Book Trailers

Although the books have been out for a little while, I spent some time this past week working on book trailers for my novels Owl Dance and Lightning Wolves. I’ve wanted to create trailers for these books for a while, but my visions have typically been grander than my time or budget allowed. That said, people often compliment me on the covers of the books. Of course, those compliments really belong to the artist, Laura Givens, but the covers almost tell a story in their own own right and I realized I could use that idea to create teasers that give the reader an idea of where each book begins. Here’s the trailer for Owl Dance:

In this case, it helps that Laura was willing to let me work with the layered Photoshop files, which allowed me to isolate each of the elements on the cover. The painting used in the first frame is a public domain painting by Léon Trousset, a French painter who painted numerous scenes from around the Southwest. What’s especially exciting about this one is that it depicts one of the locations from the novel’s opening chapter.

The music comes from the generous Kevin MacLeod, who allows people to use his music through a Creative Commons license. You can find his music at Incompetech.com.

In the trailer for Lightning Wolves, I went for a slightly more subdued tone, trying to capture the mystery and suspense of the novel.

The photograph at the start of this video is one I took and shows one of the washes near Tombstone. It’s very much the terrain that the characters encounter in the novel and I think the scraggly branches tie into those Laura had in the background of the cover very well.

Follow these links to learn more about the novels:

Owl Dance
Lightning Wolves