Jason A. Cheek's Blog, page 12

Book Four’s Completed Outline And A Quick Update On My Surgery

Woohoo, I have the outline for Book Four completed. I might name the book, Making New Friends. I still have to figure that out, but I already know what the cover is going to be so I’ll have to put in an order with Leo Black.
 
For those of you wondering why an outline for a story is such a big deal requires an explanation about how I write. An outline is a brief summary about the story itself. More than bullet points, but not quite writing the story out either. This is where I decide the story arc and the flow of the book. Every descriptive action has to have the basics spelled out. Since a portion of this story will be on the ocean, I had to come up with what the Elves boats looked like. What the orcs boats looked like. I also needed to have a solid description of the various crafts used for trading and for war. On top of that I needed a crew for the main ship the characters are riding and wanted to work in something special to make the trip more interesting. Come to find out, the trip becomes super interesting as the group is hit with a wandering instance so to speak.
 
I also had to work in a few cultures and a storyline that worked as a wandering instance that worked into the storyline of the overall world. It just happened to work out that it sets up the story at the end perfectly for book five. No, I haven’t worked out the whole book series to the complete end. Not that such a thing is really possible since the story is about a game that is basically an advance MMORPG. I haven’t made a decision of the entire crew will move in directly to Mike’s Nightmare start or not, but I think that won’t be possible because by the time the crew finishes helping Domenic out with his Nightmare start, The Syndicate will have to be dealt with once again, so hopefully by then we’ll be getting into some major guild vs. guild PVP by book six.
 
I hate just skipping around a story and having large gaps as the main characters travel from place-to-place. It seems like writers miss out on adding so much more into their stories when they do that. Why have the story blip from one coast to another when I could throw in pirates, mutinies, monsters and/or a special dungeon in the mix? I was so disappointed with how World of Warcraft did their ships. The boats looked so cool. Yes I know they were part of the transportation system, but why not throw in a random dungeon or some type of adventure or encounter while people are using the ships? You know, like a Dungeon & Dragons monster encounter. It was one of the things I thought WoW missed that could have been cool and yet annoying all at the same time, depending if you were caught taking a bathroom break when the encounter happened.
 
A fan and now friend of mine named Richard was giving me a hard time about having the books still basically in the newbie area even after book three. He said wouldn’t they be out of the newbie area by now? My response was that I didn’t want to rush the story. It’s the same complaint I have about the way MMORPGs have moved. Everything is now about the end game. Why would you want to spend the time exploring the world and finding adventure when you have to struggle as a low level character when you could just power level and slaughter everything you run into later on? Seriously, where is the fun in that?
 
Personally, I think this is where the modern day MMORPGs have gone wrong. They went away from that type of Vanilla World of Warcraft experience and the game went to shit. Now-a-day, people rush through the main content to power level their characters, play some crappy end-game dungeons that aren’t even really hard and then are bored as hell so they move onto another MMORPG looking for something that’s actually fun, but since every MMORPG has taken that same simple design, it’s all the same exact thing.
 
What made Vanilla World of Warcraft so much fun was how difficult it was. You had to learn to play your character’s class to the hilt to successfully complete the 5man dungeons of Scholomance and Stratholme. These dungeons could be run by groups of fifteen players, but even then wipes were common because the dungeons were so hard. The only way you could complete the actual storyline quest was if you did it with five players. Also, you couldn’t have the quests shared with you by a random stranger, you actually had to follow the quest line and do a lot of leg work to get to the point where you could actually do the quest. Similar to the difficulty of even entering into Lower Black Rock Spiral. If you didn’t have someone in the team who’d actually completed the quest to get the key in a 5man dungeon run, you couldn’t enter the dungeon.
 
Following through the lower level storylines and having to travel through dangerous areas to complete the quests made Vanilla WoW so much fun. This is the same idea I’m bringing to The World storyline. The things that happen in-between the massive world dungeons. The building up of your own lands for player vs. player. The forethought put in of building your character and completing quests that change the nature of the game’s world. Hence why book 4 starts with the main character just hitting level 30 and the rest of his friends still in the 20s.
 
The reason why the main character is traveling to the human lands this time isn’t even quest related. It’s to help his friend Domenic take on the religious crusade of the Forces of Light that has risen up against his religious warrior house and accused him of being a Dark Paladin. Similar to the main character’s nightmare start, but instead of Goblin Raiders and an invasion, the challenge is a religious crusade who want to slaughter him and his House of Aequitas that resides in the Ironheart Stronghold. While the main character will gain levels as he moves through the game world towards his destination, the fact that he’s not traveling to the human lands with a quest line will slow down his leveling even further. Thankfully the developers of The World threw in a bunch of … aka wandering dungeons, monsters and events for players who are focused on exploring or moving long distances from point A to B within the world.
 
Initially I’d planned to have undead pirates to deal with and had some interesting ideas to follow that up, when I suddenly realized how passé that currently was. I mean seriously there are undead monsters in so many LitRPG storylines, movies and TV shows everywhere. Besides, how could I have undead pirates without having someone complain that I copied their idea somehow? So instead I came up with something new and believe it or not without pirates.
 
I’d almost finished outlining ending of book four last night, but I couldn’t get it quite right and the morphine tables I was given for pain kept making me fall asleep off and on throughout the day. After dreaming about the storyline last night, I woke up with a solid idea of what I wanted and spent the day sketching the book out until the end. I’m now excited to sit down and get writing the actual story.  
 
I had several fans ask about bringing more of the main character’s real life into the story, which worked into the story. One of the fun ideas that came to me yesterday was having the main character accused by The Syndicate and their groups many fans online of cheating. Due to The Syndicate’s long relationship with Twitch Online, the main character’s Twitch Stream initially gets a temporary ban due to the accusations. Of course, our hero is proven blameless and his channel gets turned back on, but even so the group of online fans led by Dave continues to blast the main character on his own channel that he’s a cheater as he tries to drive the main character’s viewers away … of course unsuccessfully. I figured this was a perfect example of real life mirroring fiction. I’m sure Dave will be glad to know he motivated an interesting part of my new book as that of an online bully.
 
When I plan out an outline, I decide at what point where I want the story to end. I don’t really know the word count ahead of time, so sometimes the story ends up being a lot longer then I might have originally planned to write, but the point is where I want the story to end. However much it is, I write the story out to that point. I have to say the storyline really looks fun. Probably similar to the amount of action and story of Book three.
 
I’d also like to give a shout out to Sam, a fan of the story who recently contacted me to help me with some of my grammar issues. He gave me a comprehensive list of issues that I need to go through all three books to correct. I’m super thankful for the help. I know where I’m weak at and will be going through the story to clean it up where I can. Hopefully that will be tonight or tomorrow. I couldn’t do it yesterday because my body was still too weak for me to focus too closely on something like grammar correction.
 
Lastly, I wanted to give a quick update on my surgery and cancer. The cancer was removed in one shot. From what I understand, the doctor flayed my ear open and cut out large portions of my ear and then sewed everything back together. The laboratory results said that there was nothing left. I still will need to get regular check-ups to make sure the cancer didn’t spread unknowingly, but it’s looking really good. Once the pain gets better I should start sleeping a better. So far mornings are a little rough, but it’s getting better. Thanks again for all of the well wishes. It means a lot to me.   

It’s Nice To See The Community Coming Together To Stop Trolls

When I was accosted in my LitRPG group on Facebook within the first fifteen minutes of posting my new book series by a group of trolls who then moved their attacks to Amazon in the form of nasty reviews, I thought for sure all the work I’d put into writing my series and getting it published would all be for nothing. I was sure that these bullies would manage to take away any chance of having people interested in reading my story.
 
Luckily to say, that is slowly proving to be not the case. As Dave’s group of friends do their best to libel me online and destroy any chance of sharing my work, the LitRPG community has responded to the growing controversy by reading my book and making their own determination. Even as Dave’s friends have upgrade their reviews from ‘Clear Plagiarism’ to ‘Blatant Plagiarism,’ the community in general disagrees and is letting their voice be heard as their own responses are slowly push my rating up along with their comments on how they don’t see the plagiarism within the story. If not for the community’s support, I probably would have written off writing any further LitRPG novels.
 
Reading everyone responses at the end of the first week has motivated me to put the outline to book 4 & 5 into words. I have some great ideas for the story with some fun dungeons and monsters for the group of friends to face as they try to get to the human lands to help Domenic against the up and coming religious war that will be a PVP bonanza! This should bring the entire group of friends together.
 
With the coming surgery for my cancerous tumor, I should have plenty of time to sit down and put my thoughts together. I’ll just have to see. The hospital is trying to up their costs by saying I’ll be in the hospital all week and we are pushing to just stay during the days they’re cutting into me and rebuilding my ear, but you know how doctors’ can be when they see a way to make extra money. If all goes well I plan to just be typing away in bed with my dogs laying out beside me.
 
Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for the support. Writers are very aware of the reviews left on their books, especially when their books are just released and especially when there is so much controversy being created over nothing. The positive reviews asking for more of the story had really motivated me to reorder the books I was going to write. I’ll hold off on my new Sci-Fi book The Rise of Omni-Force and instead write some more for The World.
 
To be perfectly honest, I was a little scared to see the feedback on my writing ability. Now-a-day when I read back over my first two novels, Flight and Destiny. I see all of the mistakes I made as a new writer, but it was these same two novels that gave me the experience to start on The World and write as good as I did. Due to my work in Germany, I don’t have a large group of friends to bounce ideas off of and to get feedback on my stories. Even the friends I have stateside who like Sci-Fi and Fantasy do not read LitRPG, so I was hard pressed on getting any type of feedback on my writing style or the story itself. This was the first time I put out a piece of work without knowing how people would respond. Yea, I know. I could have gotten a few beta readers. I have two or three fans from the first series who were interested, but by the time I finished all three books and got them as error free as possible for me, I figured I might as well just put the series out. It wasn’t like I was going to make any changes at the point in time. Luckily enough, the feedback on my writing of my story is probably the greatest part of the reviews, bring tears to my eyes and motivating me to write more.  
 
A fan and now buddy of my Richard asked me why it was taking so long for the story to proceed out of the beginning area. He was like at this rate you’ll be on book twenty before they’re hitting end game. To be honest, that is part of the plan. For me, MMO gaming isn’t about rushing to the end game content. It’s about the journey. In World of Warcraft there were so many neat little storylines that really made the world something cool to wander around in and find the small gems that made the game that much more enjoyable. Following the storyline that interconnected all of the events made the world that much more real.
 
Now-a-days, WoW is quite different. Everyone rushes from one dungeon to the next. They don’t have to travel over land to find the dungeon and meet new people to group up. Instead they check a box to automatically be pulled into a group to run with a group of people they never had to build a relationship with. Their roles are already determined ahead of time, so again there is no discussion of group dynamics. Also, the majority of the content of the world is simply pasted by. People leap frog through the major points of the story and quickly get to the end of the game and wonder is that it? Typically they leave the game wondering what was so special and join another MMO trying to scratch that itch.
 
Unfortunately all of the MMOs are now cookie-cuttered into the same mold. None of the gaming companies want to make the games too difficult or challenging where players might fail and be forced to use their imagination and teamwork to overcome the challenges of a dungeon. For me that has made current day MMOs so boring I can’t even stand to play them, which is a travesty for a life-gamer like myself.
 
The World is basically the FIVR (aka MMO) that I’d love to actually play. Even though the MC is slightly overpowered. He was able to get to this point by being open to playing in new ways. He doesn’t have the specific class talents that an actual Warrior would have like intercept or a boost to his magic like an actual Frost Mage would receive. Also his build is spread out amongst a multi-character build, so he’s not the strongest at melee nor does he have the largest mana pool like a pure caster would if he met up with another player with the same Nightmare start. Instead he’s a Red Mage. A jack-of-all-trades. That type of flexibility is what gives him the power over his enemies and is the bug (if you’d call it that) he found within the game.
 
I’ll try to do better with getting these next two books out. Instead of waiting for both to be fully completed, I’ll publish them as soon as I can. Hopefully life won’t throw me another wrench like what occurred when I was finishing up my third novel when my wife was so ill. Also, once again, I want to thank all of you in the community that read my book with an open mind and then posted your thoughts online about the quality of my story and writing.  

Writing LitRPG And Then Being WRONGLY Accused of Plagiarism

​I’m and Indie Writer that enjoys writing for fun and hope to at one time to actually become a professional writer. A common dream of almost every writer in the world, since it would be awesome to be able to do what you love as a job. My first two books were completely original as I came up for an idea for a gamer-style Paladin living in a modern-day world and how that would turn out. I learned a lot of lessons writing the story, but then found myself with too many plot lines and not being sure how to bring it all back into just a few storylines as I received feedback from my readers.
 
Once I cleared my head and got back into writing, I wrote out an Outline to a new LitRPG series that I had the urge to write. I’d been reading a slew of LitRPG novels and thought it would be fun to write about gaming and decided to do a LitRPG genre outline for my storyline in August and September, which I posted on my personal blog http://www.thecheekyfellow.com/home-blog/new-fivr-mmorpg-litrpg-the-world Even though the post is dated January 10, 2017, I talk about sitting down to start write my new story arc in October 2016 (meaning my Outline was already completed by October) but I was having trouble focusing on writing because of my wife’s major health issues that put her into the hospital for nearly three months. I was able to get two and a half books finished by January 2017, but the last half of the third book took nearly another two years to finish due to life complexities, my wife’s health issues and my desire to have three books to release all at once.
 
I bring this timeline up because Ascend Online, the book that I’ve been accused of stealing part of the story arc where the hero appears at the start of the game in a town due to a glitch and saves the NPCs from Goblin invaders. The story proceeds from there and is centered around saving the town and the hero’s group of friends. An excellent story from Luke Chmilenko that was released October 3rd, 2016.
 
The storyline I came up with has the book start out at the end of another Online Game where the hero and his guild of friends are battling a group of PVPers who are bullies in the game that love to grief other players. After that battle ends, the new game starts with a P&E exam for the actual player to bring upgraded stats into the game. There is a training time period before the game starts so players understand how to actually function inside the new FIVR technology and then the game start. My character chooses a Nightmare start, which is an option for any player that chooses to do a hardcore start with increased pain to make the game more real.
 
Here is where I’m accused of stealing part of a story arc. “The hero appears as a group of refuges are being wiped out by Goblin raiders.” (Remember the Outline was already finished before the release of Ascend Online.) The rest of the action and reasons the hero is there is unique, but the fact that he appears in-game to save these NPCs is what I’m accused of plagiarizing. (I won’t even go into how many LitRPG stories have something like this at the beginning of their storyline. It’s very basic MMO style theme which fits LitRPG)
 
The rest of the storyline is again unique and proceeds from there. The hero has one chance to save them or restart his character. After saving the refugees, his quest is to recover the castle that the NPCs have been pushed out of and take over the guild leader’s crystal. There is a temporary structures build by the hero while he focuses on keeping the refuges alive and retaking back the overrun castle to push out the invaders. In-between that part of the story there is a dungeon dive and a major run-in with his previous antagonist from the first game as they bully the players in the new game. While his gaming group is in the game and their adventures pop up in discussions, he hasn’t had a chance to meet up with them by even the end of the third book in the series. The character, spell, and weapon progression is the same general type in any LitRPG storyline. There are a lot of components borrowed and tweaked for the story, just like in any LitRPG novel. I did my best to put my own twist to the specifics: bringing in skill types for 1handedge and 2handedge type of weapon skills, the ability to learn in-game skills on your own without a trainer, the ability to learn the general skills of any class if you just to spend the time practicing or learning other skills like a Red Mage instead of sticking to a base RPG character-type of build and the ability to advance other base character stats for the actions you participate in doing within the game world.
 
My wife was released out of the hospital at the end of January, which was when my ability to continue writing the last half of my third book stopped, since I had to take care of her and everything else. After almost two intense years of dealing with my wife’s on-going sickness after her multiple surgeries, my dog dying from cancer, my house being broken into, getting my green cards completed for my family, dealing complexities at work, getting new dogs and needing to train them, I finally was able to sit down and complete the last half of the third book and get everything published.
 
I was excited to see how my writing had changed from my first two books and was thrilled to be part of the LitRPG community, since it had helped with my stress during my wife’s sickness. I was able to officially join the https://www.litrpg.com/ community as a fellow writer and was looking for feedback to my story when I was instantly accused by a group of members for plagiarizing Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko.
 
It didn’t matter that my storyline was different. It didn’t matter that the specifics of my LitRPG progression was tweaked to be different as the other LitRPG writers before me. It didn’t matter that other writers saved NPCs from monsters in their intros. The use of my hero coming to save a group of NPCs from Goblin Raiders at the beginning of the game obviously meant that I’d plagiarized the entire manuscript from Ascent Online? Wtf is that all about was the only thing I could think of at the time? It didn’t matter how many other stories has the same start “save people from Goblins and rescue the town” type of theme that have come out before and after Ascent Online. It didn’t matter that every LitRPG writer have taken huge chunks of AlterWorld: Play to Live. A LitRPG Series (Book 1) by D. Rus, Publication Date: July 18, 2014 and tweaked the author’s use of game progression into their work. For my accusers, that wasn’t plagiarism, that was writing under the LitRPG header.   
 
Hell, look at google’s description of the genre: LitRPG is a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy which describes the hero's adventures within an online computer game. LitRPG books merge traditional book-style narration with elements of a gaming experience, describing various quests, achievements and other events typical of a video game.
 
Look at the rules for writing LitRPG from our group https://www.litrpg.com/: What is LitRPG you ask? It's a scifi or fantasy story that follows the two Commandments of LitRPG:
1) A LITRPG SHALL involve some type of expliticitly stated progression (ie leveling, report of item finds, quests, etc)
2) A LITRPG SHALL involve a game-type world of some kind that the main character has been involved in.
 
The rules of the Facebook LitRPG group is pretty simple: GOLDEN RULE: Have FUN, No Drama! Drama gets das'boot!
1) This is a READER based group, not a WRITER based group.
This is NOT a group to crowdsource ideas (ie asking questions of the group) for stories, writing, or publishing tips. LitRPG will only grow as a genre based on unique ideas and no one wants to see the same ideas recycled. Posts like this will be deleted. There are dozens of author groups out there for that.
NO ADVERTISING for other groups, blogs, sites or personal pages without permission of an admin
2) No politics
3) No hate mongering or bigotry. Callously questioning someone's manhood is encouraged, however.
4) Perfectly okay to say if you do or don't like a book, but don't be a dick about it. And do not go after anyone personally, authors or readers! ZERO TOLERANCE!
5) Posts on general coolness are always welcome, but please try and limit book posts to LitRPG, except for Brandon Sanderson... you know, b/c he's the MAN!
6) Feel free to recommend a newly released litrpg BUT, if it's by a new author please confirm with the moderators beforehand that it counts as litrpg or it may be removed.
 
Did any of these rules apply to my post about my book? Did the moderators come to my defense when a group of friends got a bug up their ass and decided to accuse me of plagiarizing Ascend Online? No, my post was removed. What about the rule: (4) Perfectly okay to say if you do or don't like a book, but don't be a dick about it. And do not go after anyone personally, authors or readers! ZERO TOLERANCE!)? The people blasting me for plagiarism were allowed to do so without the moderators stopping them. These same people made it even more personal when they went to my book on Amazon and left reviews saying the same thing. Is this just? Is this right? It’s like being assaulted by a group of bullies as a kid in the playground who then do their utmost best to savage their victim.
 
When I finalized my book, just before publication, I did my ‘author thanks’ page and listed some of my favorite LitRPG writers, which was again used to justify the accusations against me for plagiarism. I have to say, I feel betrayed by the community I’ve enjoyed for so long and so much that I felt motivated to write a novel within the genre.
 
Taking general idea from a genre and tweaking it for your storyline is not plagiarism. For those of you who are interested in the timeline for LitRPG as I know it from my reading and the similar ideas that have been borrowed from D. Rus’ work AlterWord by other authors, I’ve listed the novels below: (aka if an author in the LitRPG community is not listed here, it just means I haven’t read your work)
 
AlterWorld: Play to Live. A LitRPG Series (Book 1) by D. Rus, Publication Date: July 18, 2014: the first LitRPG writer that I became aware of and is the oldest published book in the list. Book is about a gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, dungeons within the story, PVP in the story, creation of guild and taking over a piece of land, purchasing unique NPCs for the player’s land/guild, raising undead, spell progression, sword attacks, spell attacks, and first monster enemy animals and knolls.
 
A Virtual Dream (The Dragon's Wrath #1) by Brent Roth, Published April 12th 2015: gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, spell progression, sword attacks, spell attacks, taking over a piece of land, purchasing NPCs for their land, first enemy animals, NPCs and Goblins.
 
Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman #1) by Vasily Mahanenko, Published April 20th 2015: gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, spell progression, sword attacks, spell attacks, taking over a piece of land, and first enemy animals.
 
Patch 17 (Realm of Arkon #1) by G. Akella, Published September 22nd 2015: gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, spell progression, sword attack, taking over a piece of land, and first enemy demons.
 
The Land: Founding: A LitRPG Saga (Chaos Seeds Book 1) by Aleron Kong, Publication Date: November 20, 2015: gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, spell progression, sword attacks, spell attacks, taking over a piece of land, first enemy animals and saving NPCs from Goblins.
 
 
Awaken Online: Catharsis by Travis Bagwe, Publication Date: July 23, 2016: Gamer joining a game, game-style character progression, undead aspect and progression, spell progression and sword attacks, and spell attacks.
 
Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko, Publication Date: October 3, 2016: Gamer joining game with friends, game-style character progression, spell progression, sword attacks, taking over a piece of land and first enemy saving town from Goblins.
 
Unbound Deathlord: Challenge (Unbound Deathlord Series Book 1) by Edward Castle, Publication Date: November 1, 2016: Gamer joining a game, game-style character progression, undead aspect and progression, spell progression, sword attacks, and first enemy saving NPCs and hero from skeletons and Goblins.
 
Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm: A litRPG Adventure (The Viridian Gate Archives Book 1) by James Hunter, Publication Date: December 23, 2016: gamer joining a game, game-style character progression, sword attack progression, spell attack progression, taking over a piece of land.
 
The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1) by Michael Chatfield, Publication Date: January 23, 2017: gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, dungeons within the story, creation of guild and land, spell progression, swords and other weapons progression.
 
 
Eden's Gate: The Reborn: A LitRPG Adventure by Edward Bro, Publication Date: February 6, 2017: gamer going into a game, game-style character progression, dungeons within the story, creation of guild and land, spell progression, sword, and first enemy animals and saving NPCs from goblins.
 
Scout (Blades VR Book 1) by Terry Schott, Publication Date: June 7, 2017: gamer going into game, game-style character progression, dungeons within the story, spell progression and sword progression.
 
The Legacy Builder: The Chronicles Of Lincoln Hart (Barakdor Book 1) by Ember Lane, Publication Date: March 3, 2018: About a gamer joining a game, game-style character progression, building process of land ownership, spell progression and sword progression.
 
Temple of Sorrow: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 1) by Carrie Summers, Publication Date: April 24, 2018: About a gamer joining a game, game-style character progression, spell progression, sword progression, building process of land ownership and first enemy animal and Goblins.
 
Underworld - Level Up or Die: A LitRPG Series by Apollos Thorn, Publication Date: November 6, 2017: Game-style character progression, undead progression, sword progression, first enemy Zombies and Skeletons.
 
Guild Master: A LitRPG adventure (Tower of Power Book 1) by Ivan Kal, Publication Date: August 28, 2018: Gamer style progression, sword progression, spell progression, building and land ownership and first enemy saving NPCs and town from Goblins.
 
First Login (The World Book 1) by Jason Cheek, Publication Date: September 3, 2018: Gamer style progression, sword and spell progression, building and land ownership, first enemy saving NPCs from Goblins.

The Release of My New LitRPG Series, The World

​First off, I’d like to introduce my new LitRPG series, The World. The three books: First Login, Mixing It Up and You’re Going Down, go through the online adventures of my in-real-life friends and guildmates from my online adventures. The only difference is that instead of being based on MMORG games, the story is built around a futuristic LitRPG technology called FIVRMMORPG, Full Immersion Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game. Wow, that’s a mouthful.
 
I held off on releasing the books singly and instead decided on getting three book fully written before releasing them altogether. After my experience with my first series, The Last Paladin, and the time it took get both books out, I thought it best to make sure fans didn’t have to wait a year and a half before they were able to read the next book in the series. From a marketing perspective, I quickly discovered that it was hard to draw readers back into the series after waiting for so long for the next book.
 
I hope that everyone enjoys the new series and the online interactions between my friends and the game. Even now as I make corrections, I find myself being pulled into the storyline. Hopefully that means it’s good and you’ll enjoy the books, but I won’t know for sure until the reviews start coming in.
 
That’s one of the hardest things about being an author. Writing can be an odd and solo hobby at times. One that’s hard to share with others until the novel is completed. Even if you have friends who enjoy reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the genre you decide to write can limit the friends you have available to test-read your work and offer feedback. Living like I do as an American in Germany and being married to a Polish woman, it’s hard to find people who understand enough English to be able to read my novels, are interested in the genre and are able to offer feedback.
 
The first two books I actually finished writing in probably a six month time period which was surprising to me. At the time my wife was very sick and was in the hospital for almost four of those six months with three different surgeries. Writing the stories helped to calm my nerves and brought a certain level of mental peace, but once my wife came home and was going through recovery it was difficult for me to complete the third book. It ended up taking a year and a half for me to complete book three. Most of that was due to a slew of emergencies that came up between my wife’s health, having our house robbed and our dogs passing away. Finally though, I was able to get my focus back and finish the last hundred pages of book three.
 
On a positive note, Aleron Kong of The Land Series https://www.amazon.com/Aleron-Kong/e/B0176S6G6A/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1536251354&sr=8-1 and one of my favorite authors, who just happens to be considered the Father of LitRPG and has an LitRPG group on facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/?ref=bookmarks to help promote his and other LitRPG writers’ works, said I should be able to post my series on his website. Hopefully that will expand my visibility as an author and allow new readers to enjoy my writing, which is a godsend for me since I absolutely suck at marketing in general.
 
Anyway, the books should be out soon for your enjoyment. They would have already been out if I hadn’t run into that author name issue with Amazon that forced me to redo the whole publishing process of all three books. I’ll keep updates coming out for any additional weird self-publishing issues that pop up. For those that are interested in the new series, I’ll list the covers below:

Self-Publishing: ENSURING Amazon Author Site Displays Your Titles Correctly

This was something I ran into unknowingly when I went to add my additional novels. My second book, Destiny had issues showing up under my Amazon author page even though everything was published from my accounts on CreateSpace and Kindle Direct. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what had happened and Amazon made a change that displayed my books under my author page. I thought this had resolved the issue and just moved on. Unfortunately, the problem wasn’t actually resolved but covered up. I wouldn’t learn my error until I went to self-publish the three new books in my series.
 
Before I uploaded my new series, I went to my last book to copy how I did the first series. You know, stuff like how I listed my name and how to properly fill in the series name so everything displayed correctly. When I did this the name I used was Mr. Jason A Cheek. I went ahead and did all the work to publish three books and then, once they were approved, I copied my information for the author from Destiny.
 
Immediately I ran into the issue where my books didn’t show up under my author name once again. Calling the help desk for Createspace and Amazon, I was able to get the new titles showing under my author homepage, but I was told that my name couldn’t be corrected linked 100%. This means that if someone finds one of my books and decides they want to look at what other books I have published, they'll only see a generic Amazon search result and not my author page when they click on my name. This is because my first book was self-published under Jason Cheek and not Mr. Jason A Cheek.
 
The only way to fix this issue is by republishing my new books under Jason Cheek. That means I have to remove my currently published books and republish them. While this isn’t a big issue for my new books except for the extra work and time for Amazon to certify the books (24 hours) and then publish them live (another 72 hours) before they are available on Amazon and Kindle, for any books that were previously published with ratings and reviews that I want to keep, this is a problem. If I change those books, all the positive ratings will disappear.
 
Henceforth the reason for this post. Make sure you keep your author names exactly the same throughout your self-publish works so you don’t run into this issue. One of which I’ve seen on many Amazon authors’ websites.

New FIVR-MMORPG / LitRPG, The World.

I'm back after my half-year hiatus. Starting my new job in May took an incredible amount of focus to get up to speed and fix a lot of the existing problems. Releasing Destiny, having Kanchen die from cancer and needing to finish up some of my professional certifications. All of it kind of knocked me off my feet. I was just trying to sit down and write again in October when my wife became ill and there was concerns that it was cancer. Thankfully that was not the case, but the last three months have been filled with surgeries and spending way too much time in the hospital. In the midst of all of that family trauma, I found myself turning back to writing again.
​
One of my problems with getting back to my writing, besides the intensity of everything that was going on for the last six months in my personal and professional life, was that I'd made a mistake in how I'd written Destiny. I've learned there is a balance on how much a writer can switch around between various plotlines within a story and still keep the focus of the reader. What I'd heard from my beta-readers was that the writing was good, but the story switched perspectives around too much and this took away from the story itself. It took me some time to get my head around this. Partly because no one likes to hear that they did less than a spectacular job on a huge project and that then requires some introspection, but also because the story is now setup with so many plotlines that I now realize I need to take back down to the hero's perspective. Although, due to how I've written book two, I will now have to break the various plot lines down into two or possibly three perspectives. I'd like to take it down just one plotline, but it will probably end up being two perspectives. Unfortunately, this is going to take some work to do it right.

It kind of reminds me of a book I just recently finished reading, J. Langland’s The Demons of Atlan series. I loved the concept and how the author put the book together, but the third book in the series jumped between everything that was going on within the universe so much so that it made it difficult to enjoy the story. It doesn’t mean I didn’t like the story itself. It just means the jumping around between various heroes and plotlines was a little too much and detracted from my enjoyment of the story itself. I understand why J. Langland wrote the story this way. There is so much happening that the hero is not directly aware of and is a good part of the story that he wanted to add this in for the reader to enjoy. I ran into this same issues with Destiny. At what point do all of these other parts of the story become too much for the flow of the overall book? Knowing this balance is quite difficult, which is why I’m moving to a more first person perspective for my proceeding books.  

 In November, I just started reading the hell out of several LitRPG novels. I'd never ran into the genre before and I found it very effective in taking my mind off of the multiple surgeries my wife had to have as I went to visit her in the hospital daily. The only problem with using reading as a mental distraction is that I'll read a book in one or two days. It took me no time to read a slew of books in the series. Towards the end of the month I was out of any LitRPG novels that really drew my attention. Some of my top choices in the genre so far are as follows: Aleron Kong's Caos Seeds, D. Rus's Play to Live, Vasily Mahanenko's The Way of the Shaman, Alexey Osadchuk's Mirror World, Andrei Livadny's Phantom Server, G. Akella Realm of Arkon, Luke Chmilenko's Ascend Online, Travis Bagwell's Awaken Online, Christopher Booth's Omnia Online and Edward Castle's Unbound Deathlord series.

At this time, I was at a loss as of what to do to keep myself distracted, and I was unable to feed my current reading addiction for the new genre. Also, I still needed that mental distraction from the surgeries that my wife was going through. It was at this time I got my drive to write back. Part of my writer's block was that I couldn't think of how to start out Book 3 for the Last Paladin Series, so instead I decided to start writing a new series. A FIVR-MMORPG / LitRPG series. Surprisingly enough, my desire to write the new series took off stronger than anything else I'd ever tried writing before. The story is based around a full immersion virtual reality massively multiplayer online roll playing game concept, FIVR MMORG. The entire concept has me so excited and is something that is on the borderline of development right now. It's a gaming concept we could see out within the next five years, since the virtual reality market is on the edge of making this full immersion a reality.

The whole concept of the story takes into consideration my love for gaming and my current discontent with games not being realistic enough. Things like the whole the whole left-mouse clicking to attack action in modern day MMORGs that have left me completely bored with the style of play. Sadly enough, just changing the MMORG came play to a FPS mode doesn’t help the issue either. The action in FPS tends to be spawn attacks that aren’t realistic enough, neither is there a real world that you're playing a part. The fast action FPS game play style currently out right now doesn’t properly fit a fantasy game style. Instead it should follow something like a realistic concepts of a Dungeon and Dragon’s style of reality, there are no world building concepts built into the world, no true storyline. The FPS versions are just blood fests. While interesting on some levels, it is still ends up being boring. I could have the same fun from playing a game of Quake or Unreal Tournament instead.

Another problem I find with most modern games recently is that many of the games are either pay-to-win or win-by-length-of-game-time, both of which I find extremely distasteful. Gaming genres seem to have gotten away from skill-based games. For those of you who don't know what "pay-to-win" is, it's the abilities for players who want to win to simply pay money for better equipment in-game that almost guarantees their ability to win over other players. The win-by-length-of-game-time type of game is games that give players huge boost in abilities just because they've spent a certain amount of time playing. Their ability to win is not based on skill, but simply the bonuses they've been given and the extra weapon options available just because they've been playing the game longer than others. Battlefield 4 was a great example of this. A game that people could run around a building due to the "skill bonus" they were given, before new players could reach the edge of one side of the building, or a veteran having access to better guns that can kill in one or two shots, while the new player’s gun can empty an entire clip into a veteran without being able to kill them. This type of winning is simply from game companies rewarding players for being in game with longer play time that newer players that allows them to win. Basically built off of the pay-to-win model, since the skills being given out to players in these games aren't due to how well the player played, nor is it available to everyone equally.

I hope and believe that in the future games will get away from these types of models. That gamers will be bored with this "dumbing down" of games and will want more skill and balanced game play. That games will have a world to discover, that there will be a strategy gaming component that could be accessed and that there will be a skill component for the actual in-game combat system, along with bonuses that are earned and not simply given due to someone having just spent extra money or extra time within the game. I wrote a novel of the gaming world I'd like to actually play some day in the future.

It took me a little over a month to write Book 1 of The World. The cover is basically finished and ready to go. The only thing I'm trying to do is pop-out two more books. My goal is to have all three ready to before May. As long as I can keep writing the way I am, I believe this should be more than possible to do. Also I already have the covers completed for Book 2 & 3. Anyway, this is just a quick heads-up as to where I've been and what I’ve been doing. I hope you will want to check out my new series. For those of you waiting on Book 3 of The Last Paladin series, don't worry. I'll be continuing that storyline too. I just needed a break to decide how best to start book 3.
 

the response on destiny's release, flight's latest edit and the end to a crazy ten month search!

​     Now that I have two books out, I made the decision to offer Flight up for free for five days to give new readers a chance to check out my story and hopefully have a number of new fans interested in picking up Destiny to see the continuation of Startüm’s story. So far, I’ve been super excited about the initial response both books have been receiving.
     Before releasing Flight I went through the text and cleaned up a lot of areas that were rough from my first edits and tweaked the story with a couple new paragraphs, here and there, to fix/fill-in gaps left within the storyline. I also streamlined a few of the fight scenes to get a better overall flow to the story like I managed to do in Destiny. At the same time, while I love the overall storyline that I came up with for Flight, I could definitely see the difference of my writing skill between the beginning and the end of the book. Destiny, on the other hand, didn’t have that feel. Instead there is a solid consistent voice and solid complex plotline throughout the story, from beginning to end, that I really love and think is great. Thankfully, I’m happy to say that, after much tweaking with my last edit of Flight, I feel that many of those rough spots were smoothed out nicely leaving behind an even better story for readers to enjoy. Although my grammar perfect friend would probably beg to differ with my evaluation at my skills in corrections, it is as good as I can get it with my current skill set at this time.  
     While it is always scary to put your stories out to the wide world. At the same time, there is nothing like the feeling you get as a writer when reading the positive feedback from fans who love your work. For me, it’s the most powerful motivator in getting back to planning out the storyline for the next book in the series. This is exactly what I needed to put my mind in the right place to build the outline to book three, especially after the last ten months of my life. There is always a risk that people will ignore your work or not like what you’ve written, but so far that has not been the case. For those of you who have expressed your enjoyment of my books, I thank you.
     For those of you who didn’t know, I work for the United States government in Europe. About ten months ago to the day, I found out that my job would be going back to America without me. It came to me, six months after the new management team moved in, that my supervisor and his boss were brought in as basically a hatch team to close up shop. In the preceding months since, the work has become exceedingly difficult as people leave and the work continues to mount. Overall it has been an exceedingly stressful time of my life. Unfortunately, having my work close in Europe at this time also has put a huge strain on my family, especially since my daughter is finishing up her pre-college exams and we are in the process of getting everyone green cards. Even worse, the new management has been treating the entire team like we were already let go. All in all it’s been a pretty messed up situation, but, luckily, I found a new home. Something not easy to do in my situation working overseas. I just got that incredible news Thursday of this week, which went along perfectly with my release of Destiny.
     Other major stressful events during this ten month time period was dealing with my baby Kanchin, a lab/border-collie mix, who has been extremely sick with cancer. We dealt with a swath of surgeries and chemo therapy treatments, but unfortunately that only extended his life for around eight months. He died the end of March, a couple days before the passing of my Grandmother. My Grandmother’s death had its own challenges. She’s one of the few family members I’ve chosen to keep in my life and, to be honest, if it weren’t for her I’d have probably starved to death in some closet before I was six years old, so I owe her in so many ways. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fly out to see her before her death, but at least I had a chance to skype with her one last time and to thank her for everything she did for me before she passed away. The last excitement we had going on was Kanchin’s brother, Rowin, who had to have major surgery this week, which turned out to be successful. Somehow, throughout all this turmoil, I was able to finish Destiny and get it published. In many ways, focusing on my writing has been a good way for me to get through this difficult time.
      For those of you who like the new back ground, I’ve attach the image below. It’s not perfect, but I think it looks cool. You can’t normally see the part of the blended image, since the web sites’ content blocks the area where the image has been combined. Even so, I think it came out sweet and I love having both covers displayed on the background of the website. If anyone is interested in how I did the combined image of the two book covers into one, just let me know and I’ll do a blog about the process for creating the image. 

Destiny has just been released on amazon!

​     For those of you who have been waiting a long three years for the release of book two of The Last Paladin Series, you can find the link to the newly released book here: http://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Last-Paladin-Book-2-ebook/dp/B01ECDDYEO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1460801253&sr=8-2&keywords=jason+cheek The ebook should be readily available, but if you don’t have the option to purchase the book immediately, you might have to wait another twenty-four hours for it to be truly “published” on Amazon. Still, it has been released and is just waiting for Amazon to finish their internal processes to make Destiny available in all formats.
     I’m excited to hear people’s feedback on the story. You’re welcome to post or email me your thoughts on the story, and, if you like the story, please leave a positive review on Amazon … Goodreads too if you feel so motivated. Positive reviews on Amazon does two awesome things. First, it lets me know you enjoyed the story. Second, it helps other people who are into the same genre find my book and enjoy the story. Both of which gives me that awesome motivation to continue writing and coming up with new exciting content.
     Writing and releasing your work is an intensely personal experience of sharing and putting yourself out there for other’s to judge. Every review that comes in, good or bad, a writer checks out and reads. I’ve had a good review left on Flight completely make my bad day into an awesome day where I go home and write more, even though I’m exhausted from working an entire day in the office.
    In regards the story, I’ve tried to do a few new things in Destiny. I hope you like the changes, but I’m still getting a feel for my preferred writing style to an extent. While Startüm is still the main hero, there are a number of supporting characters who have their own parts of the story that they are telling. Also, in the final battle scene, I brought in a lot of small sub-characters to give readers the feel of the overall battle and what was happening in the background that would have otherwise been impossible to share with you, the reader, otherwise. I hope this jumping around the battlefield enhances the story for your reading pleasure and doesn’t detract from the story or my writing style. Also, the supporting characters that are telling their part of the story I picked up from Game of Thrones. A world has a lot of things occurring in it as people within the story go about their business. I tried to keep these perspectives in line with Startüm’s overall story, so they are relevant. Also, I enjoy sharing different parts of the action scenes from various characters’ perspectives, although I tried to not repeat the same view as much as I did in Flight.
     I think it’s much more in-depth in many ways than Flight. Destiny ended up coming out to be 569 pages in length, if you discount the glossary I added to the back of the book and the other extra pages that shouldn’t be counted. I had a lot to cover with the story, between introducing Irlendria and the species living within the world and the new characters within the storyline.  
     Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story.

My baby kanchen died in my arms last night

     ​If you’re not a dog/pet lover, you will probably want to bypass this post. While I’ve been working to get Destiny’s released, I’ve had a few other major emergencies going on in my life. One of them is making sure I have new employment, ever since I’ve learned my job is going away in the near future. The other, is that one of my boys, a lab/border collie mix, came down with cancer and became very sick. Both have recently played major roles in my life and have played their parts in extending Destiny’s release date further than initially planned.
     Not everyone is a dog lover. Not everyone looks at other species as being relevant. Maybe this lack of empathy for other species comes from some humans’ being so tribal that can’t see another race as being worth consideration, or maybe these people lack empathy to such an extreme that they cannot relate to even other human beings outside of their family, city or even country, let alone make the jump of caring about another species. Whatever it is, it’s something that crosses my mind when I see the inhumanity some people have towards each other and the species we share this planet with. It’s a topic that I plan to cover more in books three and four of the Last Paladin Series.
     The biggest thought I had for the series is exploring the difference between long lived species and shorter lived species, and the friendship and love relationships that can form between these different species. The pain that that is felt for the loss of a loved one when their shorter lifespan has ended. The joy and wisdom that is shared and given from that shorter lifespan relationship that goes beyond the precepts of one’s race and culture. The relationships that can be formed at times between that of simply two souls. In this way I would like to keep the life of Kanchen alive and share his story, but in an Urban Fantasy style.
     Kanchen and Rowin are two brothers who became part of my life after hurricane Katrina swept through Florida in August of 2005. At the time they were only around twelve months old, a guesstimate given by the vet who first gave them their shots after my friend Mike’s Mom found them running around in the middle of a major highway the day after Katrina came through. I instantly fell in love with them and they became a part of my life as of that time.
     ​This time period was just after my epiphany that allowed me to leave the abusive relationships I’d been a part of for all of my life, up to a point shortly before that in time, and to make life into something amazing and special that I lived every day. Between traipsing all over Florida to traveling to Europe and visiting France, Germany, Poland and Hungry, together Kanchen, Rowen and I had one fantastic adventure after another and just enjoyed living life. While both brothers stole my heart away, Kanchen was always at my side and loved me to death. Except for a very short time period during their teenage years, I never needed lines for them. I’ve always communicated well with dogs, but the shared understanding I’ve had with Kanchen and Rowin bordered on telepathic.
     In many ways our relationship is part child, part best friend and part life companion. No matter how old or full of gray hair Kanchen and Rowin are, they will forever be my babies. Most people cannot believe how intelligent and personable they both are when they meet them for the first time. How much they are like little people. But then, I’ve never treated them other than little people.
     Right now I worry that Rowin will be too depressed without his brother. They’ve always have been together for their entire life. The longest they were separated was when they flew to Europe. All that we can do is give Rowin lots of love and help him through this difficult time in his and our lives.
My family and I thought that Kanchen was on the upper side of the curve for surviving his cancer. Our recent CT scan showed that the tumor was shrinking and responding well to the chemo treatments we’d been giving him. Unfortunately, yesterday a vein burst in his tumor and he died shortly thereafter. I was covered in my baby’s blood as he bleed to death and there wasn’t anything I could do to save him. Needless to say, yesterday and today have been rough for us all. I spent the day looking over some of the old pictures of Kanchen with my wife as we remembered and missed him. For those of you who are interested I’ve attached them below.
     I’d hoped to get most of Flight cleaned up this weekend. I want to have a cleaned up copy uploaded before I release Destiny. I did have a chance to work on this a lot last week, but so far this weekend has been a bust. Maybe tomorrow and Monday I can work on it some before I have to head back to work. If anything it will help distract me from the ache in my heart. Either way Destiny will be released in April. For those of you whom are anxiously awaiting the release, I’ll do my best to make it sooner rather than later. Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter. 
       ************ I love you Kanchen and you will be missed. ************

Creating the cover for your book and getting it "print ready" for self-publishing on amazon

​     The whole process of getting the cover of your book “print ready” for Amazon is one of the more difficult and convoluted processes in the whole self-publishing process for new authors; besides, of course, the actual writing of the book and getting it properly edited. Even knowing which size template to use for a mass market paperback is difficult to understand. While there are a lot of author websites and blogs that talk about different aspects of the process, none that I ran across in my searches warned you about the typical pitfalls of the self-publishing process that a new writer should be aware of. Luckily this gave me a lot of material to write about for my blog. With Destiny’s release I plan to post as many of the points I missed the first time around.  
     When you first go to https://www.createspace.com to start the book creation process, one of the first things you need to make a decision on is the size of your book. Well, that and whether or not you to use an ISBN or an ASIN number. You can check my previous blog for that whole option here: http://www.thecheekyfellow.com/home-blog/what-are-asin-and-isbn-numbers-and-why-do-i-need-them The short of it is to just go with the free ASIN and save yourself the cost, but back to our “print ready” cover. Even if you want to only have an eBook at https://kdp.amazon.com, Amazon requires that you first create a print book and format it properly. Only then does Amazon allow you to convert that printed book into an eBook, so no matter what you are forced to build two separate templates; one template for your physical book and one for your eBook. Also, each different size book requires you to reformat your text to fit the new template you choose to additionally use. This includes restructuring the cover for your book. The one good thing is that the cover template for the physical book and the eBook can be used without changes, but that total text restructuring between the two types of books is time consuming. One additional side note: when you go with an audio version of your book you’ll need to reform the cover for your book to fit the audio book’s unique requirements, which are very different than either the physical or eBook formats.
     Another annoying point I ran into with the release of Flight and something that I couldn’t find any information about at the time was that the smallest book you can go with on Amazon is the 5.06 X 7.81 template, which is as close as you can get to a normal sized mass market paperback that we all are familiar with when self-publishing through Amazon. It’s confusing when you get to the template choice for your book and nothing fits what you’re expecting as you measure one of your paperbacks at home and compare it to the selection that Amazon gives you for templates to choose from, so hopefully this part of the blog helps you at this point especially. After much research I discovered that Amazon doesn’t allow you to self-publish a normal sized mass market paperback book. One additional FYI on this point, the 5.06 X 7.81 template is slightly larger than a normal sized paperback book.
     A slight rant: I guess Amazon wanted their paperback to stick out slightly on any bookshelf. While a part of me found this to be annoying, I will say that at least I found the quality of the physical books from Amazon to be exceptionally good. Something that makes you proud to hand out/sell when friends and colleagues question if you’re a “real writer” or do you actually have a “physical book” of your work. For some reason, if you only had an eBook published people think that’s quaint, but if you actually have a printed book in the hand, you’re taken more seriously as a writer. It doesn’t make any sense. Most of your sales will be eBooks and not physical books, but that doesn’t matter, people will still judge you on having a “physical book” of your work. 
     Carrying on with the publishing process, once you download the template you’ll have one for the cover and one for the text. The cover template looks like this:
​Now you need to have your base image that you’re going to use for your cover. I have several posts about cover creation process and this is the only area where I outsourced the work. It costs, but if you’re smart and shop around you can find artists that are good and affordable. Also, it’s the only way most of us can get a truly high-quality, professional image for our work that we can use to compete with a normal publisher’s cover art. Some of my previous posts on the importance of a good cover is here: http://www.thecheekyfellow.com/home-blog/self-publishing-finding-an-artist-for-your-book and here http://www.thecheekyfellow.com/home-blog/cover-design-and-book-twos-artwork The basic image file I received back from the artist Leoblack is the PDF below. He also gave me one that was just a pure image, but I chose to use his title design this time around because it just rocks.
     One of the things I requested from the artist I’m working with is to have the option to remove the text that they’ve inserted to be able to replace it with my own design and format. On both of my books the title has been slipped behind parts of the main character, and I need that graphic layer available to be able to make any future changes I desire. On the image for Destiny, I really like how DLeoBlack did the font for the Title and my name, so I kept his design. I also made sure to ask DLeoBlack for the name of the font he used ahead of time. This is important for the creation of the rest of the text on the cover, since sometimes it’s hard to know just by going through the lists of fonts which one your artist actually used. Having the same font used throughout the text on the cover is an important design concept in graphic design. Not using multiple fonts on your cover design will help give your work that “professional look” to its overall layout and design. While I didn’t keep the exact “title” that DLeoBlack used for the back cover of the book and the spine, I did keep the same font and the general drop shadow and bevel/emboss stylized look that he used on the front cover’s title.        While this post is not a tutorial on how to work with Photoshop and the program’s various effects, I would like to point out the design concept of using multiple layers so that you can keep each of your text, their effects and position separate. It makes moving, resizing and finding the text in question a lot easier at this point in the process. You don’t need to use Photoshop for this process. Paint Shop Pro was an old standby I always used before I was able to get a copy of Photoshop. At the time layers weren’t part of the program, but now must graphic applications have layers. The good thing about Photoshop is that it imports nicely into Illustrator, which is kind of important for the “Print Ready” graphic that I want to have produced at the end of this process. I’m sure there are other applications out there that could do the same thing, I just don’t know them, so I’ll be showing you my process using Illustrator.
     Once you have the image looking the way you want it, the next step is to save your work with your multiple layers. You’ll need this for getting the next step correct. At this point in time I make a separate image and flatten the layers into one image. I copy this and then open the template for the cover I downloaded from Amazon inside Illustrator. Just a warning, the template will not automatically open in Illustrator.
     Now paste the image from your graphic program, Photoshop for me, into the template you have open in Illustrator. The image will be huge and cover the template. You’ll want to move the image’s opaque transparency settings down to something like 50% and resize the edges of the image until it is completely covering the outside edge of the template. The semi-finished product will look something like the graphic below, but once you have it in place you will want to set your image’s transparency settings back to 100%.
​     At this point you will see this black outline of a square on top of the image. In Illustrator this is the print area. This is easy to change by dragging the outlines of the print area. One way is to click on File, Document Setup and Edit Artboards. Another is to click on effects, artboards and selected images, but either way you will want your artboard to highlight this image only. You can confirm your print selection in the print preview options.   
     Once you have this selected properly you are ready for the next very important step. It is essential that you do not “print to PDF”. Print to a PDF will not work for a “print ready” image and will leave a white boarder around your image that Amazon will deny for your “print ready” graphic for your cover. The trick here is to File, Save As and select the output to be a PDF and not an AI extension for Illustrator. At this point you can select the settings that are in the instructions for formatting the compression of the image. Settings like the Compatibility to be Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3) and the Standard to be PDF/X-1a:2003 and setting your compression on the image.  ​     If you leave your Color Bitmap Image & Grayscale Bitmap Image compress at 150 ppi & 225 ppi you’ll get an image that’s around 5 to 6 MBs in size. If you up these settings to 300 ppi & 450 ppi you’ll get an image around 18 to 20 MBs in size. Doing zero compression will leave you an image size approximately 50 to 60 MBs in size. In the past I’ve used the 5 to 6 MB sized files, but this time I might try the 18 to 20 MB sized file for my image. Once you “Save PDF” you’ll see your PDF image has no boarders if you did everything correctly. It should look something like the image below:      ​While this looks finished, I’m still tweaking the back cover’s hook. Interestingly enough, when you print out the image and share it with your friends in this format you end of getting a lot of good feedback. There is something about having the image in your hand that allows you to see mistakes or areas to improve better than on the screen. As you can see I’ve justified the text for the hook, lined up the spine’s Title and Author name a little better and corrected some of the spacing issues between the edge of the book and the spine. Since I’ve documented the whole process, this will be a piece of cake to jump back into Photoshop to make the needed corrects and then recreate the images I need via Illustrator. I probably could have done much of the text work in Illustrator, but I’m better in Photoshop and there seemed to be a lot more built in effects to apply to my text.
     I hope this post helps those of you who are working hard to get that first book published. For me this post will work as an excellent procedure to have for future publishing, since by the time I’m pushing out book three I will have forgotten this process again. For now, I’m wishing everyone a great weekend and signing off.