Cover Me

Did you know I write a whole other blog about author graphics? I'm no expert, but I wanted to help other people with graphics. If you need to make graphics for work or play, you might find some helpful suggestions. And I try to make it amusing too! You can check my graphics blog out here. Today, I'm doing a cross-post with my graphics blog because I thought my readers might find the design process interesting and there are giveaways to be had!

Okay, on to today's topic: book covers. I don't do my own covers. Covers are too important to sales for me to fool around with them, so I hire a designer. However, smart authors save money when they can, so I do design my own covers when it comes to freebies.

If you've signed up for my mailing list, you receive a free short story entitled Sunny Side. It's part of the Vancouver Vice hockey series and the cover looks like this:

The impetus for this cover was finding the perfect photo. I've already gone off about having to find mixed race people in stock photos, so I'll get off that soapbox. I needed a geeky half-Chinese guy and a blonde woman. Close enough. Download that sucker. I experimented with a colour version, but went with the black and white so I could pop the graphic text.

If I was smart, I would have done a cover that looks like the rest of the Vancouver Vice series. But I don't have the title font that my designer uses, and she does complicated things with bokeh backgrounds that I can't handle. I did maintain a similar font for my author name. Knowing your limitations means I make the best covers I can with my skill set. This is the smart thinking that keeps me from doing whatever new physical thing my friends suggest. Zip-lining, nope. 10K, ha. Afternoon tea, let's do it.

Recently, I discovered that I hadn't done new covers for the free short stories which connect my trilogy, Hockey Is My Boyfriend. And you know what that means? Mel gets to make new covers!

This is one of the existing covers for the short stories. In fact, this is what all my covers looked like before I started using a cover designer, except not always with cake. Sometimes I used flowers, cookies, or shocker: a cat. Perhaps it looks more like a cookbook, but there is hockey stick wallpaper! Early self-publishing Mel had much to learn. Although early self-publishing Mel made money on the first sale as she had zero expenses to earn out.

You know my drill already. Go to Deposit Photos to look for appropriate photos. Curse at the paucity of half-Asian models. Find photos. In this case, hit the gold mine of time saving and find two photos from the same photo shoot. My characters are the same in both stories, so they can look the same. Woo hoo. Do celebration dance. Cats join in.

Put photos into Canva. Now what I do is fool around a lot with the photos and their placement. Here is the original photo. Hot, right? Is it just me or does this guy look like Carey Price?

Covers have set proportions and you have to stretch your image to meet those proportions, and then you can move them around. Ideally, you want to have blank areas where you can put your title and author name. In this case, the sheets made a nice blank space, but I'm not too keen on the distracting side boob. So, I went in closer. I usually alternate adding text and moving the photo around. In addition, try to make your text mimic the photo in some way. The word "Kelly" is on the same angle as her spaghetti strap. Now the text really emphasizes the kiss. Phew, my Carey Price fantasies are in overdrive right now. But he's a cowboy and I'm a city girl, so it can't work. Not to mention his lovely wife and my lovely husband.

My other cover is the same process, except this time the photo I wanted was in colour, so I transformed it to black and white. To be honest, I can see that an original black and white photo is better than one that I converted with the Street filter, but having a colour photo around will be nice for making teasers... or just for a Carey Price screensaver. 

And, voila... new covers for the freebies.

Hey, what about those freebies, Mel?

Okay, if you'd like to read about a half-Chinese guy who works at a tech start-up, a blonde hockey fan, and a dating app—you can sign up for my newsletter here and get Sunny Side free. Talk about multi-tasking. 

And if you've already read the Hockey Is My Boyfriend series, and you're thinking, "WTF, Mel, where have you been hiding these connecting stories?" here's the down-low. My box set, Hockey Is My Boyfriend, The Complete Series, has all the books including the short stories. So if you're on Kindle Unlimited, you can read them now and I'll get paid. Lovely. Off you go. 

When I was writing the HIMB books, it took a long time. Way longer than I thought, which happens every freaking book. Readers were emailing me to ask when the next book was coming, so in the meantime I sent out the connecting stories to everyone on my mailing list. But I never published them. Here's the order of the series—now with short stories!

1. Hockey Is My Boyfriend, Part One
2. French Kiss (It's Kelly and Phil! In Montréal!) 
3. Hockey Is My Boyfriend, Part Two
4. Happy Birthday, Kelly (Kelly gets two very unexpected birthday gifts.)
5. Hockey Is My Boyfriend, Part Three

If you're not on KU and you'd like to read the short stories too, just hit the titles above and you'll get a free download. With love, from me.

Comments? Questions? Write them below!

Talking 'bout Girlfriends (and a great big excerpt!)

Girlfriends

One of my great pleasures is writing friendships between women characters. In my own life, girlfriends have been a source of support, honest opinions, and laughter. Even though my best friend lives across the country, when we get together—as we did last week—things are exactly the same. We even claim that we still look the same!

In Hockey Is My Boyfriend, Part One, April Lachance is the sophisticated woman of the world, even though she’s only 18. And Kelly Tanaka needs all the advice on guys that she can get. I have one beta reader who tells me regularly that April is her favourite character. I think it’s her sarcasm.

In How The Cookie Crumbles, girlfriends come in threes. Frankie, Bianca, and Chloë were high school besties who kept the friendship going through university. Each one is very different but they complement each other. And they have the shared history of every embarrassing thing they did together during high school!

In my upcoming book, Second Round, the girlfriends are now in their forties and the friendship is mature and hilarious. Jackie Wagner and her best friend, Sharon Zennaro have bigger responsibilities. Both are single moms raising their kids and navigating the dating scene at the same time. Jackie is a sweetheart and Sharon is a straight-shooter with a ton of swagger.

Once a lovely reader told me that she aspired to be as confident as my heroines—who make mistakes, but maintain a sense of self. Jackie Wagner is the least confident of all my heroines. When her husband left, she suffered a huge emotional blow that filled her with doubt. She’s worried about her kids, unsure of her job prospects, and really nervous about dating. But luckily, she has Sharon around for a good kick in the butt.

Here’s an excerpt from the book. After Jackie accidentally runs into the new coach of the Vancouver Vice hockey team, she flees to Sharon’s house to discuss everything:

---

I parked in front of Sharon’s house. Like the shoemaker’s children, her place was always in the midst of some renovation. Right now the front steps were missing, so I climbed up the cement blocks that were a substitute. I knocked and walked right in.

“It’s me. Not a burglar or anything. Shouldn’t you be locking the door?” Sharon was in the living room with her feet up and a glass of wine beside her.

“You think whenever you leave the safety of West Van, you’re entering a war zone.” She shook her head. “Soooo, what the fuck’s up with this coach?”

“Oh God. I went to his place to finish up the kitchen and hang the curtains in the little girl’s room. I thought he was on a road trip, but it turns out that’s next weekend—”

“Get to the good stuff.” Sharon handed me my own glass of wine and then relaxed against the cushions.

“He walked into the kitchen while I was there and scared me.”

Sharon frowned. “Is that it?”

“No, he had just taken a shower, and he was only wearing a towel. He has this amazing body, with muscles here and here.” I motioned to my chest and arms. “And there were little beads of water on his skin. He looked so hot.”

I paused and closed my eyes, remembering everything about how he looked. “He’s good-looking too. Not in a conventional way, but he has these sharp angles in his face. His cheekbones, his eyebrows, his mouth... everything.”

“So far you’re only giving me an inventory of facial parts.”

“Oh, sorry.” I snapped out of my daze. “I saw his business too!”

“His business? For fuck’s sake, Jackie, how old are you? You mean his penis, right?”

I nodded vigourously. “Through the towel. It was um, impressive. And you know what? My mouth actually fell open, and he laughed at me and said something suggestive.”

“Seeing that he was half-naked and you were drooling, I’m surprised that nothing happened. Nothing happened, did it?”

“No.” My lower lip turned down. “Not tonight anyway. He asked me out.”

“Fuck, yes! You’re finally going on a date. It’s about time.”

“I’ve been on dates,” I protested.

“Yes, innocent, polite little coffee dates. Not evening dates with the possibility of sex.”

I swallowed hard. Could a date with Leo end up in sex? I was willing to make whatever ritual sacrifices were necessary to make this happen. “He’s the first man I’ve been attracted to since Brent. And it’s huge.”

“Are we talking about his dick again?”

“No! I mean the way I’m attracted to him. It’s almost overwhelming. I hardly know him, and I wanted to have sex with him, right there in the kitchen.”

“Mmmm, I am so happy to hear you say this. You’ve been strangely asexual for months.”

I shook my head. “What’s it like? Having sex with someone new. The last time I took my clothes off with a new person, I had a fabulous twenty-something body. All firm parts and flawless skin.”

“Yeah, but did you know that then? In our twenties we all agonized about tiny food babies or a single zit. Now if I get up and nothing new sags, I’m throwing a fucking party.”

“You’re right. I felt like I was getting more confidence as I got older, until....” Until Brent left. My life these days could be divided into two parts: Before Brent Left and After Brent Left. But when Leo had touched me, it wakened all my buried senses. If he could do that by touching my hands and hair, imagine what his hands on my body could do. But taking off my clothes in front of a stranger was still daunting. Things had changed while I was married. Even naked bodies were different these days.

“Can we talk about shaving?” I asked.

Sharon’s hand flew to her upper lip. “Fuck. Am I turning into my Nonna? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

I giggled. “Not you. I mean me. Do guys expect women to have full Brazilians these days? I’ve never done that stuff.” I trimmed because otherwise Brent complained about going down on me. But that hadn’t been necessary lately.

“You’re in luck. I heard that the bush is back.” She had a big sip of her wine. “You know that guys shave now too, right?”

I winced. Hairless made me think of Greek statues, not real men. “I heard about that, but I thought it was only young guys.”

She nodded. “Yeah, most guys our age won’t go near their balls with a razor. However, if it makes their dicks look bigger, sometimes they’ll take the risk.”

“In fairness, women go through a lot of pain to make themselves look good. Still, why bother? Once I’m naked with a man, it’s not like I’m going to change my mind because of some optical illusion that his penis is larger.”

Sharon giggled. “Have you not learned that when it comes to penises, guys don’t do a ton of logical thinking?”

---

Second Round comes out on August 9th. Preorder the ebook here.

The Bad Guys

Writing guidelines suggest that you should have a villain to counter your hero's moves in every novel. For me, that's always been difficult because I don't see characters in black and white terms. In fact, there's nothing I like more than flipping a "bad guy." For example, when we meet Cynthia and Robert, Josie's siblings, in The Tao of Hockey, they're both extremely rude to Eric. Robert threatens him with a lawsuit and Cynthia doubts Josie would even date him. But as Tao unfolds, it becomes clear that they're only trying to protect Josie—she's the youngest and they have no mother and a harsh father. And when Cynthia pops up again in An Irresistible Force, we learn that under her sophisticated and bossy veneer, she's as full of insecurity and doubt as any normal person.

But as a reader, I do like to see justice: bad things happening to bad people. Laura, the captain of the hockey team in Hockey Is My Boyfriend, Part One, bullies teammates then sees her scheme completely backfire when she sends Kelly to humiliate herself with Nicklas—and he ends up asking her out. Maybe Riley, the creepy stalker in HIMB, Part Two, doesn't suffer enough, but in my imagination, Jimmy went on to make sure that Riley got blacklisted for any hockey work in New Brunswick. And Kelly's awful boss, Brendan Williams, from HIMB, Part Three does get fired in an alternate universe.

Readers of The Tao of Hockey may be wondering where is the justice is for Coach Bob Pankowski and Daniel Ramsey? Daniel is the captain of the team and supposedly a leader. But he tries to sabotage Eric's tryout in every possible way, because Eric is competition. Coach Panner is an old-fashioned screamer whose management style was possibly modelled on a failed Vancouver Canucks coach. The only time he seems happy is when he's cutting Eric from the team. And we see both these characters again in An Irresistible Force. Daniel is in full suck-up mode with Chris. Coach Panner resists the efforts of Amanda and Chris to improve the team. Yet neither one has suffered any comeuppance...yet!

Well, in Second Round you'll find out exactly what happens to Coach Panner. And perhaps even end up feeling sorry for him, once you know his history. Coach Panner plays an important role in this book because it's all about coaching and the arrival of a new coach to the team. This new coach is pretty much the polar opposite of Coach Panner—young, innovative, educated, and hot. Not that hot is an important quality for a good hockey coach, but it certainly helps the hero of a hockey romance. 

Second Round will be released one month from today! You can preorder it here.