Robin Kalinich's Blog, page 32

I'm ferocious.

Somebody called me a social media soldier today and it made me grin from ear to ear. I feel kind of fabulous and ferocious at the same time.
Here's my interview with Rene Mullen: Click here.

My Eyes Are Closed, a guest post by Lisa Malabanan

Lisa Malabana is the author of Consonance, and she was kind enough to agree to write a guest post for us as part of her Book Blast Tour. Lisa and I have a lot in common; we are both influenced by the ideas of art and creativity. It's been a pleasure to connect online with her. 

The words below are Lisa's but I've added the artwork of Lori Field for your viewing pleasure. Click on any piece to enjoy Lori's website. 




Thanks so much, Lisa, and best of luck in your literary endeavors! And now...Lisa!



“My Eyes are Closed,” Choosing the Perfect Book Cover
“I don’t like this picture, my eyes are closed.” I’ve heard that excuse many times, and often use that reason not to choose a picture for a photo album. Picking a perfect book cover is not as simple as deleting a bad picture. I’d rather shut my eyes.
My daughter happens to be a good artist in the making. Like me, she loves music, even played the piano for a while and the guitar briefly. She gave up those instruments for the clarinet (for now). Art is the only thing she remains devoted to. Unlike her I am no artist, but I can clearly form an image in my mind when it comes to my story and characters.
Consonance is heavily influenced by music. The inspiration for the story came from my abandoned instruments (piano, guitar, and bass guitar). I wanted to bring them to life and tell a story in the process. I could go on and on about how music can inspire a story, and how a story can inspire a song, but I want to focus on visual art instead.
As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Whichever art form or style is used, the image or sculpture can elicit an emotion, interpretation, or wonderment. If it is intriguing, then a person will want to learn more about the art piece and the artist.
A book cover should bring about the same principle. Readers peruse the many assortments of books in a bookstore or ebooks in the online store. If a picture captures the attention of the customer, he or she will proceed to read the book blurb, and decide on whether or not to purchase the book. That first impression is essential to make a sale.




An eye-catching book cover is important, but the image should also fit the description of the book. I may pass on a book if the cover has a raging sea with a man drowning because his boat capsized, although the book flap and excerpt indicates a romance novel set in the Civil War period. Yes, I am exaggerating to illustrate a point.
I am embarrassed to admit that my first book cover for Consonance was terrible. My idea to have a picture of my piano keyboard and the strings of my acoustic guitar to make it feel more personal backfired. This idea actually did the opposite of what I was aiming for. The cover was boring, even the colors were muted and it did not help my book to pop out saying, “Stop and read the blurb!”
The image didn’t seem personal. It was just piano keys and guitar strings. There is nothing special about the picture, so it’s not worth the reader’s time and he/she will move on to the next book.
My initial concept failed, although this did not mean I can’t try again by infusing something personal. For the second attempt, I closed my eyes and imagined the book cover from the perspective of my protagonist, Elle Martins. She is a classically trained pianist, a singer, and guitarist recruited into a newly-formed rock band.
The entertainment image of a stage, spotlights, musicians, and a wild crowd of fans cheering with hands in the air appeared exciting. Yet my mind didn’t envision or embrace that thought. The piano was vital to my cover. After all, the story introduces Elle’s talent on the piano before readers discover her other skills.
Next, I hired a book cover designer. It is important to work with a designer who understands the concept of the story and therefore, comprehends an author’s vision of the book. We agreed on a set budget and how many revisions would be covered in that price range. She gave me resources of royalty free image websites, and gave me the freedom to choose pictures that I like while she did the same based on the book description I provided to her. She also gave me the time I needed to make changes to the cover before agreeing on the final product.
The designer offered three possible book covers based on the images I liked the most. She followed my concept of hands playing the piano and hiding the woman’s facial features so the readers can have their own mental picture of Elle’s appearance. I finally chose the image that means something personal to me.


My second book cover is simple, but it captures the essence of a musician playing a song of her story in a classic style. I am very happy with my choice. To me, the book cover is “picture perfect.”
            The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. ~Aristotle
Thank you for having me as a guest on your blog. I had a wonderful time sharing my experiences with you and your readers.
Sincerely,
Lisa
Lisa MalabananLileemv@gmail.comlisamalabanan.wordpress.com


“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,Sing like there's nobody listening,And live like it's heaven on earth.”― William W. Purkey

May I help you?

If you're looking for inspiration, guidance, or a literary kick in the pants, head over to the resource section of my website, especially the mailing list archive. That oughta keep you busy for awhile.

The Gap-Toothed Madness and Me

How wonderful! I'm featured in the September Newsletter for the The Gap-Toothed Madness, which is an art & lit mag out of Sacramento, CA. 
Check it out!

I need a logo!

I need a logo so I'm having a contest. 

Ink & Alchemy and More Ink are focused on creativity - specifically writing and art. I'd like to incorporate the idea of chemistry into the logo somehow as well, but I'm open to all ideas. I'm looking for something simple, bold, and easily recognizable. If you'd like to take a crack at it, please send me your designs by Saturday, October 5, 2013 @ midnight MST.. All entries will be showcased on this page and throughout my platform, with a link to your primary website, so even if you don't win, you'll get some exposure and publicity. And also my undying gratitude.

The winner will receive:
$25 via paypalFeatured Artist status at Ink & Alchemyan extensive write-up on my blog, which will be further shared throughout my platformone guest blog slot a t-shirt emblazoned with the winning design my book, Cutting Your Losses
What I get:Complete rights to the winning design Electronic file(s) of the logo to use as I wish
How to submit:
Send me an email containing your submission with the subject line:  Logo Contest . Images should be high resolution and of good quality.

You, the artist, retain all copyrights to your design until a winner in chosen. At that time, the winner will sign a copyright agreement in exchange for the prizes listed above.
If none of the submitted designs suit my needs, I may not award a winner. In that case, I will still write-up the contest and do my very best to promote all of the entrants. Please feel free to email me with questions. You may submit multiple entries. If you are not familiar with my platform, view it here. 

Stupid questions to ask self-published authors

"Did you use a real publisher?" "Is it a real book?"
I've heard these questions and other similar queries many times, and not just from those dissociated with the writing and publishing industries. What kinds of people ask these questions? Traditionally published authors. Struggling writers. Non-writers. Friends and family. The guy at the bus stop. Basically anyone.


This is rude and thoughtless. It's akin to walking up to a set of new parents, gurgling baby in arms and asking, "Can you trade it for a real one?" "Will it get any cuter?" Inherent in those questions and especially in the particular phrasing which uses the word real is the assertion that a self-published book isn't valid. Dead wrong.


Self-publishing is a perfectly acceptable way to get your book into print. It's quick and inexpensive. What it isn't, however, is easy. It still requires the same hard work. You still need to write on your lunch hour and burn the midnight oil. You still need to write, write, and thump on that manuscript until it doesn't make you want to choke with embarrassment. Then, you need to find a trusted cadre of readers brave enough to give you true and harsh feedback. Rewrite again. Find an editor. Rewrite again. Proof that sucker multiple times.


The process of writing hasn't changed a bit.  It's still really hard to do it well and terribly difficult to find success. The good writing will hopefully get noticed and the bad writing will sink to the bottom. Note that this  is just a general rule and isn't necessary true in all cases - see  The Cuckoo's Calling and 50 Shades of Grey.

You finally drag your tired carcass across the finish line with this raggedy-ass manuscript in hand and guess what? More work and lots of it. You either need to hire someone to design your cover or get very familiar with GIMP or Photoshop. You need to navigate the idiosyncrasies of .mobi files versus .epub. You must slay the dreaded auto-indent that lives in KDP-land.


I'm not saying that every self-published book out there is a sparkling, beautiful gem, just waiting to be discovered. Sub-standard work exists and the fact that anyone can publish pretty much anything they want means that the publishing world has drastically changed. We need to change with it. We need to accept and understand the new paradigm and begin to strengthen it.


What I'm saying is a self-published book doesn't suck simply by virtue of being self-published. It very well might be poorly written and ill-imagined, but you must read it before you make that determination.


Self-publishing isn't new, it's e-publishing that's new. Proust paid his own bill in order to get Swann's Way published . Many familiar authors such as Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin,  and Edgar Rice Burroughs (among countless others) utilized some form of self-publishing.


So your manuscript is finally ready. You go through the steps required to turn it into an ebook and then a physical book. Are you finished?


HELL, NO. You are not even close to being done.

Now you must market this thing. You must network and promote. And lest I be misunderstood, let me clarify something here - when I speak of marketing and promoting, I mean you will spend months, maybe years, building a platform and maintaining it.


This process is not for cowards. It isn't going to work for those who lack initiative, follow-through, or tenacity.

So - have some respect, please. The next time you speak with someone who just self-published a book, think about the tremendous amount of perseverance, hard work, and sheer heart that it took. Congratulate them on their huge accomplishment. Give that author a big old bear hug from me!


If you wish to have an opinion on the book, you will need to do one of two things:
1.) Go buy the book and read it.
2.) If you don't want to buy the book, ask the author if you may receive a free copy in exchange for an honest review. I guarantee every single author will agree immediately. Now go home and read that book.


Finally, go to Amazon, Goodreads, and B&N and review the book. Be kind but give them your honest opinion. These reviews are invaluable for several reasons. Remember I said anyone can publish and they do? This means that the market is glutted and one of the important ways that authors differentiate themselves is using reviews.



Yikes! I can hear everyone out there clamoring and shouting questions about the current state of book reviews.

 Are they trustworthy? Can one pay to get a review?

Answers:  I don't know. Yes, I suspect so.

This is a topic for another post and I will table it for now and come back to it at a later time.


Let's just focus on HONEST REVIEWS. If you can deliver them with clarity, honesty, and specificity, they can serve to help the writer better understand her readers. That is worth it's weight in gold. If you have something to say that might seem a little harsh to just toss out there into the cyberworld, limber up your fingers and send that author a kind but honest review of his book. This is a kind and generous, and something that most people don't take the time to do for writers.


Criticizing or diminishing the efforts of self-published writers weakens the industry. Instead, let's take a positive approach. Encourage and applaud self-published authors. Review. Refuse to give anything but an honest review.


By the way, most of these principles also apply to indie artists who are trying to make their way. Let's lend support and love to all creative people brave enough to put their work out there.


P.S. If you choose not to read the book, you only have one option. Kindly shut up about it until you have something informed and useful to say.

These gorgeous collage pieces were brought to you by one of Ink & Alchemy's Featured Artists, the talented Emilia Elfe. Clicking any artwork will take you to her website.

As always, thanks for spending time with me. If you wanna hang out some more, visit my platform.

You can't say I didn't try.

My latest painting.

How to begin?

Good question! One which could be answered in a myriad of ways. We tackled this difficult question at a recent More Ink gathering.





We shared some examples of terrific beginnings, but sadly, I didn't take notes and so most of that is lost in the nooks and crannies of time. I'd recently finished reading The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell, so I had several ready examples from this excellent collection of short stories. Here's my favorite, from a story called Uncle:

A cradle won't hold my baby. My baby is two hundred pounds in a wheelchair and hard to push uphill but silent all the time. He can't talk since his head gto hurt, which I did to him. I broke his head with a mattocks and he hasn't said a thing to me or nobody else since. 





What? Holy hell! What is going on here? Well, I know how the story turns out, but I can't tell you. That would ruin the excellent suspense and sense of wonder that the author has created.



What should a beginning do? 


Introduce conflict and tensionStart with action, not boring background informationMake the reader wonderIntroduce - the setting, character, and proper tone



It's generally not a good idea to start with:


Lots of dialogueA cliched hookDescriptionIn a dream sequence

...and don't start too early in the story. Crank it up a bit and start further along when the action is really starting to cook. One guest did have an interesting story about starting too late in the scene and thereby not allowing the reader to properly empathize with the character. Whiiiich brings me to an important point, and something I think we already know. Rules are made to be broken and none of this guidance is absolute. Do what makes sense for your story. 


At the very least, a beginning should make the reader want to turn the page.




Chuck Wendig, my current author crush, has much to say about how to start. Read it here. Be warned that he can be profane at time; it's one of my favorite things about his writing. That and the fact that he's wickedly creative and cool.




We did an exercise using assorted bad beginnings culled from the world wide web of horrible writing. Given the beginnings below, we attempted to re-write them to make them more compelling:


 It was a dark and stormy night.Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eking out a living at a local pet store.Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the green sward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!"No, he never does manage to win her over but let me tell you how he didn't.Boy, that sure is a lot of giraffes, I see one giraffe, two giraffes, there's three, and four giraffes.It was a blustery fall day when Optimus Prime returned home early to find his wife boning Dracula.Bullets rained down on us like-- nope, that's actually just rain. I'm a dumb shithead and even though this isn't really the first line no one will care because I, Donald Trump, am pure garbage.

This exercise actually made me want to stab my own eyes out with a mechanical pencil.  I resisted but the fact that I sucked seems indicative of the fact that I need practice. Lots of practice. Many of the attendees had a gift for this. I can vouch for the fact that it's much harder than it looks. Try some of the examples above and see how you do.




The raffle prize was a terrific book called The Successful Novelist by David Morrell and our own very talented Jonathan Kahn is the lucky recipient. Congrats! Jonathan is preparing for the release of a collection of very short stories called Vanity Plate Tales. You can find some of them on his FB page. I've been lucky enough the proof the manuscript and it's good. Look for its release soon.




The art in this post was created by Andew Salgado, a featured artist at Ink & Alchemy. It made my morning just looking at it. If you want more, pay him a visit at his website.

If you're interested in my Feature programs for your writing or art, here are the details.

Writer promotion in exchange for honest reviews

I am seeking honest reviews for a recently published collection of midwestern-noir short stories. In exchange for your review posted at Amazon and Goodreads, I will add you to my Featured Writers program and promote your work or site throughout my platform now and in the future. You'll find details about the program on my website. If interested, submit the form and note that you are requesting a review copy of my manuscript and I'll provide it by email. 
Thank you!

Eulogy

I'm writing my own eulogy.

I know, I know. It seems a little macabre. I'm not dying or anything. At least not that I know of. I'm doing it for a couple of reasons. First, to help put things into perspective. Lately, my life is just bursting at the seams. It's mostly good, mind you, so I'm not complaining, but I do need to find a way to prioritize. What's really important?

Secondly, I'm having a bit of trouble with death. It seems that wherever I look, there it is. I'm usually a pretty stalwart kinda gal, but I gotta admit it's getting to me. Maybe it's my age. I'm forty-three. I know of at least five people busily dying from cancer at this very moment and it has thrown me into a tailspin. I've found myself just sitting the car and crying several times lately, which is completely out of character for me.

According to Wikipedia, a eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person, especially those recently deceased. It's sobering to think of your life in this way. When it's all said and done, what kind of a person were you? What were the things that you chose to spend your valuable time on?

If we knew that we only had two weeks or even two months, most of us would spend those moments with our loved ones. The choices get more complicated when the timetable is longer. We have to live our lives. The bills still have to be paid. We can't just sit around waiting to die.

I'm the kind of person who usually jumps right in and lives each moment to its fullest, and I still plan on doing that, but I'm going to write my eulogy in hopes that it will help me sort this out and put it behind me. I've made several attempts, which were largely failures. Have you ever known those people who respond to tough or awkward situations with humor or sarcasm? Yep, that's me. I'm a smart-ass. It keeps happening in the eulogy writing, too, and while hilarious (at least to me, if no one else), it doesn't have the gravity that a eulogy seems to demand.

My current approach is to make a list of the larger concepts that  are important to me and then assess my life to determine how I'm doing incorporating those things into my daily life. 
The list so far goes a little something like this:

Continue to strengthen important relationships. Discard relationships which consistently have negative affects on my life.Cultivate a life which incorporates creativity. This makes me exceedingly happy!Reduce stress.Increase exercise.
I'll keep you posted, but in the meantime, does anyone out there have some input on this topic? I'd love to hear how others have dealt with this issue.
The artwork in this post is courtesy of Jeremiah Ketner. He's wickedly talented and you can find even more fabulousness at his website, including details about his current show, Ideal World.
As always, if you've got creative works to share, either literary or visual art, you may submit using this form. I'd love to hear from you!