I’ve been thinking about the role of the antagonist in stories. A super quick search of the interwebs revealed four main types of antagonist: Evil, Opposing, Superior and Internal (honestly, I’m sure there are other classifications, but this serves my need for now). They’re all interesting and worthy of deeper consideration, but it’s the evil antagonist who is most relevant to where my musings have been taking me.
The evil antagonist is the one who is evil for the sake of being evil. This character may have a back-story that gives them some excuse, but generally it’s not critical to understand their why. All that matters is how they satisfy their greed, hunger for power and uncompromising drive to achieve their nefarious goal at any cost, and how they torment the hero of the story along the way.
Often, we feel nothing but hatred for this character, they represent the worst traits of humanity distilled and concentrated for effect. No-one feels empathy with the likes of Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, Sauron in Lord of the Rings, Darth Sidious in Star Wars, or Doctor Smith in the revamped Lost in Space. They have no redeeming features.
But there is another kind of evil antagonist—the trickster. They’re usually a secondary antagonist to some greater evil, either facilitating the main antagonist, or confounding the hero for their own means. Yes, they’re evil, but they have moments of vulnerability that fool not only the hero, but us as well, into empathy. We can almost see ourselves in their place, even if just for a moment.
My favourite examples of the trickster are The Master/Missy from Doctor Who, Loki in all his incarnations, Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes and, most recently, Ms Wardwell (otherwise known as Lilith or Madam Satan) who was the sole reason I watched the entire first season of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in one sitting!
Of all the antagonists I adore tricksters above all others! What I love most about these characters is their intelligence and wit. So, it’s really no surprise that I’m incorporating one into my current work in progress (known for now as ‘The Japanese Story’). My trickster is a white fox who acts as a messenger between humans and Gods. He’s a fun character to write and I hope I do him justice as his role develops.
 

I’m a very visual person and appreciate good art.
Famous artists feature in my ancestry and many of my immediate family paint and draw well. I don’t!
While I have some skill at technical drawing anything requiring a free hand and colour is beyond me. I can compose a visually attractive photo—but it has to stand on its own as, to my eternal chagrin, I’ve never mastered the art of Photoshop, Gimp or any other image manipulating software.
Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I have a particular eye for imagery. I know what works and what doesn’t and have ruffled feathers in the past when it came to the cover designs for a series of anthologies I was involved with.
With all that in mind, today I went ahead and tried to make a cover for my upcoming novel ‘Gods of Fire’. This was a bad, terrible, not at all good idea, because:

• I have a VERY clear idea of what I want the cover to look like
• I don’t have any images that are remotely close to what I want, nor can I find any
• I thought I could learn Canva in a morning
• I can’t even find a font I like

All I’ve managed to achieve is to make myself frustrated and grumpy.
This is clearly an aspect of self-publishing that I need to leave to the professionals, just like I did with the editing (shout out to Bowlerfern in that department). So, I’m now waiting for a few book cover artist/designers to get back to me.
Back to writing for me.

For over a year I’ve been sending the manuscript of my first complete novel, “Gods of Fire”, out to agents seeking representation. To say that it has not been a success is a wild understatement. Yet, I remain convinced I’ve written a good story that will appeal to readers who love both fantasy and erotica.

So, I’ve launched myself into the unknown, but thankfully well-charted, waters of the self-publication process.

A complete novice, my first step was to send out a call to my writerly colleagues on Facebook and Twitter. This resulted in a mixed bag of responses, most of them encouraging and many with some great advice on how to get started. I also spent at least a day poking around the internet, looking for resources and recommendations for success.

The two main pieces of advice that have popped up over and over again are:

1. Get a professional editor to work on your manuscript;
2. Your cover is critical, and again professional help is highly recommended.

I patted myself on the back for already having ticked off number one, and I’m chasing up a cover artist to help me with number two.

My next challenge was to convert my Word document into the right format for a book. Again, two main recommendations emerged, Vellum and Draft2Digital. Vellum is for Mac users, which I am not, so the decision was easy. It took me a day of trial and error, formatting my manuscript and testing the different options in Draft2Digital to get a look I’m happy with.

Within the space of just a couple of days, I’d gone from terrified and completely ignorant, to sufficiently confident in my ability to create a product and get it into the market. But of course, that’s just the beginning of the process.

So watch this space!

​I’ve recently been involved in negotiations and discussions over the design of a book cover. During the discussions, it became clear that almost everyone involved had a different expectation of what the cover should look like and what that would mean.
So, I ask the question—What’s in a Cover?
Because I’m a very visual person, I look for an attractive, interesting, or quirky cover. It must have artistic merit, I like imagery that leads the eye from the title across the page to the author, or the other way around. I like space and a sense of movement. Imagery should address the content, but sometimes words and patterns are all I need. In that case, the fonts should be interesting and unique, and the placement of the title and authorship used to the same effect as imagery, to lead the eye.
Unless I’m looking for a specific author or title, then it’s the cover that determines whether I bother to pick a book up and look inside to see what it’s about (Yes, I’m describing my process with a physical book because that’s where my heart lies, but it equally applies to clicking on an ebook on a screen).
The cover is very important when I’m looking for a new read. If I don’t like the cover, I don’t pick up, or click on, the book. No sale!
The different will leap out at me, anything that is unusual or unexpected will grab my attention.
So, in my recent discussions, I was surprised to learn of the belief that people won’t buy a book if the cover doesn’t match their expectations for the genre. The perception was that the reading audience did not seek uniqueness, but sought sameness in design. This revelation hurt my heart. It also made me wonder whether the approach of uniformity limited sales to a portion of the potential market. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because those that want their books to look the same form the most lucrative corner of the market? I have no idea.
I, of course, understand that a cover for a physical book won’t always work in an online environment—where the size of the thumbnail images results in the loss of fine detail and finesse. The sheer quantity of books available in electronic format exacerbates this. Anyone can self-publish, some of it is wonderful, much of it not! So surely, in the sea of books available to readers, a well-designed and unique cover becomes even more important?
The other issue that arose was specific to erotic fiction, where the favoured ‘look’ is a torso, or two (I was directed to the top selling erotic fiction on Amazon, you should go there too!). There was much discussion on whether the model on the cover should be a single man, a single woman or a couple. In many ways, this depends on the perceived audience and the contents of the publication, but even here we diverged in our views. My view is that women readers want to see a woman on the cover—someone they can identify with. Almost everyone else in the debate thought the opposite. For me, unless the title of the book gives a clear indication otherwise, a single man on the cover indicates that the material inside is aimed at gay men. Maybe I’m just weird?
Despite not getting my way on almost every aspect I was concerned about, it was an interesting discussion and clearly gave me a lot to think about (hence this blog!).
I fully concede that this is an area I’m new to, and I’m quite likely wrong in many of my views. Hell! I’m sure there’s an entire field of research that I’ve been too lazy to investigate that would answer all of my questions! But I’d really rather hear from you!
How important is the cover in your book choices? And what makes a great cover? I’d be really interested in your thoughts.