For the
past couple of days, I’ve been studying fonts. I want to find the exactly right
one for the cover of my upcoming book, the Warrior’s Heart. Anyone who has ever
tried to do the same knows it’s not easy. The sheer amount of fonts is
overwhelming and just because you like a font doesn’t mean it’s suitable for
your purpose. There was a timely reminder of the latter on my twitter feed only
this week:
I looked at
fonts on only one website, Fonts2U, and there only on one category, gothic
fonts. The fonts on that site are mostly free to download, but they are not all
free to use. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a handy search function that would
have limited the search to those I could use so I ended up going through approximately
500 fonts of about 2500 there were in that category. It took me quite a while. I really like fonts and I don't find the task of finding the right one a burden. But, after a while, they all began to look the same.
Today, I
went through what I had downloaded. I had found quite a few nice fonts and I
tested them all. They weren’t all suitable for this book, but I can use them in
others. And there were more than one that was almost perfect so the task of
finding the right one isn’t over yet.
So what is
the right font then? Frankly, it’s impossible to tell, but you can narrow down
the possibilities.
The right font has the right atmosphere for the genre of your book. It can be romantic, funny, futuristic or gothic, for example. For the most part, these are pretty straightforward to figure out. If you’re not exactly sure, study the covers of the professionally designed books of the same genre.
The right font is legible. As I went through the font samples, I skipped all those that I couldn't read with one glance. Remember, too, that just because a font is readable on large sizes, it doesn’t necessarily remain so when the cover is shrunk to a thumbnail, so test it out.
The right font isn’t overused. This is perhaps the most difficult thing for an amateur to know about until someone points it out. I wouldn't worry about this one overly much, but I would avoid the obvious ones. I downloaded the Hobbit font used in - or similar to that in - the Lord of the Rings movies, but it's too recognisable to use in anything but funny private projects.
The right font is the one you’re allowed to use. Remember to check the licenses.
I have found these points helpful when narrowing down the possibilities. I hope they will help you too. And if you need more, here's a couple of useful links:
I finally got my next book, the Warrior's Heart, to a point where I felt comfortable enough with it to send it to my editor, Lee Burton. For the first time, I had a deadline with him; he had other clients lined up so I was determined to keep it too. But it turned out that the book had a mind of its own and I shot past my deadline by over ten days. And that was even though I worked long days with my manuscript.
Deadlines aren't all bad. Some say they keep the world turning. I wouldn't have pushed that hard with the book if I hadn't had one. But now that the book is out of my hands, I find myself very exhausted. I most definitely don't have anything creative in me. So it's time to recharge the batteries for a few days. I'll head to the countryside and do some crosscountry skiing.
Oh, who am I kidding. I'll be sitting by a fireplace, catching up with my reading. I'll be back next week.
Here's another unedited sample from my upcoming book, Warrior's Heart; the first one you can read here. It's the second book in the Two-Natured London series. This one features two vampires, Jasper who is a Crimson Circle warrior, and Philippa who is a DI in the Metropolitan Police Service. Here is their first encounter. It isn't very auspicious.
Jas noticed an unmarked
police car to pull over outside a three story residential building on the other
side of the street to the club. He thought that they were here for the melee,
but although two of the three persons exiting the car – human males – paused to
take a look, the third, a vampire woman, headed straight into the building
without so much as a glance. Of course, being a vampire, she didn’t actually
have to use her eyes to check out the situation, just as he didn’t have to be
close to her to know what she was; that was what the scanning was for.
The sight of her – small, fit
and pretty – distracted Jas briefly from what he was doing and the human man he
was trying to calm down got a chance at lunging at him. Almost distractedly, Jas
blocked the attack and subdued the bloke with more compulsion than was
absolutely necessary while straining his hearing to find out what was happening
in the building.
What he heard froze his
blood. An enraged man, shifter by the sounds of his still-human roaring, was
trashing a flat there, scaring the shit out of some woman in there with him.
And into that the vampire woman was heading. Alone.
Before he realised what he
was doing, Jas had dashed across the street and to the building. “Are you
seriously letting her do all the work,” he growled at the older of the men
standing by the door.
The man lit a cigarette as if
nothing was a miss. “Relax. She can handle it,” he said, but Jas didn’t listen.
He got in and rushed up the stairs two at the time. He could already hear the
woman knock firmly on the door, and since the noise inside the flat silenced,
she had been heard.
“Metropolitan Police. Open the
door, please.” And the shifter did.
Before Jas’s horrified eyes,
the door opened, revealing a tiger-shifter so enraged he was a hair’s breadth
from shifting. The three-dimensional, living, holographic manifestation of the
shifter’s tiger, visible only to two-natureds, was stretching so far out of his
chest it easily reached the woman. It attacked her instantly.
She didn’t even flinch. Shifters’
auras couldn’t hurt anybody – insubstantial as they were they simply went
through any concrete obstacles on their path – but it took some nerve not to
flee when a tiger attacked you. Standing her ground, she reached out her hand
towards the shifter’s chest and yanked, and the man dropped on the floor
unconscious, his aura disappearing.
Since Jas had felt what she
did, he wasn’t as surprised as the twenty-something woman who crawled out from
under a coffee table where she had taken cover. “What did you do to him?”
“I blocked his access to
Might,” the vampire detective answered.
Jas knew it was the simplest
explanation, but actually she had sucked all Might from around the shifter,
creating a temporary void, thus cutting his access to the energy vital to the
two-natured; an extremely difficult stunt to pull alone, as Might abhorred
vacuum and constantly rushed in to fill it. Shifters couldn’t shift without
Might, but the bloke had probably good enough reserves to shift even without a direct
access. However, on the edge as he had been, the sudden loss of contact had
caused him to pass out.
“He’ll wake up soon enough so
I suggest you vacate the premises before he does.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t harm
me,” the woman said contrary to the evidence. The flat was trashed and there
were pieces of broken furniture everywhere. She wasn’t injured, so the shifter
had taken out his rage on inanimate objects, but that didn’t mean she was safe.
Jas had to shake his head. Humans.
“You cheat on your shifter
mate and expect him to just take it,” he growled, startling both women. He was
sure the vampire had known he was there, had in fact felt her scan him when he
approached, but the other had had no idea, all her attention on her downed
mate.
“I did not cheat on him,” she
claimed defiantly, crossing her arms over her ample chest. “And anyway, how
would you know about it?”
The vampire woman snorted
before Jas had a chance to answer. “You positively reek of the other guy.”
“But I showered,” the human
woman began and then covered her mouth hastily with her hand.
“You’re married to a shifter
and don’t know that their sense of smell is far superior to yours? Or understand
that shifters mate for life once their beast makes a choice and his has chosen
you. And this is how you repay him? By cheating?”
Jas had once thought a human
would make a good partner to him, but he had learned otherwise the hard way.
With shifters, the difficulties were even more obvious and the consequences
more dire. Their tightest bond was created by Might pulling the two people
together, but since humans couldn’t sense Might, they didn’t react to it. As a
consequence, the human partner wasn’t similarly physically incapable of
cheating on their mate as the shifter was. As evidenced, the shifter would react
really badly when their human mate was unfaithful.
“I don’t see how this would
be any of your business,” the woman started angrily, but the vampire woman
interrupted her.
“If I have to come back here
tonight, it will most definitely be my business, and I will arrest both of
you.”
“What would you arrest me
for?”
“Stupidity.”
The answer made Jas laugh
aloud, but the vampire just shot him a disgusted glance, before turning back to
the shifter’s mate. “You can’t stay here. There’s no saying he won’t attack you
again once he wakes up. I’ll wait here until you’ve packed your bag. Hurry up.”
It was said with such authority that the woman complied, no charm needed.
Jas was about to compliment her on it when she turned to him.
“Who the bloody hell are you
and why are you here?”
But Jas was too busy admiring
her to answer, now that he had a good look at her. She wasn’t quite as small as
he had originally thought, perhaps five foot four, but she was delicately
built, which made her appear smaller and more fragile than she undoubtedly was.
She was wearing a suit that didn’t show much of her body, but he could imagine
shapely legs and round buttocks inside her trousers, and the cut of her jacket
revealed the curve of her small, round breasts and narrow waist. Her face
didn’t follow the delicate theme though. It was well-defined and stubborn with
fine cheekbones, pert nose and straight dark brows. Her mouth was set in a
determined line and her eyes were large and green. And very angry. To cap it
all, her blond hair was cropped near to her scull in a pixie style and while he
favoured long hair on women, he thought it suited her perfectly. Very feminine
instead of manly she probably wanted it to be.
“Well, answer me or do I have
to arrest you too.”
Philippa couldn’t understand where the large vampire male had come from, but judging by his outfit, he had either been at the club or about to go there. That didn’t explain why he was standing on the landing behind her, looming over her like a bodyguard.
The immediate impression of him was that he was huge, but decades in service had taught her to estimate heights and she thought he was a little short of six foot tall. He seemed larger because he was all tight muscles and large bones he had put on display in a form hugging silk shirt, and he carried himself tall. On top of that, the air of authority around him one didn’t question gave him some extra height.
His face was equally strong and full of arrogance the older vampires oozed without even trying. She couldn’t say how old exactly, because his shields were up so tightly that her scan couldn’t penetrate them, but that alone belied age. Angular chin covered with stubble, prominent nose, strong dark brows over cold brown eyes and a cleanly shaven head that revealed an old scar on the right side of his head; it must have been a horrible wound. He wasn’t actually handsome, but he was so manly looking she could barely turn her eyes away. If she had to hazard a guess, she would say a face like that belonged to a Circle warrior.
Bugger.
He was saved from answering by the return of the idiotic shifter’s mate. Philippa opposed violence against women on principle and years in service had made her abhor it in practise too, but sometimes she had to wonder if a good slap around the face wouldn’t drive some sense into some people. Couldn’t they at least teach humans some basics before they let them mate shifters? Did the woman really think her mate wouldn’t find out that she was cheating on him? Never mind that his reaction had been over the top even for a mated shifter. Their flat was demolished.
“Do you have a place to go? Mother? Best friend?”
A moment alone had given the woman some time to reflect what had happened and she was more subdued. “I guess I could go to Steve.”
“Is he the other bloke?” When the woman nodded, Philippa shook her head disgusted. “How stupid are you anyway. Your mate will follow you there and then there’s no saving either of you. You’ll go to your mother.” She didn’t even have to charm her; the woman just nodded.
The shifter was lying across the threshold unconscious and Philippa leaned over to push him inside so that she could close the door. But before she managed to do it, the vampire male had handled it for him. “I had it covered, thanks,” she said annoyed. She wasn’t so small she couldn’t have moved a two hundred pound shifter.
“I was glad to help,” the bloke said, as if nothing was amiss. He stepped aside to let her and the shifter’s mate descend the stairs before him, but she sensed him scan the perimeter well before them for anything that might harm them.
“Relax, big boy,” she sneered. “It’s just my partners downstairs.”
“Who let you handle an enraged shifter on your own,” he said with a frown.
She snorted. “Like they could have done anything about him.”
“It’s the principle of it.”
“Yes it is,” she conceded. “She who can, does.” He didn’t say anything to that, but she could sense his disapproval. A big surprise. Vampire males hadn’t really reached the twenty-first century yet when it came to gender equality. All the more reason for her to work among humans, even if they annoyed her with their short lives.
Back on the street, Simon took charge of the woman and Adrian came to her. He hadn’t been happy when she ordered him to wait downstairs, but Simon had convinced him to stay. He sized up the vampire and she had to admire his nerve. Or pity his stupidity. “Who’s the civilian?”
She actually didn’t know so she turned to the vampire, only to see him staring arrogantly down at Adrian. A feat, considering they were about the same height; the vampire only seemed bigger. “He’s too young to look after you,” the vampire growled and she stifled an urge to punch him in the arm. If he was, indeed, a Circle warrior, nothing good would follow from it; they weren’t exactly known as forgiving fellows. So she rolled her eyes instead.
“And you’re too old for pissing contests.”
His mouth quirked, softening the hard face. “A man is never too old for those.”
***
If you liked the sample, the first book in the Two-Natured London series, the Wolf's Call, is available on Amazon. Check the side bar for links.
