John Prescott Teaches “The Basics of Cover Design and Book Layouts” for SavvyAuthors.com

The Basics of Cover Design and Book Layouts (Aug 28, 2011 6:00 PM EST – Aug 28, 2011 7:00 PM EST)

The image you choose to be on the cover of your novel is one of the most important decisions you will make as an author. This Q&A with Author and Professional Graphic Design Artist John Prescott will answer your questions on how to determine what images should grace the cover of your book, obtaining pictures and artwork, fonts, layout, ISBN numbers, important copyright information, and useful software. Host: John Prescott

http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/showevent.php?eventid=1143

John Prescott was born in the deep southern woods of Mississippi. Art has always captured his attention and he has been drawing in one form or another for longer than he can remember. As one of the founding members of Atlanta’s famed DragonCon, he served as the Art Director for the original collections of program books, and worked with such esteemed artists as Larry Elmore and Ben Wooten. He is the President of White Silver Publishing, maintaining a freelance stable of over 25 artists specializing in gaming and world creation.

As the Chief of Design for Dark Continents Publishing he is in charge of all graphic design and cover creation, as well as working closely with the POD industry. But he considers his greatest professional accomplishment to be his novel, PRAY. Published in 2010 as the first in a three-part trilogy, PRAY is an end times novel set within the Book of Revelation. PRAY was recently listed as one of the top 100 best selling novels in Amazon’s Kindle Horror category. The second novel in the series, HELL, will be released on November 25, 2011.

Feeding the Beast to Keep Him at Bay

I’ve seen it countless times while doing promotions for our books and even before I was with Dark Continents; all the same tale tell signs were there, and they all went something like this…..

“Help! I can’t write! I have writer’s block!” Then the downward spiral starts after his statement has been made, and I’ve seen it hit hard and heavy with some writers to the point of their quitting the craft all together. This is very sad, but it happens. Thankfully this has never happened to me and nor do I see it happening in the near future. Why? I have a healthy bin of treats and food to keep this ugly thing well away from me to keep him sated and very content.

This little blog will be short, I won’t take much of your time. You should be writing anyway! But I do want to give some tips to avoid the Beast that is ever lurking at our door.

If this beast has come barging in your front door and latched on to you nice and proper don’t fight it. It’s way stronger than you think. Now what to do? Do what they say do if you’re the unlucky person who is being attacked by a bear. Simply, play dead. I.E. forgot about writing all together for a few days or even a week. Go do things that you love doing and don’t think about writing, story, plot, characters or anything else. Just relax, rest and have a little fun. More importantly don’t say or even think the beast’s name.

Now, your few days or your week are up, now what? There are a few things to do. Read on. Don’t jump in full barrel and try to plot out the greatest story ever told or the best trilogy ever written. It won’t happen, well it might but the odds are well, I don’t even want to do the math. Start small and don’t write anything yet, yes, I said that, don’t write anything at all yet. Well, what do you do? Take a walk and then talk that walk at the same time every day or get on your treadmill or go for a drive, but do this at the same time each day. Look around, play the ‘What IF’ game while you walk or whatever you decide to do. Don’t be hindered by reality, let your imagination out and let it run rampant while you’re walking. Anything is fair game while doing this no matter or silly or how great it sounds and when you finish don’t write anything down you’ve thought about. Put it back up in the mind and let it simmer a while and mix with the other things you’ve thought about.

You can start writing now, but start simple. Well, what do I write about? Simple things. Here are a few. Write a one to two page conversation with your spouse or one of your parents or someone that is very close to you. You most likely know what they will say if they are that close to you and this requires little concentration. Consider this a little warm up exercise.

Another writing exercise is imagine yourself at the start of a city block. But the fun part is that this block is yours and yours alone. Write what you see while walking down this block. Now, it can be anything contained in this block again don’t let the real world intrude, it can be a space port, a wild carnival just moved in, or the wilds of the land have moved in with a vengeance. It’s up to you, but don’t write more than just the block. Don’t detail too much just write what your mind sees while walking. This also should be about one to two pages in length.

Go to a mall and sit down on one of the benches there and watch people. See how they interact. See them laughing with one another, see the hurried pace they have, watch and note the stressed out people and how they don’t interact. While doing this play the ‘What If’ game again. Let your imagination go wild. What if one of the people got suddenly jerked upward through the roof by something unseen? What if (if your mall has a central display fountain) the pipes backwashed and all the mall’s sewage got rerouted to the fountain and with a healthy little dose of electrical surge to the pumps the fountain started gushing fecal matter high into the air and onto the shoppers? Oh, what a funny story that would make. You get the idea? Good.

Most importantly start reading and keep reading every day. I think this is one of the most important things a writer can do above all else. This is the main course that feeds the beast and keeps him sated and his eyes away from your front door.

If you don’t have a set writing time, now is the time to make one. We are very trainable creatures so allot a time to where you can sit down and write. If you only have an hour devote that hour to writing and nothing else. After a while your mind will grow accustomed to this time and you will be very surprised to find out that you will start to know when it’s almost writing time and if for some reason you miss that hour your mind will let you know about it.

After doing these things your mind should have eased up some and not be on red alert screaming, “Condition Red – Condition RED!, Oh shit! Writer’s Block can’t write….dream over…career over!”

Hopefully your mind will have come up with enough stuff that your overloaded with ideas, and this is the time to explore those ideas and see if they lead anywhere to a good story or a novel. Continue to do these exercises daily as well. What If is a great game to play, one that fuels the imagination and that of course is what we fictions writer’s use mainly so keep that well fed as well!

An idea can come at any time and from anywhere and from two things meshed together. I will give you one of mine that happened a few days back and then I’m done.

I was walking through the house with a copy of Dracula. I was bringing it to work for a co-worker to read. I passed the TV and something on one of the channels were talking about time travel, enough so that I stopped to listen to the theory. I looked down at my book and then back up to the TV. What if a vampire could time travel? WHAM! – there ya go.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a game to play and a walk to take.

Back to Blogging!

2011 has been a great year for the Dark Continents Publishing Company!

In April at the World Horror Convention in Austin, Texas Dark Continents was proud to hold the official Launch Party for thirteen debut books! The DCP Vice President Tracie McBride came all the way from Australia to join in on the celebration and help promote her novel, Ghosts Can Bleed. We celebrated by hosting a Bat Cruise Launch Party at sunset on beautiful Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin. Our guests were treated to a buffet supper and open bar, a special Audio Sample Presentation of our entire line of books read by the talented voice narrator, Wayne June, as well as a fantastic view of the famous Austin Bats as they left their caves for the evening. Three special cruise guests each won a lifetime membership guarantee of one free copy of all future Dark Continents publications, so long as they keep in touch and let us know where to mail the books!

In other exciting news, author Dave Jeffery’s novel Necropolis Rising Kindle version has enjoyed remarkable success in the UK, where it reached #1 in the Amazon Horror chart. Since this time the novel has maintained a top-ten presence in the Amazon Occult chart, where as of this writing it is currently #8.

 

David M. Youngquist, Sylvia Shults, and John Prescott participated in a whirlwind book signing tour in Illinois this June, stopping at three bookstores in two days. Many people turned out for the signings, and many books were sold. But, most exciting of all, Barnes and Noble and Waldens (so sorry to see you go, Walden’s!) have begun displaying our titles as end caps. End caps  are the equivalent of the Holy Grail for authors – having books we have loved and nurtured majestically displayed at the end of a row. Nirvana!

John Prescott’s PRAY novel made it into the top 100 Horror Novels in the Amazon US Kindle ratings in July, and we’re expecting  a bigger reception for the second novel in the series, HELL, set to debut on Black Friday November 25, 2011.

Sylvia Shults continues to do research on her as-yet unnamed novel about the Bartonville, Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane, a very haunted and very cool old abandoned place. Sylvia and S.L. Schmitz spent a wonderful afternoon on the grounds of the asylum, taking photographs of the graveyards and the main building in preparation for her research!  

John Irvine and his wife, Maureen Irvine, are in New Zealand enjoying all of that LOTR’s scenery and working on two joint collections called Collected Haibun and Echoes of Exotic Places. Maureen’s novel (set in Greece) is called Bitter Olives, and is slated for DCP’s 2012 new imprint collection. If you can’t wait to sink your teeth into the next Irvine publication, you simply must check out the gourmet short stories, poetry and recipes (yes- recipes!) in Blood Curry, featuring that most unique of ingrediants; fresh animal blood!

Also in July, the newest edition of the DCP Book Catalog became available for distribution. Additional books now added to the collection include S.L. Schmitz’s dark and mysterious Let It Bleed; the upcoming launches for John Prescott’s HELL and Snareville II, the chilling sequel to David M. Younquist’s fast-paced zombie thriller, as well as Phobophobia, an anthology of short stories about the secret world of human fears and phobias edited by Dean M. Drinkel.

Dark Continents Publishing will host an official launch party of several new publications at the British Fantasy Society’s FantasyCon in Brighton on Saturday October 1, 2011 at 8:00pm. Huzzah! Simon Kurt Unsworth will be debuting his highly anticipated Quiet Houses novel, and Dave Jeffery’s haunting new collection of short stories Campfire Chillers. Adrian Chamberlin will be there as well, with his excellent novel The Caretakers, and if all things go as planned DCP’s President David M. Younquist will be journeying from the USA to join in on the fun.

On a more somber note, we were sad to lose Serenity J. Banks from the Core Board of Directors, but welcomed Julia Messina as our new Senior Editor and member of the Senior Board. Serenity will now participate as a Junior Board Member – looking for a good vampire novel? Check out her novel The Left Hand.

Over the next six months, stay tuned for more blog posts as the madcap Dark Continents Authors travel to such places as the FantasyCon in Brighton and Archon 35 in  St. Louis, MO. There will be updates on bookings, podcasts, interviews, author appearances, blogging, and a VERY BIG Press Release announcing some VERY BIG author news…. So stay tuned, “LIKE” us on Facebook, and sign up to receive blog updates!

We are Dark Continents Publishing…. Horror Just Got Scarier