Figuring out fonts

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:

• Fonts for interior book design. Useful for cover design too.
• Tips for kerning. For those who are really serious about their fonts.

Recharging my batteries

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.

#SampleSunday

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.

Of literal epiphanies

I had an epiphany yesterday about the book I’m currently writing, the Warrior’s Heart. There are smaller moments of enlightenment with every book, when I suddenly know how the story will enfold, but epiphanies happen more seldom.

The book is the next one in my Two-Natured London series. They’re paranormal romances featuring vampires and shape-shifters among other creatures I’ve created myself. I’ve put quite a lot of planning into my world in order to make it believable, logical and interesting, but sometimes I simply cannot design the details to my liking. Writing this book, I’ve struggled throughout with my vampires and their second nature. At times, I’ve been completely stuck, but mostly I’ve written on, doggedly, ignoring the gaping holes in the logic of my creation. 

And then, yesterday: an epiphany. Suddenly, I knew what I needed to do with absolute clarity. And it was so simple I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. Adding one detail to my description of vampires made everything else I had created fall neatly to their place. No more holes in the logic.

Of course, now I have to rewrite the entire manuscript that was almost finished. But it’s worth it. The book will be that much better for it.

I’m sure there’s a lesson in this for me too. One that immediately comes to mind is that I cannot rush the story. I need to give it time to mature. And I guess the other one would be that even small details may make a difference so I should pay better attention to them. Good lessons for all of us, I'm sure.

For a sample of my upcoming book, visit my webpage, here.

Food for imagination

I love maps; always have, ever since I was a child. I love all kinds of maps from historical maps to road maps and atlases. I’m good at reading them, too, and usually end up as the navigator on family vacations to strange places; we’ve seldom got lost and have always found back home.

In addition to being helpful in practise, I find maps a great food for my imagination. I like to imagine what the places that are only lines on paper will look like in reality. They don’t even have to be maps of real places; those imaginary maps in most fantasy books are vital for my enjoyment of them and I consult the maps often during the reading.

I use maps when I write my own books too, although the books themselves don’t contain them. I want to see the places where my characters live and work, the routes they would take between the two and the transportation they would use. Sometimes I’ve changed locations for either or both because I’ve thought the commuting too much of a hassle; it’s easy to relocate when you can do it on paper. I've been writing a historical novel too that would be absolutely impossible to imagine without the help of old street maps. Maps, therefore, affect my writing.

Modern technology has added an extra dimension to all those maps: Google Street View. With a click of my mouse, I’m transported to another town to witness places I wouldn’t otherwise have access to. When I plan locations for my characters, I pick a neighbourhood on the map and click closer to see if it looks and feels like the kind of place where my character would live. If not, I’ll simply choose another one until I find one that fits. The pictures on Street View have all sorts of little clues that help me make up my mind. Maybe I’m looking for a family neighbourhood, but the street is filled with sport cars that give me a notion of a place where only single men live; maybe I want a neighbourhood for wealthier people, but the houses on the one I’ve picked need repair and the shop fronts are boarded over. So on to the next street.

I also use Street View to make action scenes more real. In At Her Boss’s Command, for example, Emily, the heroine, flees from point A to point B. With the help of Street View, I could describe her flight with greater detail, add little obstacles on her path to make everything more realistic. Street View prevents me from making embarrassing blunders too. The same scene, the way I originally wrote it, would have taken her straight through a huge construction site that wasn’t on the map but was visible on Street View. I could have made her round it, but in the end I relocated the entire scene to a more accessible location. I don’t know if readers would have known about the construction site, but it bothered me so I changed it.

Finally, I use Street View when I’m stuck in my narrative; when what I’ve written feels lifeless or when I can’t find the right words. I look at pictures of real places and start describing them to my readers, adding details that transform my narrative from dry words to something more alive.

So, here they are, my reasons for liking maps. Next time that you are stuck in your writing, try opening a map or Street View. Let your imagination free and see if it doesn’t help you too.

Of book series

As a compulsive reader, there’s nothing I like more than long series. I like to return to people and places I love again and again. The series that follow the same main character are the best – Harry Dresden, anyone – especially if there is a slowly evolving background story, but series that introduce new main characters in every book are good too, as long as there’s something to remind from the previous books. Some romance series follow that pattern. Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series is a good example, even more so since it has an intriguing story beneath the romances, as are Suzanne Enoch’s Regency romances, most of them written in trios. I’ve realised recently too, that the books don’t really have to be any good for me to return to them. Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series hasn’t had a decent book in ages, yet I read them. I simply love some of the side characters – not even Anita herself – and have to return to them.

As an author, then, I’d like to produce a good series that readers would like to follow for many books to come. I believe I would enjoy writing a long series, because it would allow me to spend time with my characters longer. Everything I’ve published so far has at least one book planned to follow them, but the Two-Natured London series I have planned to be longer. It will be a series of paranormal romances set in the same world, with some recurring characters. The first book was about shifters, the second one will be about vampires, the next one – who knows. And I have another series planned – partly written too – set in the same world, a longer, more action driven series called the Crimson Circle.

In order to write an intriguing series, I’ve tried to figure out what it is that draws me back to the series I follow. So far, I haven’t found any one thing that would define all of them. For a romance, I’d like the chemistry between the main pair to be sizzling so knowing that the author can produce that will make me read them; for a fantasy, I’d like the plot to be compelling enough to keep my interest, but the best ones have more than one thing going for them. It’s a challenge then, to try and write books with the similar allure. Readers have liked the first book in the Two-Natured London series, but how to repeat the same when the characters change? And in the longer form, how complex would the story need to be to hold the readers’ interest?

The only solution I have come up with so far is to write each and every book as well as I can. Will that be enough? Well, it’s early days yet, but if you stay with me along the way, you’ll be the first to find out. And if you'd like to share the thing that draws you back to your favourite series, please do so in the comment section.

Incidentally, there are a couple of reviews of some of my favourite series in the reviews section of this blog. There aren't that many yet; as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm new to the reviewing, but I'll add them as I go.

Hello, dear void

I’ve been hanging out on Twitter for two months now. Not terribly long, but long enough for me to have got some hang of it. Well, of the basics anyway. I haven’t figured out all the hashtags yet, nor do I employ those that I know very often, but I have come to understand one thing about the nature of Twitter. This may be self-evident to you; my husband revealed it to me before I even opened the account, but I didn’t quite believe him. Tweeting is not about communicating; it’s not a dialogue, it’s a monologue.  A cluster of monologues that all happen at the same time. Everyone speaks and no one listens.

Once I figured that out, tweeting has been fun. I don’t have to care about what people think of my tweets. They won’t read them anyway. I can talk about myself, or mention something that has taken my fancy that day, be it a cute kitten or a piece of information for writers. Once it’s out there, those who follow me have a half an hour at most  to see it and then it’s gone. And since most of those who follow me live on the other side of the world from me, the chances are they never read anything I tweet; it will be lost in the influx of other people’s monologues in their feed long before they wake up in the morning.

I think most of those who tweet have realised the one-sided nature of Twitter. At least if you look at their tweets. Most of the content isn’t meant to be reacted to, unless the tweet asks you to buy something. Of six hundred accounts that I currently follow, only fifty have content that I actually read regularly. Apart from institutions, like newspapers that produce quantities of genuinely interesting tweets, the tweets that I read are usually something personal that make me take interest in the tweeter, or something funny. Considering the number of people who tweet because they want people to buy something from them – me included – it’s surprising that so few of them make an effort to ensure their tweets actually get read. 

   

So, it’s a challenge, making my tweets interesting enough for people to read them regularly so that the couple of times I mention my books won’t get lost. I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but I’m trying. It’s time consuming though so I can understand why some would want to maintain a Twitter presence with automatic tweets that repeat their books’ links many times a day with the hopes that one of the tweets catch. But since I don’t read the automatic tweets, I have to assume mine wouldn’t get read either if I resorted to those. So they’re counter-productive, really.

In the long run, the monologue might become disheartening. But then, occasionally, someone reacts to my tweet, retweets it or answers to me. For a brief moment, there is a dialogue and then we go to our separate ways. Those encounters are wonderful, they make everything worthwhile. I can imagine that I’m not shouting into a void after all. I’m not alone.

Now that I have the tweeting figured out – to a degree – it’s onto the next challenge. I opened a Google+ account as Susanna Shore, one of my pen names. I have no idea how it operates, or how to get people to follow me there. So if you have an account there, look me up. Perhaps you can share a few pointers with me about it to; create a dialogue.