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Friday, April 27, 2012

BREAKING GLASS cover and trailer reveal--THIS IS IT

BREAKING GLASS 

by Lisa Amowitz


On the night seventeen-year-old Jeremy Glass winds up in the hospital with a broken leg and a blood alcohol level well above the legal limit, his secret crush, Susannah, disappears. When he begins receiving messages from her from beyond the grave, he's not sure whether they're real or if he's losing his grip on reality. Clue by clue, he gets closer to unraveling the mystery, and soon realizes he must discover the truth or become the next victim himself. 

I thought it's worth mentioning that since I am a professional graphic designer, the amazing Spencer Hill Press allowed me to design my own cover. Yep--they did. And I'll never forget the immortal words of my first agent---you'll never design your own cover, you know that right? Wrong! Yeah, baby! (It should be mentioned that my second agent--the one that I will hopefully be with forever, Victoria Marini, said--why not?)

Kate Kaynak of Spencer Hill and I worked very hard on this together---there were probably about 30 rejects until we settled on this one.

The trailer started as a complete lark. Kate and her team had intended to do it with my input this summer, but we both already loved the song Lost Forever, from a band called The Guggenheim Grotto. When we got permission from their management, I just went bonkers with glee and started the trailer. I surprised myself and finished it in a single day--and next thing I knew, Kate was eager to get both the cover and trailer for the book out into the world.

I feel the mood of the trailer, though not revealing every aspect of the book, really captures Jeremy's longing for the lost girl. That longing, the deep gnawing loss, is what drives most of his actions as he struggles to overcome his own issues and unravel the mystery of Susannah's disappearance.

I'd love to know what you think of the cover, the trailer and if the book intrigues you! Thanks for joining me for the big reveal!

Lisa



available in July 2013 from Spencer Hill Press

visit my author page on Facebook

visit my page on Goodreads

Read an excerpt of BREAKING GLASS

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

TWO covers and a trailer reveal one now, one later...

FIRST, check out the "placeholder" cover I did for Kate Milford's Kairos Mechanism on Goodreads. Once the project is funded and the amazing Andrea Offermann creates a cover illustration, I'll be doing the actual design.

check out the KAIROS MECHANISM on Goodreads!

SECOND:  
I HAVE A REALLY BIG ANNOUNCEMENT
This Friday, April 27, 2012, right here on this blog, I will be revealing both the cover AND the trailer for my forthcoming book BREAKING GLASS. I'll also be posting an excerpt from the book.

So stay tuned!

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Guest Post by Kate Milford, author of the Boneshaker, the forthcoming The Broken Lands and the hopefully forthcoming Kairos Mechanism


Folks--I'm letting Kate Milford take over the blog this week as which she ruminates on the pitfalls and rationale for self-publishing while still also contracting with publishing companies. Kate, is without a doubt, one of the most fascinating, insanely brilliant and creative people I know. (And I really do know her---live---in person for five years in which she has been a member of my killer critique group, the Cudas, and a very good friend). I hope you'll help Kate with her new project, THE KAIROS MECHANISM. I've had the good fortune to have read it and also, (oh yeah!) I am designing the book cover which will feature more art by illustrator Andrea Offermann (of whom I am a fawning art fan girl).
Visit Kate's website

I’m now a week and two days into a project that, if successful, will be the first installment in this mad idea I have to write and self-publish a companion novella alongside every traditionally-published book I do from here on out. Each will be related to the novel it accompanies, either directly or indirectly. The idea will be to provide extra content in different formats, and to try and use self-publishing and traditional publishing in tandem, to see what they can do to work for each other.
Pre-order The Broken Lands
There’s a lot of flak flying back and forth right now between the two big camps in publishing, especially with the DoJ nonsense going on at the moment. On the one hand, I’m firmly in the pro-publishers camp, or I would be if you put a gun to my head and made me pick one. I like my publisher, I think my editor forces me to make smarter choices in my storytelling, and my first two books are truly beautiful objects. I couldn’t have afforded to do what they’ve done. On the other hand, I don’t like being made to take sides, and I think it’s silly for anyone on either side to ignore the potential of the entire field. And I’m just organized enough—just barely, mind you—to pull off this self-publishing thing. I think. Early indications are that I am. Whatever. I’m not worried about it. (Actually—obviously—I’m totally worried about it, but I’ll deal.)

I’ve discovered in the last year that I have WAY more stories in my head than anybody’s ever going to pay me for. Some of them are too short to be good prospects for a publisher to take a risk on; some of them are just too weird. Mind you, I like weird, and I know there are readers out there who like weird, too—but weird is notoriously difficult to sell at the publisher level. I understand why. Still, all these bizarre little stories in my head interconnect and relate to each other, and to my two first books, The Boneshaker and The Broken Lands, which makes me think readers might be excited to have them.

They come to me at night, when I ought to be dreaming. That sounds so much nicer than the raw truth, which is that I’m an obsessive-compulsive, occasional insomniac with breathing problems who frequently wakes up at 3am and doesn’t fall asleep again until 5. How do I spend those hours? I lay awake in bed and try unsuccessfully to shut down my brain so I can go back to sleep. During this time I have racing thoughts. Usually they’re worries, or regrets, things like little panic attacks about the post office box I forgot to renew or a maybe-dumb thing I said to someone a week ago or how long its been since I last went running. But I’ve learned that if I give my brain some direction, I can turn those racing thoughts toward more productive work. Like stories.

They also come to me when I’m trying to work on something else: research for Project A I suddenly throws in my path something glimmery and distracting that just begs to be turned over and over until a story begins to evolve around it. Some of these shiny bits of things will combine with others, or will turn out to be exactly what I need to solve a story problem I’ve been grappling with in a different project. Some will germinate into separate books of their own. Still others will not immediately fit with anything else; nor will they immediately feel like the kind of things I want to expand into a full-length novel. But some of the ones that fall into this third subset will still be shiny and glittery and enticing enough to keep me from being able to put them away. They’re like the little bits of ephemera I keep on my desk that I find myself staring at when I need to turn my eyes away from the computer screen for a bit.

These little baubles, it turns out, are perfect candidates for my self-pub project, which I’m calling the Arcana. The first installment is The Kairos Mechanism, which is on Kickstarter now through June 9th. The next few volumes are still taking shape. Some are novellas; a couple are looking like they might morph into collections of folk tales; others are still just shiny and hanging around at the edge of my peripheral vision, waiting to take their final forms. Here’s hoping you find them to be as delightful a set of little gems as I do.

Now, I know how I got to thinking this project would be a good idea, but I’m curious. Readers: what kind of extra content do you long for when you’re immersed in a world? Writers, how do you go about using extra content to enhance the reader’s experience? Have you experimented with ways to use both self- and traditional publishing?

Monday, April 9, 2012

Heidi Ayarbe; WANTED trailer world premeire contest and giveaway




Goodreads Book Giveaway

  
     Wanted by Heidi Ayarbe     
  

       Wanted       

       by Heidi Ayarbe       

    
      
Giveaway ends April 16, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
      
      Enter to win