2019 ends …

Thank you for reading this post.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Thank you for leaving comments and likes and making my day when I’ve been struggling this year.

Thank you for downloading my free book, Silver Fire.

Thank you for buying my other books online.

Clippings December 2019

Lored taku-kevir

Nilo is half human half kimder

Pencil sketch of Otta by Freya Pickard

Tari Colour by Suzanne

Thank you for reviewing my work and enabling me to keep on selling my books.

Thank you for being my audience.

Thank you for everything.

Have a wonderful Christmas and here’s to a peaceful, inspiring and creative New Year!

See you all again in 2020!

Much love

Freya xxx

Positives Please!

This is a short post about Reviews.

An Ancient Song Volume Three of The Kaerling Series

The Day of Weird Paperback Cover

When I read reviews about a book/film/product, I only ever read the 4 and 5 star reviews. I never read anything lower. Why?

I work in the hospitality industry and have discovered that people who leave 1 star reviews or who complain a lot in reviews, have issues. Sometimes they have unrealistic expectations. Sometimes they bought the wrong product (eg a small B&B room instead of a luxury spa hotel spa) and don’t like it.

Having survived cancer, I believe life is too short to waste my time on reading complaints that often are irrelevant to the product I’m buying.

When I read a review about a book, I want to know why the reviewer enjoyed it. I’m really not interested in story and character arcs. I read a lot of books that don’t conform to accepted ways of telling stories (JRR Tolkien and Patrick O’Brien for instance) so I don’t need to know if someone else found these things important. I want to know if it’s a page-turner or has an unexpected plot twist!

And these are the kinds of reviews I’m looking for for my own novels. Can you help? Silver Fire is a FREE download. Why don’t you start with this and post your review on Amazon or Goodreads? You never know, I might find your novel and read and review it myself!

© Freya Pickard 2019

How to be a Writer’s Best Friend #6

DO

Watch your author friend’s book trailers right to the end! Share them everywhere on facebook, twitter, pinterest, linkedin etc etc Leave encouraging comments on You Tube about her book trailer and remember to like it!

DON’T

Tell her that her books aren’t your kind of thing without reading one first.

You can find the links to all my books here at Scribd.

© Freya Pickard 2019

If you’re a writer and identified with this post, please share!

How to be a Writer’s Best Friend #4

DO

Buy subsequent books by your author friend as soon as they are available. Repeat steps #1 – #3.

DON’T

Insist on going round for coffee. She’s writing. Wait until you’re invited.

You can find the links to all my books here at iBooks.

© Freya Pickard 2019

If you’re a writer and identified with this post, please share!

How to be a Writer’s Best Friend #1

DO

Buy her book as soon as it’s launched. Read it within a week. Review it straightaway. Then blog/tweet/pin/share your review everywhere.

DON’T

Ignore the fact that she’s written and published a book. You will be dropped from her Christmas list.

You can find the links to all my books here at UK Kindle.

The Day of Weird sketch by Kombmaker

© Freya Pickard 2019

If you’re a writer and identified with this post, please share!

Freya’s Paperbacks

If, like me, you prefer reading a paperback to Kindle, you will be overjoyed to learn that I now have 3 paperbacks in publication!

My most recent paperback in print is, of course, Vintrig’s Throne.

This is the sequel to Vintrig’s Kingdom (see below) and brings to a conclusion the story of Isu that began in the first volume.

If you enjoy tales of romance and swashbuckling action mixed in with biased trials and dark magic, this is the book for you!

With its blood red cover you can’t miss it! And once again, I’ve used a painting by Kombmaker because it made me think of the terrain around Vintrig’s Castle!

Secondly …

… there’s my first collection of short stories, The Rusalka Ritual & Other Stories.

These are tales that involve Dracomagan, the narrator of Dragonscale Leggings. They’ll make you laugh, shiver and cry…

If you like fairy tales with a twist, get yourself a copy!

I had to use this painting by Kombmaker because he unwittingly created a picture that was straight out of my otherworld!

Thirdly …

… there’s my novel Vintrig’s Kingdom.

This is the first volume of Isu Magan’s tale – a snow white cover for a virgin princess living in a monochrome world. Again, it is one of Kombmaker’s sketches – a castle in a snowstorm… You’ll need to read this one before you buy the sequel!

All of these three books are available as e-books The Isu Magan series are priced at $3 each and The Rusalka Ritual is currently $1. Paperback prices vary depending from whom you buy them. I will be releasing my 4th paperback in the next few months! Keep a look out here for it – what will it be? A novel? Another short story collection? Or perhaps it will be a poetry anthology…

To navigate around this blog, simply click on the dragonscales at the top of the page and scroll down to see the options on the right handside.

© Freya Pickard 2018

How I choose covers for short stories …

A few weeks ago I posted about how I choose covers for my novels. Today I want to talk about choosing covers for short stories.

Stories are different from Novels in their length, structure and aim. With a short story, you have to be in the storytelling world immediately. The action has to happen quickly and there needs to be a good resolution before the end of the tale. So far, I’ve published a single short story plus one short story collection.

I had very clear ideas on what I wanted for The Essence of Thyme. As the first in a series (originally published as a free read in my Newsletter) I wanted the covers of the following books to link back to this one.

I knew from the start that I wanted a vast green globe on the front to portray the green globe mentioned towards the end of the story. (It is key to the following two stories as well). JBH suggested the shadowed lattice work giving the cover a slightly darker, more haunted feel. This, I felt, went suitably with the silent castle and slightly puzzling enchantment of Lord Thyme’s son.

I knew I didn’t want a fairy tale picture because although this story is a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, it is most definitely NOT a sugar sweet, happy ending …

I came across the picture I used for The Rusalka Ritual & Other Stories when I was going through Kombmaker’s portfolio. As soon as I saw it, I recognised it as being the woodland that the companions travel through in The Rusalka Ritual.

When JBH came to manipulate the painting, I advised him on the part of it that had to appear on the front cover, namely the waterfall with the golden light above it. Surprisingly, JBH stretched the painting digitally, cutting off the trees to either side. But boy, did it work! I was so pleased with it. At JBH’s suggestion, we used that particular font with red ink, to make it look as though the words were written in blood …

This collection is a series of fairy tales, but there aren’t necessarily any fairy tale endings, which I why I think the cover works; it makes me think of Grimm’s fairy stories. My tales will make you laugh, but there’s always something slightly sinister about Dracomagan’s Otherworld.

As always, I’m trying to be different! Do you think I’ve succeeded? Which of these books would you buy?

© Freya Pickard 2017