The Great Challenge – Week 6
Six weeks down in The Great Challenge with Dean Wesley Smith, and six stories written.
- Red Orchid – Romance – 3,800 words
- Debts And Obligations – Fantasy – 14,200 words
- Naughty And Nice – Modern Fantasy – 4,800 words
- Popper’s – Mystery – 4,100 words
- The Case Of The Missing Rocker – SciFi/Mystery – 7,200 words
- Fences And Neighbors – Post-Apocalyptic – 4,800 words
Only 46 more stories to go to complete the challenge. 🙂 No problem.
In other news this week, I got my Short Story 10-Pack out in audio form. You can find it on Google Play, Apple, Kobo, and everywhere else that sells audiobooks, except Audible. Audible will take a bit longer, because of how their process works.
Also, as part of my process to revamp my library and make my branding more uniform, I’ve been updating old covers. You saw this with the various short stories I’ve been turning into audiobooks. Well, I’ve been continuing that with some of my longer works.
Like this.
Old Version 
New Version
That looks a lot better, more professional.
Along those same lines, I’ve been thinking for a while that I need to change the cover to The Pericles Conspiracy. Now, I love the work that Trevor Smith did on the cover art; nothing against him at all. I mean, look at it.
It’s great! But unfortunately it doesn’t quite fit with the overall brand look that I’ve been developing. I thought of asking Brandon Swann, the guy who did my new Glimmer Vale covers, to have a go at revising the Pericles cover, but he’s busy doing a couple of Glimmer Vale short story covers for me at the moment.
So I decided to give it a shot myself. I’d done that before, with Pericles’ original cover
It’s not too bad, if I do say so myself. But it gave the wrong impression of the book’s contents. That cover screamed, “Out In Space!” But the book is mostly on earth, doing spy/heist/conspiracy stuff before finally getting out onto a space ship near the end. So Trevor came up with the current cover, to better reflect that.
In redoing it myself, I faced the challenge of wanting to keep Jo, the main character, front and center, while also saying science fiction but not only out in space on a ship. While being limited by my admittedly non-expert skills at GIMP.
So here’s what I came up with. I also updated Passing In The Night, since they go together.
Not to blow my own horn, but I like it. I think it hits the mark, so I’m going to run with it for a while, see how the marketplace reacts. What do you think?
So that’s what’s going on this week. Have a good one, and I’ll talk with you later.
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Copyright (C) 2019 by Michael Kingswood. All rights reserved. No copies may be made or distributed without the express written permission of the author.
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