- March 5th, 2009 at
6:23 am by --KALEB NATION-- -
I leave today for Chicago, to meet my publishers for two days of marketing and book talk!
We’ve been planning for this trip for the past year, and now that the release of the book is getting so close, we’ll finally get to meet in person and talk over publicity plans, as well as cool stuff like the cover art…the release date…future books…singing goats…etc.
I’ll post updates to my Twitter and blog if I can!
- March 3rd, 2009 at
12:05 am by --KALEB NATION-- -
Today is the third day of the third month: and exactly six years ago, I had an idea that changed my life.
The photos above represent bits and pieces of those six years — from the first idea, to plotting the story, to the various titles, to the deal — and my first early steps in writing. Now, in about six months, the book will finally be out. When I first started on this story, I had no way of foreseeing that it would actually work out, and I would finish it. Now, I’m happy that I finally did.
Later this evening, I will be announcing the first bit of major news regarding The Farfield Curse. I plan to have it up here by 7 PM CST, barring any sudden distraction that comes up (I will Twitter the news immediately when it is up, so you’ll know). In the words of my project editor: Happy Branniversary!
- February 27th, 2009 at
7:43 pm by --KALEB NATION-- -
As you have perhaps noticed, my official website now has a new design and layout; shorter header, wider content, etc. The main new stuff is the front page, which I’m still working on a bit to get out some of the bizarre busyness, though I suppose it could also serve as a good comparison to my life at the moment. I can’t wait until summer break, and those glorious months of time to actually get caught up on things. My to-do list has been monstrous and disorganized lately, as displayed in this nifty little illustration:
Don’t ask me why summer causes my life to turn into something resembling modern art, but at least it’s more organized than the beastly thing to the left.
The redesign of the site is part of my new self-help program to get me to blog here more often than in recent months. Of course, to blog here something interesting and epic has to happen: after March 6, I have a feeling there’s going to be lots more of those types of things going on, since stuff will really get moving for the book. On March 14, I’m officially getting my author photos done by a professional, and I’ll be posting the results of that soon after as well!
FYI to all, I’ve got a live BlogTV show coming up this Saturday (Feb. 28) at 7PM CST on my channel. These shows are always loads of fun — they’re mostly centered around my TwilightGuy readers, which is why I haven’t announced them here, though as the slow transition goes into getting ready for the book, there will be loads of shows focusing on the release and news (perhaps one on the fateful and upcoming March 3, which will be exactly 6 years after I first started the book!).
Planning ahead for this Fall, I had an idea for a possible release party for The Farfield Curse as a live BlogTV show (one of those things I’ll be discussing at the publisher’s meeting in Chicago next week) which would mean anyone from any country could attend. Plus, having it online would mean I get to avoid the inevitable event of showing up at a bookstore with a table of my books, a smile, and a signing Sharpie; only to have no one but the store manager and my great-aunt Tootsie show up, my Sharpie go dry and unused, and my smile to slowly melt into a morbid frown, as I stare blankly ahead at what I suddenly envision as the long and tortuous future of the New Author In Town.
Not My Aunt Tootsie
Nightmarish happenings aside, I can confirm certain going-ons with The Farfield Curse, namely that I have received a number of pencil sketches from the illustrator, one of which will become the cover of the book in nary a few months (done in full color, of course, as our secret illustrator has won awards for I might add). Also, I have gotten word that pre-orders of the book could start as early as May/June. Exciting? MUCH.
Other exciting news: TwilightGuy.com just passed 3 million hits last week, around the same time my Youtube videos passed 2 million combined views. I love the word million, especially when referring to such things as web hits/views/copies sold, etc
And, if you haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire yet, you should do it before something awful happens and you miss your chance. Honestly one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
- January 1st, 2009 at
12:58 pm by --KALEB NATION-- -
Ah yes — 2009 is here, and yet another year of even crazier crazyness lies ahead. True to form, I am starting the first day of this year as a person who is drastically behind schedule. In fact, I am so behind at the moment, I shouldn’t even be writing this. I should be writing on the outline for Book Two, which was due to my agent a month ago. Instead, I am sitting here and trying to think up believable excuses for my lateness, such as:
A) I was kidnapped by a band of zombie head-crabs who took me to their base and forced me to watch Dancing With The Stars until I confess humanity’s darkest secrets (under those conditions, it wouldn’t take long for me to break),
B) Whilst eating a lasagna I accidentally tipped the tray onto my keyboard, causing it to melt into its own insides, thus distorting my keys beyond recognition and severely slowing my thought process,
But none of them will work, because the fact is I’m actually sick again, have been in bed the past two days, and in this condition it is virtually impossible to write a coherent sentence that doesn’t involve ‘AND A BIG BOMB GOES OFF AND THEY ALL DIE THE END LET ME SLEEP NAO’ which I don’t think would please my publishers at all.
So, in my half-delirious exhaustion and illness, I stayed in bed today and searched the Interwebs for my favorite books covers (my characters are safest when I’m not contemplating their demises). If you are not a writer, you will not understand this practice. But the fact is, many of us, myself included, go to the bookstore simply to see the new covers, and when I’m sick BN.com works just as well.
But, this time I also have some ulterior motives. Since 2009 is here, that means we have only about 9 more months until Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse comes out! One of the biggest steps in a book coming out is its cover. Most books are defined, at least in the beginning, by its cover — if it’s a good one, it will succeed far better, because people will pull it off the shelf and read it. The unfortunate thing is that a lot of people do judge a book by its cover. And even though I don’t have much direct control over the cover for my book, I still can’t stop myself from hunting about for good artists I like. And thus, I have found
My Favorite Book Covers Of All Time
To begin:
The cover for the book Flora Segundais definitely one of my favorites in regards to color. I love how the purples blend into the greens, like some sort of a glow from the center. Also, I love how it all seems to be one color, and then there is this big glow in the center of the green.
Savvy by Ingrid Law has one of my favorite covers of all time, done by Brandon Dorman. I really like how there is so much blue at the top that blends strikingly into the golden yellow glow down at the bottom.
I love how the cover for Tantalize revolves around the color red so much. It seems that the girl in the photo is actually part of the cover, the way she blends into the black below. Also, I love that font for the title
While I love the covers for Twilight by Stephenie Meyer in the US, I especially like this version from Europe (I can’t find which country exactly). The green goes perfect against the black and dark.
I love all of the Percy Jackson covers, again because of how the artist (John Rocco) focuses on one very strong color and has glowing things in it, like the lightning. This cover is just amazing.
I am a huge fan of Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series. But the best Colfer book cover I’ve seen is this one for Half Moon Investigations. I don’t usually like covers like this, where it isn’t really an illustration, but rather a bunch of fancy design and words — but for this one, it seems to work well (I wonder though, if that device behind the words Half-Moon is an icy batman or a Super Bowtie Noodle symbol).
While I was traveling, I saw Tunnelsby Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams at an airport store and bought it on the spot, simply because I loved the cover so much. I don’t know what it is about this, but it seems to be such a wonderful and mysterious cover: from the faces you can’t see, to the glowing green that is actually slightly reflective if you hold the book.
And now for a few covers I despise:
Yes, that is the cover. It certainly makes you want to tear the book off the shelf, dash to the counter, and pay for it as fast as you can, so you can read what lies between those mysterious, bleached-bumblebee covers. The only reason I can imagine for this cover was that the white was supposed to be a photo, but the designer pocketed the money and left town, leaving his project editor very confuzzled. And:
Oh hideous boringness of a cover on such a classic.
As for my book cover, I’m not sure exactly how much I’m supposed to say or if they’ll let me name any names yet of who we’re hoping for. But at the moment, the publishers are working on the cover, they have some artists who are interested, and for at least the past few weeks we’ve been discussing different ideas for how it will look. I’m sure many of you who have read the preview chapters might have your own ideas for it as well.
Speaking of the cover for The Farfield Curse, we probably don’t have much longer until that comes out (I am flying to Chicago in February to talk with my publishers, so it could either be ready by then or in the works). I’m trying to think of some cool way to do a big reveal of it. Part of me wants to print the image and do a big thing on 3/3/09 on a live BlogTV show, which would be exactly 6 years after I started writing the book. Another part wants to do that classic reveal on BranHambric.com, where each day for a week I peel away a covering of the book (like that Megan Fox/worst Photoshop hoax of all time).
If my publishers really wanted to be wicked, they would pull this trick on me, chop my cover into little pieces, and give me one piece every time I finish part of the outline for Book Two. That would certainly get it done faster
Question for the comments: What are some of your favorite book covers? Link to the Amazon or BN.com images!
- September 27th, 2008 at
6:54 pm by --KALEB NATION-- -
When I was about 12 years old, I stumbled upon a book at the Round Rock Public Library titled “What’s Your Story?” by Marion Dane Bauer. It was a book for kids that described certain steps to tell a story well. Finding that book was a huge milestone in my life.
It was about two years before I started on The Farfield Curse (then, I was writing a fun but abyss of a fantasy story called Enchanted Memories, which had nothing to do with Enchantments, and nothing to do with Memories, but surprisingly enough had many of the same character names as is in The Farfield Curse). I was very new to writing, and when I found this book at the library, I realized suddenly that there was actually such thing as a book about writing a book.
After later miraculously finding another guide by Phyllis A Whitney in our attic, I was led to my first voluntary foray into the upper floor of the library, where the adult books were kept (a milestone in itself). There were about two shelves of books that fit between the decimal numbers for Authorship and Writing Novels: and I am almost certain that I read every book there at least once. I would literally fill up backpacks and baskets with them, bringing every guide on writing that I could find back home, or spreading them out on the library carpet to see if it had anything interesting I had not yet read about.
I discovered, to my dismay, that publishing a book is not as simple as calling up the editor of Scholastic (to me back then, all publishers were Scholastic or HarperCollins, who did Lemony Snicket). I also discovered that my cousin could not be my literary agent, that you actually have to finish a book before sending it out, and that you cannot telephone head editors to pitch your story idea, even if you found their number somehow (sorry Liz at Scholastic).
Thanks to that first book by Marion Dane Bauer, I was led to a treasury of others like it, and slowly formed a list that I re-read at least every 6 months, until I pretty much had them memorized. All the research built up was an enormous help, and having a basic knowledge of publishing lingo is priceless for query letters.
The following books are the ones I recommend to anyone who asks me about writing, or anyone who is already an author and wants something humorous and informative dealing with the writing life:
This book is wonderful throughout. The title is pretty much burned into my memory as a Good Writing Book, so that if anybody asks me what I recommend, this is the first one that comes to mind. I don’t know what it is about it, but this book seems to focus highly on that elusive ‘unique voice’ that makes a good story. It doesn’t really go over commas or correct grammar, but rather how to tell an engaging story and how to hold the attention of readers with your words. One of the biggest things it taught me was a technique of never giving the reader what they want, and in the process giving them exactly what they want. Confusing? Read the book. You’ll understand.
Before the trolls start to hop up and down, screaming that Richard Curtis is my agent and of course I’ll promote his book, there is a secret you should know: I read this book 5 years before I ever knew who Richard Curtis was (yes, it was a very welcome surprise). This book was on my Annual Reading List, because not only did it refresh me on all the duties of agents and the process of getting published, it has a nifty little appendix that describes what a ‘fair’ book deal is (aka $) and a ‘good’ book deal is (aka $$$). The title makes me laugh: there are so many things that agents do, you leave the book all the more convinced that you need to get a good agent, and fast.
Richard has recently offered this book entirely free online through Google.com, and you can read it here. Also there are links on how to buy it from stores (really, it is worth it. When my editor says things in publishingese on the phone, I am secretly paging through this to translate).
This book was one of the biggest influences in helping me get an agent. It is very thin (only about 200 pages) but the advice in it is absolutely invaluable. Besides going over the things to keep in mind for the first five pages in your novel (practically undisputed as the most important part of the book) it also goes over Characterization, Dialogue, Narration and all sorts of important elements that go into the story.
If you are looking for a good inspirational story about a real bestselling author, this is the one. I have honestly (and ashamedly) never read a Terry Brooks novel (it’s on my list… I started on Magic Kingdom For Sale just before I moved to college, and left it at home). But that didn’t stop me from enjoying this story in its entirety, as the author goes over his life as a writer, certain stories from his experiences, and the things that he has learned along the way that made him the success he is.
Another book by my agent: this one I actually read after I had signed with him, and was searching the Austin Public Library for anything by him. I found this old one (originally from the 1980′s) and read it about 4 times all the way through. It is one of the funniest accounts ever from a literary agent’s point of view, telling of previous clients, wonderful book deals, pseudo-possessed authors (and editors), and much more. In the midst of the humorous stories about the writing life, from an agent’s perspective, there are scores of writing tips to be gleamed.
If you have any other great books for writers, leave it in the comments!
I leave today for Chicago, to meet my publishers for two days of marketing and book talk!
is definitely one of my favorites in regards to color. I love how the purples blend into the greens, like some sort of a glow from the center. Also, I love how it all seems to be one color, and then there is this big glow in the center of the green.
has one of my favorite covers of all time, done by 
revolves around the color red so much. It seems that the girl in the photo is actually part of the cover, the way she blends into the black below. Also, I love that font for the title 
in the US, I especially like this version from Europe (I can’t find which country exactly). The green goes perfect against the black and dark.
covers, again because of how the artist (John Rocco) focuses on one very strong color and has glowing things in it, like the lightning. This cover is just amazing.
series. But the best Colfer book cover I’ve seen is this one for 
. I don’t usually like covers like this, where it isn’t really an illustration, but rather a bunch of fancy design and words — but for this one, it seems to work well (I wonder though, if that device behind the words Half-Moon is an icy batman or a Super Bowtie Noodle symbol).
by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams at an airport store and bought it on the spot, simply because I loved the cover so much. I don’t know what it is about this, but it seems to be such a wonderful and mysterious cover: from the faces you can’t see, to the glowing green that is actually slightly reflective if you hold the book.
When I was about 12 years old, I stumbled upon a book at the Round Rock Public Library titled “What’s Your Story?” by Marion Dane Bauer. It was a book for kids that described certain steps to tell a story well. Finding that book was a huge milestone in my life.
