Over 1200 and a New Practice Book Cover

So, I got off on a TERRIBLE start today! Well, it wasn't terrible as much as it was just late, late, late. Got up an hour later than I was supposed to. Then dinked around in the office too long [watching Las Vegas] and so I didn't get back out to my laptop until at least 7am. Then a client came. 7:30am. Then an unscheduled one came. 8am. By that point I had to address all the issues with our current stays. 9am [slap forehead now, please].

I didn't really get started writing until 11am, but - thankfully - I was raring to go. I thought I would finish SEEKING LIGHT AURORA today, but the story had some additional scenes that I was unaware of until I started writing today. I love it when that happens. So, I pretty certain I'll finish it within the next day or two. I think it will come in around 20K for a word count. But, last night I went on a quest to find out how novellas were formatted and what kind of length we're looking at. They have chapters, but there tends to be just one scene per chapter rather than multiple. I found several for sale on Amazon that were between 60 and 150 pages. I found several Stephen King novellas that only came in at 50 pages. So, needless to say, I think that is great. At this point, I will probably just release it as an e-book novella, but I might use it to test out the new POD printer I'm considering. Though I think I will probably go with CreateSpace, simply because it is the easiest and most cost effective way to get listed on Amazon for print books. We will see.

I also did a new practice book cover and I do not necessarily like it. It is for Koontz's Odd Hours, and I think it looks really good as a thumbnail, but when it's bigger, I can really pick out what's wrong with it. I definitely didn't take my time on this one. But, nonetheless, here it is.

New Practice Book Cover...Odd Thomas

So I'm trying to hack book cover design because of the negative experiences I've had thus far with graphic artists and because I'm SO VERY CHEAP there is no way I'm paying $600 or more for a picture for a book. This goes double since an indie author like Hocking can sell a million dollars worth of her books with the terribly simple covers she has.

I have downloaded covers for a bunch of thriller, horror books and I'm trying to reproduce them from scratch in Photoshop. It's not the point to produce them exactly - I have neither the skill not the natural talent as an artist - but it will serve me well enough when I start designing my own covers for ebook and print distribution.

So, here is my latest Practice Book Cover for Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas. Hope you like it. Let me know what you think.