I don’t know all the functions, but it looks promising.

Unfortunately, everything I talked about in this post and the previous one will help you create free covers for historical fiction or fantasy, especially fantasy set in a quasi-historical time and place. For a sci-fi story or for modern fiction, you need modern imagery. Some of it is cheap on Dreamstime.com or other online photo buckets, but if you want a complex image, you need an artist.

Migrating to Wattpad, part 1

I’ve decided to transfer all my free fiction – short stories and flash – to Wattpad. I like how the site displays the stories and I like that they are available to anyone. I started with The Answer is Yes.

This is a complimentary story to my novel Almost Adept, but you don’t need to read the novel to enjoy this story.

To find her true love, Leyale travels along a torturous path, through sacrifice, bewilderment, and betrayal.

You can read it here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To prepare for the transfer, I needed to:

•  Revise all the stories. Most were written years ago and benefited from mild editing.

•  Create a cover for each story.

This last activity, unusual for me, presented multiple challenges. First – I’m not an artist. I can’t draw, either digitally or on paper, if my life depended on it. The only things I can do are copy and paste images, resize and crop images, and add text to images – practically the limit of the functionality available through Windows Paint and MS Office Picture Manager. So it had to be ready images. And here comes the second challenge: I wanted free images and I didn’t want to infringe on copyright.

My solution: I scoured the internet. All the classical imagery – paintings and sculpture created in the 19th century and earlier – is in public domain. Lots of it is available on the net, but you have to know what to look for, what text to type into the Google search box. Ideally, it would be the names of the artists, but I didn’t know whose paintings I wanted. It took me days to find the right images for the seven stories I’m transferring to Wattpad.

For example, for my story The Answer is Yes, I started with the search for mother and child classical painting. I got lots of results but none was exactly what I was looking for, so I continued, narrowing the search in different directions, checking out different artists and themes. I also looked on Pinterest – a treasure trove of images. I love the site.

Happily for me, the theme of mother and child was covered extensively in the past. As my story is fantasy, set in some European-sort-of medieval place, I found several pictures I liked. But then, some of them were poor quality. Others were too small – a cover should be at least 400 x 600 pixels. And the image needed to have space for the title that would be easily visible. That is the next step – cover design, which is as hard for me as the creating of the actual image.

I used Windows Paint to write the title and author’s name and again encountered small problems. The selection of fonts in Paint is limited. The colors for the text also have limitations, especially for someone as artistically handicapped as I.

The resulting covers are amateurish; I’ll be the first to admit it. But they are free. And they gave me a rare insight into the book cover designer’s job. I’ll never attempt to create a cover for a novel I want to sell commercially, but for free fiction on Wattpad, I think my covers are better than the default Wattpad blank box with the title and author’s name.

I’ll talk about other possibilities in creating free covers in the next post.