Showing posts with label tom brokaw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tom brokaw. Show all posts

Making of a Book Cover: Extracted

This is the book that took 25ish years to write. It's gone through several incarnations. It began as a short story after I read Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation and became fascinated with WWII. My story was about an old war veteran who had a heart attack, traveled through the tunnel of light but was ripped out of it, his soul snatched and put into the body of a dead soldier to keep fighting in an alien world's war. I titled it Do Not Resuscitate.

I loved the concept so years later I once again resurrected the story, but this time twisted it into a teen guy displaced on an alien world. I could never quite get the plot settled comfortably in my head so let it sit while I worked on other projects. It was when I was talking about it with YA author Mari Mancusi and she said, "Why don't you make the hero into a heroine?" and something finally clicked.

So no more alien world, just good old fashioned soul snatching in a scientific way right here on planet earth.

Oh but the cover...how to bring this concept into a cover... I searched long and hard until finally I found the perfect model, mainly because she was asleep and has such an innocent quality about her.

Here's the original picture I purchased from Dreamstime.com.  Actually the original picture had a green background which I had to erase, but somewhere when my laptop died and I switched over to a new one I lost the original.

Next I enlarged and off-centered it and added words. There isn't much contrast in this cover with the white on white words, but I was going for a clean and sterile "lab" type look. Also since I was still writing the book when I found this picture I was able to base Kat's look on this model, so she is an exact look for the character. 





Pretty simple and easy. Then I really started having fun. I thought it would be cool to have her eyes open on the back cover, a kind of awakening to her situation like what happens in the book.

So I bought another stock art from Dreamstime with the same cover model.
What I did next was overlay this picture on top of the other and then erase all of it except for one eye. With a bit of enlarging and tilting I got it overlaid over the closed eye and then did a little tweaking like clone-stamping her skin tone over the dark lashes beneath her closed eye and little touches like that.
Extracted back cover

I'm actually quite impressed with myself at this point. 
Next I flipped the picture so it will be a mirror image when the book jacket is folded over and viola!!!

Paperback cover of Extracted

Available at Amazon

WIP Blog Hopping


I was tagged by my good friend and fellow chapter mate from North Texas Romance Writers of America chapter, Jerrie Alexander. She’s funny and generous and a wonderful writer. I’ve been anxiously waiting for the arrival of her first book The Green Eyed Doll.

What is your working title of your book?  Reaped

Where did the idea come from for the book?  I was reading Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation and the thought of what it would be like to randomly be plunked into the middle of another world’s war in another person’s body must be like. I know, that premise has nothing to do anything about WWII, but that’s how my bizarre brain works.

What genre does your book fall under? Young Adult Fantasy.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I would want actors that aren’t well-known because when I write I don’t imagine any real person’s face so I wouldn’t want my character forever slapped with a really famous actor’s persona like that.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? She died on that lonely country road when their truck flipped, but woke up in a sterile facility with scientists calling her a different name, and in some other girl’s body.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? After six years of being with a traditional publisher, I have fallen in love with everything about self-publishing. Guess I like the freedom and control of it all.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? This book idea so far has been the one-that’s-gotten-away. I had the idea for it at least ten years ago and have written the first chapter many times and then tossed it. It’s gone through several transformations, from a an old man plunked into a young man’s body in a battle similar to WWII, and now it’s completely different about a teenage girl whose soul is scientifically “reaped” and placed into a test-tube grown body. Trouble is, she wasn’t supposed to retain her memories, but does.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to do National Novel Writing Month to push myself into actually writing this thing and finally get it out of my head and onto paper where it belongs. So, long answer to your question: In a month, I hope to have the first draft completed in a month.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? I’d have to say James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series due to the mad scientist experimenting on kids aspect.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 
Just the whole identity factor. How much of who we are comes down to who we are physically verses who we are inside. Then take those both away, bodies and memories, and who are we then? Would we have the same values or even personalities deep down or does that all filter away?

I have tagged Gina Lee NelsonLee Thompson, and Jesse Kimmel-Freeman  to learn more about what they are working on. So go on over and see what they're writing.