alison brodie

See how the two complementary colours - green and red - work? The cat's eye is green, making it stand out against the red. * Following on from last two blog posts about e-Book Cover design, I am now going to give examples of eye-stimulating book covers and ideas for outsourcing the cover design. A great book cover is the thing that's going to get your book noticed. Remember

How to design your ebook cover Following on my from my last blog - Colours for your Book Cover - I am now going to talk about design tips. Remember, your cover needs to jump off the screen and sum up your story at a glance! Person or object? Amazon advises that having a person on your cover is more appealing to buyers. I agree, yet I have a problem... When my debut, ‘Face to Face’ was published by Hodder & Stoughton, I was dismayed. My heroine, Peri, was meant to

You’ve written your novel, now it's time to create an ebook cover that will grab attention, jump off the screen and sum up your story at a glance. As an indie author your cover is a priority. Vibrant, eye-catching, intriguing. Easy to do? Well … We would all like a cover like Joanne Harris’s “Five Quarters of the Orange” with all its intricate detail that is a pleasure to study (it was only on my third look that I noticed the hand-grenade!). But, sorry, my fellow inde

When your job’s up in your head, you take it with you everywhere. How lovely and super is that, to have a commitment and dedication to your craft so intense that it accompanies you every waking hour? It is with you every second of every minute of every day, sitting in your brain screaming for attention like a toddler on a sugar high, like an attack of tinnitus, like a buzzy blue-bottle that refuses to fly out of the window. Writing is intensely rewarding yet spitefully un

Ten daily dilemmas before breakfast Every day every writer hears the voices. You chomp your toast and the voices chomp away at your brain making sure that the last hour contemplating your first positive action on your novel today goes swirling into the black hole of indecision. This is the role of the nagging voice. Welcome to daily self-doubt that comes with every word you write. There’s an easy way and a hard way to do this. The easy way is to look to the advice

How to conquer word count and master time Who isn’t paranoid about the whole time thing? Take Shakespeare for example. There’s a guy who didn’t seem to have too many problems bashing out a pacey plot and peppering it with twists and turns, witches, nutcases, murderers, adulterers and wise-cracking grave diggers. Even so, he felt the pressure: “When I do count the clock that tells the time, and see the brave day sunk in hideous night”, he said, “…nothing ‘gainst time’s sc

Every relationship is different. The only fact that counters this observation is that every relationship is the same. Are we all so boring? The stats speak for themselves. There are a squillion billion people on the planet (approximately) so you can’t generally generalise. You can’t say, for example: “Everyone who lives” – point a finger – “there, has no sense of humour.” Or, “Everyone who lives over there” – wave an arm towards another part of the globe “is too fri

5 easy ways for Indie writers to avoid exploding-head syndrome Do you know that feeling of having a head so full of story, plot, doubt, fear, trepidation and total ingrained conviction that you’re writing your way into a dead end? Tell me about it! From page two of my current novel I’ve been thinking I’ll have to start again; now on page 102 I have the same feeling. At the end of the book I know I will be absolutely convinced that the best way for this book to see the

Chinese philosophers always take the easy view of life. They shrink challenges that freak out the rest of us down into pithy one-liners. Take Confucius. Forget the legendary ‘Go To Work On An Egg’ and consider: ‘Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.’ ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’and the perennially useful: ‘Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.’ The other guy, Laozi (c604-c531 BC) said: ‘A jou

romance means finding a way to keep 2 people apart for at least ten chapters. Thank you Grace Kahlo!