Helen Glynn Jones

Picture Perfect

In a past life, I used to work in advertising. I had a few different roles – print production, casting, photography producer, general dogsbody. One of the roles I held involved purchasing all stock photography for the large agency where I worked at the time, meaning I had to negotiate rights and usages for each image, so it would be fair to say I know a little bit about the process.

Many people who choose to self publish also choose to use stock images for their cover artwork. There are several reasons for doing so: the images are sharp and professional, they are easily found online, and it’s not always possible to take the photo you need yourself. Stock photos tend to fall into one of three categories:

Rights managed. These are images which require rights to be purchased for their usage. These fees are based on number of uses, the area where the image will be used, the length of time it will be used for and a few other variables, including fees paid to models who may appear in the image. Therefore, I wouldn’t recommend using this type of image for your cover, as it’s quite difficult to predict how many copies you will sell or where, and to purchase a blanket usage license would be quite costly!

Royalty Free. These are images for which you pay a single fee, then you are free to use them as often as you like, wherever you like. Therefore, they are quite useful for use in cover designs, though one downside is that you do not own the exclusive rights to the image, so it can be used by somebody else at any time.

Free. There are lots of sites offering free stock images, some of which are excellent. However, some downsides can include the images not being of the best quality, or that you have to enrol and pay a subscription fee to access the images without watermarks. Also, I have seen some of these free sites with the disclaimer that the images are not to be used for commercial purposes, which then discounts them as being used on the cover of your book. I recommend to always check the fine print before using any of these images.

You will also have to give credit to the photographer as well, so make sure to do so when using any stock image in your books.

One way around all of this is to take your own photos. You don’t need to be a Photoshop whiz to create your own effects either – even Microsoft Word has a whole selection of filters and effects you can apply to your images. For example, here is a photo of some tulips I took with my IPhone (inside the Eden Project, just FYI):

It’s rather pretty, isn’t it? (if I say so myself) 🙂

And now here it is with several different filter effects added:

This was the result of about ten minutes messing around with the images in a Microsoft Word document, then saving each one as a JPEG. As you can see, you can get quite a few interesting effects.

Just something to think about, if you are considering designing your own cover.

Cover Reveal Time!

As you know, I’m at the proofing stage for my first book, Oak and Mist. I’ve just uploaded the (hopefully) final edit file, and am now waiting with fingers crossed for the go-ahead from CreateSpace.

But in the meantime, I thought I’d share the cover with you all. And here it is :

Yay!

With thanks to the talents of Rich Jones at Turning Rebellion (who happens to be my brother) – I couldn’t have done this without him. The sword image is my design, and he drew the other elements together to create a cover that I think perfectly captures the feel of the book.

Oak and Mist

The end of everything? Great, no pressure then.’

Alma Bevan didn’t mean to go on a quest.
But when she disappears between two trees at her local park and reappears in the land of Ambeth, she finds they’ve been expecting her.

And now she has to find a lost sword or the consequences for humanity will be dire. With no idea where to look, despite help from her new friend Caleb, things become even more complicated when a handsome prince of the Dark expresses an interest in her.

All this plus homework too?

Travelling between worlds is hard enough without having to manage a suspicious best friend, complicated love interests and concerned parents. Add in some time-twisting, a mysterious bracelet and a group of immortal beings all vying for control of a lost sword, and it’s enough to make any fifteen year old girl want to give up. But then she wouldn’t see Caleb any more. Or Deryck…

Oak and Mist is book one of The Ambeth Chronicles. Available (very) soon through Amazon.

Exciting times, people, exciting times 🙂

Oh, and I’ve also started a page on Facebook. so please come and visit me. It won’t just be my blog and me banging on about my books – I’m also planning on featuring content and snippets that interest me or make me laugh, plus bits and pieces about my life. You can join me at http://www.facebook.com/authorhelenjones if you’re interested.

Thank you all so much for your support, comments and likes!

xx Helen

A Super Quick Update

It’s here!

Today I received the proof copy for Oak and Mist, the first book in The Ambeth Chronicles.

I am so excited!

It looks amazing – so much better than I even imagined. The cover design has turned out really well.

So now I need to give it a last look through before I hit the ‘Publish’ button…

…and then all will be revealed 🙂

Just wanted to let you know.

A Mystery From The Sea

The view from our guesthouse front door.

Last year, at the end of summer we went to Sligo, up in the northwest of Ireland. It was wonderful. We visited a fairy mountain and made a wish, walked through a landscape of stone monuments older than Stonehenge and stayed on the beach at a little hotel behind an ancient pub that served the most fantastic meals.

One day we decided, perhaps in a moment of madness, to walk around the rocks that edged the coastline, leading away from the pebbly beach. It wasn’t too bad, to be honest – even the small girl could manage it, and we were amazed by the fossils visible in the ancient rock layers, as well as the deep clear ocean pools below our feet.

We made it, eventually, around to what had once been a harbour and on the rocks of the small ‘beach’ we found this:

Isn’t it amazing? If I could, I would have brought it home with me. But it was incredibly heavy, despite the rust. So I took a photo instead. I’ve been meaning to have it made into a canvas – I just love the colours and the way whatever-it-is sits on the stones.

The stones were in it just as you see them – whether deposited by some other hand or the ocean waves I wasn’t sure. The beach was littered with other bits of rusting iron, remnants of a mysterious past. A curving concrete quay jutted out along one side of the little cove but it was tiny – only small boats would have come in here. Perhaps one night there was a wild storm and one of them washed up to break against the rocks, only the heaviest metal bits and pieces remaining to tell the tale.

Ireland – where even the rocks have personality 🙂

So an object found, but left where it lay. Sometimes it’s better that way.

Letting Go

The light at the end of the publishing tunnel…

I’ve had a few days away from my blog, mainly because I’ve been concentrating on setting up the manuscript for my book. I’m publishing through Createspace, the Amazon print-on-demand platform and, to be honest, it’s been pretty easy so far. I chose my size, downloaded a formatted template and started loading the text. I copied it over one chapter at a time and, besides a small formatting issue (why, Microsoft Word, would I want a line space after every paragraph and line of dialogue? Really?), it’s looking pretty good, if I say so myself. So the last step is to upload and finish the cover template, then, I guess, I can press Publish and that’s it. I’ll be published.

Which is a bit, just a tiny bit, scary.

Many of you who read my blog are writers and most of you have published already, so perhaps you know what I’m talking about. That moment before your work goes live, before you send it out into the world and it is no longer in your control. But I’m going to do it, of course I am. It’s why I’m writing stories, after all. And I’ve done all I can to make this the best product it can be – I’ve had it edited, a professional cover designed and, hopefully and most importantly, written a half-decent story. So it’s time to let go.

I guess this might be why some people refer to their books as their children, or describe birthing a novel. It’s not as intense, of course it isn’t, but it is a similar feeling. As my girl gets older and has to find her own way in the world, I have to slowly let go. Of course she will always be mine but her life will eventually become her own, so to speak. And so it is with my first book. I will send it out there and then it’s on its own. Open to criticism, to unscrupulous people who might copy it without leave, left to sink or swim. I will do all I can to help it, of course. Spread the word. Try to guide it as best I can. And, hopefully, there will be good things as well. Positive reviews. Sales (a few, at least). Sequels to come. More books in the future to keep it company out there. Don’t get me wrong – I’m pretty excited about it all too. I just have to get on with it.

They say with so many things that the first time is the hardest, and so I think it might be with publishing a book. Have any of you felt the same way?

PS I’m also planning an e-book version as well – will let you all know when it’s out there!

Heart Reflections

Over the half term holiday a couple of weeks ago, I went to Wales to visit family. They live just near Llangollen, a small town nestled in the arms of the mountains, the river rushing through its midst.

The town hasn’t really changed since I was a small child, and I suppose hadn’t changed much even then. There are small winding streets, old stone houses and river gardens, shops where you can buy local art pottery, old books or souvenirs, tiny dragons or slate house numbers, flags and magnets and all the things we take away to decorate our homes, little bits of magic to remind us where we’ve been. A ruined castle sits high on a hill overlooking the town, as do the venerable black timbered halls of Plas Newydd, where two ladies lived together in defiance of both their families and eighteenth century convention.

We did as we always do when we visit. Walked the main street, wandering in and out of small shops where my daughter spent some carefully hoarded pounds, ate in a café (staffed by two fabulously coiffed young men), watched the River Dee as it bubbled over the rocks and under the old stone bridge. Then we went for a walk along the canal path.

The canal was created as part of the great industrial revolution, a smooth straight stretch of water running alongside the ancient river, her waters too wild to carry the boats filled with coal and stone and supplies. The River Dee has a long chronicled history, first mentioned in the writings of Ptolemy as the River Deva, almost two thousand years ago. Deva means goddess, and the river waters were said to be sacred to the goddess of war, their ever changing path as they moved toward the boundary with England said to state which side would be victorious in any given year. So this is pretty cool stuff. In modern welsh the river is still called Dyfrdwy, which translates as ‘the waters of the goddess,’ so the tradition still holds.

I love that kind of thing.

So off we went, walking the gravelled canal path, the ancient waters of the goddess tumbling over stones to the left of us while the canal stretched smooth and unbroken to the right. The day was bitterly cold, the foliage bare golden brown in most parts. Yet there were still signs of Spring to come – a few buds of blossom, snowdrops carpeting the opposite banks. I took some photos and talked to my mother and, as I tucked my hands in my pockets and watched my daughter dancing ahead, hand in her grandfather’s, I felt a great sense of peace. It’s the kind I get when I’m in the Welsh hills, as though I could lie down and wrap myself in the landscape. This is why I call it my heart home, I guess. There is no other place that does this for me.

A huge old oak tree stands where the river and the canal join…

Do you have a heart home, somewhere you’d love to live if you could? If so, where would it be?

Making Salad with Anais

My lovely sister-in-law-to-be is currently studying at UCLA, and she recently had access to their archives for research. She chose to look at the diaries and correspondence of Anais Nin and was extremely excited about having the chance to look at these documents, to touch the pages Anais had touched, to see her words as they were written. As I sat here in gloomy grey England she sent me a quick snapshot of one of the pages – the writing was neat and stretched long, but it was the words that amazed me:

‘There was a bottle on the floor and talk which did not climb like a Gothic spire, but broke and splashed like a kaleidoscope in the febrile hands of Fred whose moods are like a string orchestra playing Debussy…

From the diary of Anais Nin

Sigh.

Such a glorious use of simile, and this was just one part of one page in her diaries. I think I would have been stuck in the archive room for weeks, immersed in the beauty of her words. And this was no significant event, just a diary entry noting an evening spent with Henry and Fred (Henry Miller and Fred Perles, his roommate). They drank together and talked, and at one point made a salad. She describes Fred preparing ‘the savouries for the salad with ritualistic fervour.’ I mean, it’s just making salad, but she imbues it with so much more. You can almost hear the knife chopping down, staccato beat on wood.

For me this was fascinating. Here is a woman known mainly for her erotic stories, but whose everyday diary entries prove the fact that she was also a damn good writer. These days, diary keeping is a largely forgotten art. Instead we have Facebook and Twitter in which to record our hours, short phrases dashed out in the few moments we may have between one thing and another, hardly conducive to creating great prose. Yet writing every day is the best way to improve our craft, so perhaps those diary keepers of yore had an advantage that we do not, something that explains why some of today’s popular novels seems to lack a richness of language, erotica dumbed down to repeated exclamations and muddy inner monologues, style sacrificed to pace.

I hope one day I can learn to write about making salad like she did.

Music and Dreams

Tower House in London. Home to Jimmy Page, another fine musician…

Music is in my family.

My grandmother was a wonderful singer, my brother is a professional musician, and my cousin works in music management. Music has been around me since I can remember, dancing to Leo Sayer and Queen on my dad’s stereo, lying awake on warm nights listening to ELO and the Moody Blues drift upstairs to my childhood room, sweet melodies in the golden darkness. Later I formed my own tastes, posters on my walls, teenage screams at concerts past, Walkman almost permanently on. I was even, and this is the absolute truth, at the concert where Duran Duran filmed ‘The Reflex’ video. I still remember Simon LeBon announcing ‘We’re going to make a video’ and the whole place losing its collective mind, myself included.

I like a fairly broad range of music and still love going to live shows – the last one I went to, and enjoyed immensely, was the Ginger Wildheart 50^th Birthday Bash. We took our daughter to her first live concert when she was five. It was Slash, and she got to go backstage and then onstage (courtesy of her uncle playing in the opening band). She and I danced together as Slash played his iconic guitar riff from ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ just metres away from us, my own sweet child clinging to me. That was an experience that will always stay with me, one perfect moment in time.

There is a piece of music I particularly love to listen to while I’m writing. In fact, I’m listening to it now. Sure, I usually have Itunes on in the background, often on shuffle. But sometimes I play this piece, over and over, on repeat. It’s the second movement of Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony – if you’ve seen The King’s Speech (and if you haven’t, you should – it’s an amazing film) you’ll recognise it as the music playing while the King reads his famous speech.

They say that in times past, classical composers were the rock stars of their day. And this piece of music makes me imagine how it would have been, sitting in a darkened theatre centuries ago. The gleam of silk and jewels, gold trim on the boxes, candle wax scent in the perfumed air. Or perhaps listening to it played in a private salon, the home of someone wealthy enough to command a performance for friends. It is music to dream to, bittersweet longing woven into the notes.

That’s my interpretation, of course. And that’s the great thing about music. There are some bands and genres that I’m never going to like, whereas other people might look at my own musical tastes and shake their heads. But while it appeals to each of us in a different way, music is something common to the human experience as a whole. Its origins lie somewhere entwined with our own, an ever-changing soundtrack to our history.

Great music moves us – to dance, to scream, to tears. So what moves you? What songs form the soundtrack to your own life?

A Portent

The other week I saw a dragon in the sky.

Outstretched wings, a long curving neck, all gleaming golden beauty.

‘Do I need to build a windlance?’ I thought.

And then, as I struggled with cold fingers to get my phone unlocked, the dragon drifted and changed, the sky taking him away.

But I think, perhaps, I caught him. No black arrow required.

🙂

The Heart of Things

The other day I experienced something entirely new as a writer. I finished writing a book. And by finished, I mean, that’s it. No more editing, no more adding scenes or taking away. Done. Ready to publish.

The book is Oak and Mist, of course. The first in my series of six books about Ambeth, and a girl from this world who finds her life inextricably linked with that magical realm. The story is one I still enjoy reading, no matter how many times I go over it, so I hope other readers will feel the same way.

It’s quite an unusual feeling to be finished, after tinkering away on it for two years now. I must have read and made changes to it close to a hundred times by now, but this final edit, the professional one, is the one that has made the difference. The language is clear, the story flows and I know that if I mess with it any more I’ll just be gilding the lily. So it is done.

In one of my original blogs I wrote about stories emerging from the forest floor, gleaming carapaces of fossilised bone. I had to clear the dirt from them, brushing the crevices, honing and polishing until they were free of the earth. And so now it’s as though I hold one in my hands, unutterably precious and delicate. It’s a wonderful feeling and, now that I’ve experienced it, I’ll be able to access it again for the next five books in the series. (and then all the other non-Ambeth ideas I have waiting after that).

Now I need to get going on book 2. The title is No Quarter, and, when I started reading through it last night I could see immediately there’s a lot to be done before it’s ready to send out for editing.

So that’s another lesson learned, on my journey to Ambeth. That as writers we must keep chipping away until we reach the very heart of things. Extraneous words, extra scenes and fancy description can often detract, rather than add to the story. I still have a way to go, but I do feel as though I have a much better understanding of that now.

And so I keep digging…

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