Aaaaugh I’m horribly behind on all the things, but I wrote a new book or rather I compiled a new book out of stories I’d already written but there’s a couple new stories in there and a couple you might not have seen because they were behind paywalls or whatever and you might enjoy it. Unless you’re a Patron! Then it’s free! You should have gotten an e-mail!
Should be on Kobo & iBooks as well, but you may have to search!
I very rarely check my Amazon reviews–better for my mental health if I don’t!–but I had to check a thing on The Raven & The Reindeer, and noticed that there was a one-star review on it. And curiosity…well, y’know.
Predictably, they were very angry about lesbians.
(Actually, they accused me of writing fairy-tale slash fic, were wrong about one minor plot point, and accused Mousebones the raven of gender confusion. Then there was a Think of the Children and a desire for Amazon to issue refunds, the word hack thrown about, etc.)
Well, I expected that to happen eventually. What I didn’t expect were the remarkably kind things I’ve heard about it from so many readers, many of which made me stop around the house grumbling and making tea, which is what I do whenever I think I might cry a little otherwise. And the stark relief of this one little nasty bit made me realize how incredibly generous people have been about this book, and how grateful I am to have been able to write it for my readers…and then I stomped around the house grumbling and making tea.
And about ten minutes after I noticed this review, Tor.com published a really spectacularly glowing review of it, which I hadn’t known was coming.
So, y’know. One of those days. But thank you all for being such damn fine people. I’ll write books for you guys until I keel over.
Have a toad.
I have all these photos of a wicker maze built locally, and it’s a really striking construction and there is virtually no way that it doesn’t end in serial killers, so I wanted to fiddle with book cover design using the photos. I have not written this book and have no immediate plans to.
I dunno about the middle font. It may be too lighthearted. You know when people build giant mazes out of wicker that somebody’s gonna die.
*INSERT NOT THE BEES JOKE HERE*
Thoughts welcome! I’m not sure about this one, though it does read pretty well at teeny size, if you ask me.
This book does not really exist, and is unlikely to do so, so let’s get that out of the way.
Having realized that I will probably be randomly self-publishing things for many years to come, I finally decided that I need to address one of the glaring holes in my artistic skillset–graphic design.
I’m not great at it. But I’m gonna be doing my own book covers as T. Kingfisher for quite awhile. So I spent awhile on Pinterest pinning covers I like or found interesting or eye-catching, and then it occurred to me that there is pretty much no artistic skill you learn simply by looking at examples of it, so I started fooling with fake book mock-ups. My buddy Daniel Solis, whenever anybody drops a particular complex or weird line into the conversation, will simply say “…a memoir,” and so that turned into fake memoir covers and so forth.
I dunno, it sort of works large but the contrast between the green and the brown isn’t strong enough at the small size, so if it was kindle-thumbnail-size, it’d just look too dark.
If anyone has any suggestions for really good entry-level design books, I’d love to hear ’em.
…I cannot believe I did not update this here. By the way, I have a new book out!
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I write & illustrate books, garden, take photos, and blather about myriad things. I have very strong feelings about potatoes.
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