And Now for the Next One (E-book, I mean). I'm Getting a Taste for This! By Rosalie Warren



Following on from yesterday's post about book covers from Sue Price, I should say I'm delighted with the cover designed for me, at a very reasonable price, by designer and photographer Rob Tysall of Nuneaton.
 



Rob did an excellent job of bringing alive my somewhat blurry vision of the character Charity from Charity's Child - imbuing her with a wonderful mixture of scariness and vulnerability that for me exactly captures her persona in the book. So huge thanks to Rob. I'll be asking him if he'd like to do some more work for me soon... and that brings me to the topic of my next book...



This one is for adults and it's called Alexa's Song. The publishers of my first novel for adults, Low Tide, Lunan Bay, made encouraging noises at first but then decided that Alexa's Song  was 'too depressing'. (Gosh, I'm being my own worst publicist here. Though I actually quite like 'depressing' books...) Not that Alexa really is depressing, of course. It just has 'issues', serious ones, as indeed do most of my books, without my deliberately making any effort to introduce them. I start with characters; the characters grow on the page and reveal their issues in the process.


This, of course, forces me to do research, in order to make sure I've understood the background and got the facts straight. I enjoy research, as I think most authors do, but I always feel guilty while doing it, as it doesn't feel like real writing.


Anyway, Alexa's Song  is about a woman who is a talented musician and composer, and a man called Jake, who is deeply in love with her throughout her marriage to someone else and various other frustrating and distressing developments. Jake has bipolar illness, something I very much enjoyed researching. I suffer from chronic mental health problems myself, so I had some background on this, but not precisely on bipolar (I get the lows but not - or not very much - the highs - so it was interesting to investigate the other side of things).


Publishing Alexa  on Amazon Kindle and in other e-formats will be part of an ongoing experiment. For the last two days, I've participated in the Electric Authors e-book giveaway, which you may have heard about. I put my novel Charity's Child - Dark Deed or Virgin Birth?  on Amazon's KDP Select and offered it for free download on April 23rd-24th.


Although, of course, the downloads are not 'sales', I was gratified to see my ratings soar and, even more so, to receive great reviews and comments on Charity  from people I'm pretty sure would never otherwise have thought to read it. So I'm hoping they'll remember my name and look out for more e-books by me, and perhaps even be willing to pay for them. I haven't yet decided on the price for Alexa's Song, but it's likely to be somewhere close to that of Charity's Child, £1.94 ($2.99 in the US).


I'll be fascinated to see if this works. I'm also really excited to find a good cover for Alexa and perhaps discover what she, and/or Jake, really look like. I never quite 'see' my characters while I'm writing them. Almost, but not quite. I hear their voices; I feel I know them like my friends by the time I've finished a book. But their faces are blurry, until someone else nails that cover for me. So watch this space - I hope to reveal Alexa and Jake very soon.


Happy reading!
Best wishes,
Ros


Charity's Child - on Amazon UK and on Amazon USA
My website
My blog, Rosalie Reviews
My Facebook author page
Follow me on Twitter @Ros_Warren








Comments

Dennis Hamley said…
Rosalie, Alexa's Song sounds marvellous. How terribly sad that your publisher thought it was 'too depressing'. It's symptomatic of the retreat from reality they all seem hell-bent on making. I'm glad that you got some good reviews out of the giveaway. My book also showed up well, being top for a while of a US list. But at the last time of looking I hadn't garnered one single Amazon review, not even a troll. Even that would be welcome. It's a bit sad when even trolls can't be bothered to be nasty about it.

That cover is indeed superb. I see exactly what you mean about the combination of vulnerability and scariness. How wonderful when a cover designer interprets your wishes so sensitively and accurately.
CallyPhillips said…
Just about everything I've ever written has been dismissed as 'too depressing' (except for what I find depressing and then they think it's comedy!?!) But that's not my main point. My main point, if I ever come to it is HEY ROSALIE remember you were in such angst about epublishing. Feeling better about it now then eh? GLAD WE MANAGED to encourage you to dip your toe in the water and now you're planning a cross channel swim. I'm going to buy Alexa's Song so you've got 2 sales before publication already! Me and Dennis. Way to go.
Dennis.... look at it this way. People downloaded masses of books over that 48 hour period and they will have to prioritise their reading AND their reviews -good or bad. And BTW. I've sold 3 of Voices after 4 days of freebies and had no reviews so what does that tell us.... but let's keep the glass half full mentality. We are getting our work out there, it's a start.
Rosalie Warren said…
Thanks, Dennis. I've been working on 'Alexa's Song' today and it's great to know I already have an enthusiastic reader waiting for it. I'm glad you like the cover of 'Charity' too.

As for reviews, I'm sure you will get some as a result of the giveaway, but it may take time, as Cally says. Not sure about the trolls, though. Unless they are Moomins, I'd rather they stayed away :-)
Rosalie Warren said…
Hi Cally - glad to know I'm not alone with the 'too depressing' remark. I'm currently reading your 'Brand Loyalty' and it's superb. But yes, thanks everyone for encouraging me to go ahead with e-publishing - I'm very glad I did. The last few days have been tremendously exciting but the main thing for me is that I'm learning so much from all the Electric Authors here - such an inspiring and friendly bunch. And another Alexa enthusiast - wonderful!

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