YA Fantasy - Storm Child by Sharon Sant #YA #fantasy

But first a little guest post




I read somewhere that, on average, you have seven seconds to make a first impression on someone you meet.  It seemed logical to me that scrolling down a list of books on Amazon would give you even less than that. 
So, the first consideration for the cover of Sky Song, my very first novel, was that it needed to stand out. It’s rather a given, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to miss the mark. I also had to consider the conventions of my genre, the fact that it would be seen as a thumbnail and also kindle sized, and my very limited budget. The cover needs to tell the reader immediately what type of book they’re going to get, so font, photos and colours are all important in conveying a mood or genre.
The process of choosing that first one actually took about two months in total.  The initial stop was to ask a good friend of mine, a talented artist with a degree in fine art, to draw one for me.  It took her a few weeks and the resulting illustration was gorgeous.  But much as it pains me to say so, neither of us had the skills to convert this into the necessary format to look good online.  She sent it to me as a plain old jpeg and once I had added the cover text myself and uploaded the image, it looked sketchy and amateur and as an ebook cover it simply didn’t work.  My first learning curve, and possibly my toughest, was to let my friend down gently and beg forgiveness for wasting her time.
I tried to make one myself. I started with stock images available to buy, researched my genre and checked out other covers to see what a fantasy one should look like, right down to the font on the title (even though I had read loads of these books it is surprising how differently I viewed them in this objective way).  I bought quite a few different photos and made them all up.  I settled on one with a dazzling, ethereal night sky, but just before uploading it realised that while it was beautiful, it didn’t have the right level of drama.  So I trawled the catalogues of photos again and finally found one which not only represented a key moment of the book, but also had more drama and mystery.  Looking back now I know I needed a professional designer, but like most indie authors starting out, I didn’t have a lot of money to spare.
Sky Song did ok, thankfully, and it made a little money that I could put aside. I wrote another, The Memory Game, and by chance was approached by a book cover designer who had read my first one and was starting out herself. She wanted to know if she could design the cover for my next book and in return I would recommend her services if I was happy with it.  She did an amazing job, and I’ve used her (paid, of course) ever since. The difference in sales between Sky Song and The Memory Game were obvious and so with the money I made on The Memory Game I asked her to redesign Sky Song.  As soon as she did the sales started to improve for that one too. We work well together (seven books on) and I trust her completely. I give her the flimsiest of briefs and she knows me so well now that she just seems to nail my style. That relationship is so important, and the more books we do together the more we click.    Storm Child by Sharon Sant
Genre: YA FANTASYRelease Date: 21ST April 2016Publisher: Lightfoot PressIn a Victorian era where the industrial revolution has been replaced by superstition and magic, Britain is a place where wolves roam freely and children with magic are snatched from the streets. This is home for thirteen-year-old witch, Annie and her baby sister, Georgina. When their mother dies, Annie and Georgina find themselves saved from the workhouse by the mysterious Ernesto Black. But Black’s motives are far from pure and soon Annie faces new, even more dangerous threats. What does Ernesto want from Georgina? And can Annie trust the other teenagers living with Ernesto: Polly, who has her eye fixed firmly on inheriting Ernesto’s fortune and will do anything to make sure she gets it, and the charming Isaac, who would do anything to win Polly’s affections – legal or not.

Fearing for Georgina’s safety, Annie is faced with a terrible choice: she can try to guard her sister from the ever-present threat of Ernesto, or she can leave the child out in the wilds of the New Forest in the hope she’ll be found and taken in by a new family, ignorant of her powers. Annie chooses to leave Georgina’s future to chance and steals her away from Ernesto’s house in the dead of night.

But Annie’s troubles are far from over as her actions set in motion a chain of events that will take her and Georgina into danger she could never imagine. This danger drags country girl, Charlotte Harding into the fray and threatens every one of the teenagers, and it leads them right into the heart of the powerful organisation responsible for the assassination of Queen Victoria, an organisation that wants only one thing: Hell on Earth – quite literally…

FROM THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE MEMORY GAME AND THE SKY SONG TRILOGY, STORM CHILD IS BOOK ONE OF THE STORM CHILD TRILOGY.ExcerptThe basket the girl carried was almost as large as her and she gasped as she stumbled, nearly dropping it.  It had been dragged on a stolen handcart along dark, silent roads until she reached the edge of the heath. The cart was useless on the dense undergrowth here and now she walked with her precious cargo, crooning to it as she laboured under its weight.  Biting back tears, she took one last look around.  Her gaze returned to the lights of the tiny house.  Was this close enough?  Would the basket be found?  What would happen if it wasn’t?  But the girl had no choice.  The alternative was a fate far, far worse.  She opened her mouth and clear, high notes rang out across the darkened terrain.  A few moments passed, the girl singing in the darkness, until a shadow appeared on the horizon and crept towards her.  The wolf approached and bowed its head.  ‘Thank you,’ the girl said.  ‘You will protect her until she is claimed.  After that, your will is your own again.’ The wolf stared at the girl, as if in a trance.  Then it sat next to the basket and turned its eyes to the heath.

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ABOUT SHARON SANT
Sharon Sant was born in Dorset but now lives in Staffordshire. Aged eight she wrote a poem about ET, which received the ultimate praise of being pinned onto the classroom wall, and from that moment on she knew she'd never stop writing. She graduated from Staffordshire University in 2009 with a degree in English and creative writing. She currently works part time as a freelance editor and continues to write her own stories. An avid reader with eclectic tastes across many genres, when not busy trying in vain to be a domestic goddess, she can often be found lurking in local coffee shops with her head in a book. Sometimes she pretends to be clever but really loves nothing more than watching geeky TV and eating Pringles.

Young adult novels Sky Song, The Young Moon and Not of Our Sky (the Sky Song trilogy), The Memory Game and Runners were all released in 2013 to glowing reviews. Dead Girl Walking followed in 2015 and she has a new trilogy planned for 2016, the first book of which, Storm Child, is due for release in April.

Sharon also writes children's fiction under the name of Summer Hopkiss.
To find out more you can follow her on twitter where she's always happy to chat: @sharonsant or find her on facebook. You can also go to her website: www.sharonsant.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharonjsant/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SharonSant Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6888220.Sharon_Sant Blog: www.sharonsant.com Website: www.sharonsant.com

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