Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
The first story I ever remember writing was in elementary school. Our class was forced to enter some young author competition. I won. We did it again the following year and I placed 2nd (I think). No one was more shocked than I was. My mother never censored books we chose from the local public library. I started reading Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz at age 9. This is important to point out because the two stories I wrote were quite disturbing. I don't remember which one was the winner, but one was about a girl that got sucked up into her ceiling and transported to a terrible land where she had to fight monsters to stay alive. The other was about an elderly couple that fostered troubled children. And ate them. By middle school, I was sneaking my grandmother's dirty westerns. It took me years to figure out what half of the euphemisms meant.
How do you approach cover design?
I googled 'worst romance covers' and spent 30 minutes laughing my tail off. Then I looked at covers for books that I had really enjoyed reading, then covers for books that hold sold well. I prefer simplicity. I didn't like the covers that had a lot going on and were 'busy.' It made it hard to find the title and author. I spent some time finding a simple picture of a couple that looked sort of like the couple in the book. I had to pay for rights (way cheaper than I thought possible) and then I pieced it together on canva.com. It was awesome.
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