ASIN: B00B1UOE7S Cover Reveal

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I’m putting the finishing touches on the second e-book of the Green Crystal fantasy series, which stars Nick Andrews, a 12-year-old boy whom I featured in my previous post. The book, “Day of the Fairies,” is another short story, and it replaces the following books that I published at Amazon from 2013 to 2016:

Trespassing: The Ridgewood Chronicles, Book 2

and Trespassing: A Vree Erickson Novel

The novel moved to another series of books. (More about that in a future post.) As for the new book, I’m aiming for a Halloween release, so stay tuned for more info.

So, before I run off to put on my editor’s cap, here’s the new cover:

Day of the Fairies: A Ridgewood Chronicles Short Story

Okay, time for me to run. Peace, love, and good health, everyone!

Judging A Book By Cover

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I am trying to understand the reasoning behind the popular talk nowadays among indie authors about how to best present our book covers. Most of the how-to info is very complicated, and most of the advice ends with “Let a professional do it.” The idea is to hook the potential reader before they look inside the book.

I’m an old-school reader and buyer of books that began in the 1960s. Many of my purchases back then were paperbacks because they were affordable. Even in the 1970s when I entered the workforce and had a weekly income, I still bought paperbacks. So did my friends. Often, we went book hunting on Saturday afternoons, hitting the malls in search of our next read.

The covers on paperback books (and hardcovers) were simple in design. It was often the title that caught my eye. If it sounded interesting, I would flip the book over and read the back cover copy. That’s what either prompted me to buy the book or return it to the shelf.

Most online bookstores today have a feature equivalent to the old back cover copy. It’s the short blurb off to the side of the book cover on display. I call it the “What is this book about?” feature. And it’s here where an author either convinces me to buy their book or prompts me to continue browsing.

Beautiful, fancy, exotic book covers and plain, two-tone, neutral ones have never prompted me to buy a book. It has always been the “What’s this book about?” feature.

Look at this Stephen King paperback of The Shining from one of its first runs.

The book’s title attracted me because I asked, “What does the title mean?” The back cover copy gave me a clue and whetted my curiosity. Until then, I had never read a book by King. Neither had my friends. I ended up liking the story so much, I bought his two prior releases, ’Salem’s Lot and Carrie, on a gamble that I would like them too. I did. So did a million other readers.

Compared to today’s indie writing market, if King was an unknown author selling his books at Amazon, and he used the above cover, would you buy it?

Look at the replacement cover of The Shining a few years later during the movie release.

Would you still want to buy it?

I don’t think it’s wise to worry about eye-catching book cover design. I think we should continue to strive at writing as well as we can and to write a compelling “What’s this book about?” feature. If your story is captivating and entertaining, then people will notice, even if you’ve wrapped it in a brown paper bag.

Old Dog, New Tricks In May

Steve Campbell7 Comments

I’m back in the saddle with my KDP book projects, getting ready to publish my books again at Amazon. I spent the past month learning new publishing techniques that will help ease the burden of being an indie author who self-publishes their books.

First among the list was learning the latest Microsoft Word program after I replaced 2010 with 365. The learning curve was small on that, which carried me onto Amazon’s latest version of Kindle Create. Again, the curve wasn’t too difficult since I last used the program five years ago.

Next on my list was learning to use Inkscape so I can create my book covers for paperback books. I usually use MS Word and an old PhotoDeluxe program for that, but I wanted to learn something new. The curve on that is big, so I’ve been watching YouTube tutorials to ease the process. I have a college BA degree in graphic design that I received in 1990, so I’m a relic when it comes to all the gadgets and their bells and whistles in the digital age. Don’t let me get started on all my failures while using Photoshop twenty years ago. The program was Grand Canyon huge and clunkier than my grandfather’s Model A Ford back then, so I got rid of it and settled on its streamlined and swifter little brother, PhotoDeluxe. Inkscape doesn’t seem as difficult as Photoshop but has plenty of bells and whistles.

During all this excitement, I replaced my Win7 laptop with a Win10 one. I spent a weekend moving files and learning 10’s shortcuts. It was funny when the computer connected to my old 2007 Hotmail account and wanted to use it as my primary email. I’ve been using Gmail for a decade and I forgot all about my Hotmail account after I transferred all my contacts to Gmail ten years ago. It was funny and a little bewildering to see my face from 2007 on my computer’s sign-in screen. Ah, the old gray hair isn’t what it used to be.

In between writing, prepping my books for publication, and getting comfortable with Win10, MS Word 365, and Inkscape, I decided to dive into the deep end of the author pool by downloading Scrivener version 3. More tutorials at YouTube helped me with its steep learning curve and I enjoyed how easy it was to create ebooks and paperbacks ready to send to Amazon’s KDP.

As if I wasn’t busy enough, I created a new author logo.

I plan to use this on my book covers to give them a unique look. I’m tired of seeing plain fonts on covers, so the artist in me took over during one of my book cover design sessions. Although the one pictured is red, I can use any color.

As an experiment, I threw this cover together for the first ebook at my KDP website.

I made it with MS Word and PhotoDeluxe—my old standby method—but I’ll probably use a cover built on Inkscape when I actually publish the book.

So, there you have it, my busy month of May in less than 1000 words.

Have a great June and stay safe.

Peace and love!

Apple Orchard [poetry repost]

Steve Campbell9 Comments
Apple Orchard
Apple Orchard, Oil Painting

In small acreage on a hilly clearing,
Sunny morning shines golden on chalky-pink blossoms;
I pause and prolong my hike to watch sunbeams lick away dewdrops
Soaking in shaded greenery of an apple orchard.

Craggy, crabby branches nod jaggedly at a breeze dashing across the way;
Wasps complain from gray papery hives swaying above me;
A hummingbird pauses and peeks inside a blossom—
Perhaps she smells the jellies, pies and cider clearly on my mind.

I head away on journey once more,
Longing to return and sample ripe fruit from the trees.

© 2006

Slap Happy [comic strip]

Steve Campbell3 Comments

This comic strip is the last of my recent finds from the 1980s. It’s a large-format comic from December 1982 and it features a rarity in the world of Louie & Bruce. It shows the guys in class at their local community college.

l&b 1982-12 v2 1200x900 100dpi

I hope you enjoyed this run of rarities from the past.

Changes [comic strip]

Steve Campbell6 Comments

This is it!

This is the 1982 Louie & Bruce strip showing the day when the boys lost the sawmill—their place of employment for over a year (in actual human years; time runs wibbly-wobbly-whacky in cartoon worlds).

Writing and drawing large, multi-panel strips were fun because of the room they allowed for storytelling, which was good practice for me to sharpen my writing skills—especially writing dialogue.

Unfortunately, newspapers only ran multi-panel strips on Sundays; the rest of the week was reserved for shorter strips. You could call them the “Flash Fiction” strips of the comic world. My story strips were a hard sell to local newspapers, and a harder sell to syndication outfits.

Meanwhile, back at my little studio, I drew another multi-panel strip after this one, which featured the boys at their community college. I’ll include that one in my next post.

Until then, peace and love!

John Sells the Mill [comic strip]

Steve Campbell5 Comments

It’s August 1982 and the boys find out that the owner of the sawmill is selling and moving to Florida. Life for Louie and Bruce is changing. Oh my!

But this strip never made it to publication. None of the large format strips that I drew in 1982 did. I turned to 3- and 4-panel strips that year, which put this little gem in a drawer and then lost over the years until recently when I found some old boxes in my basement.

Two more large panel strips are coming, as soon as I digitize them and clean them up.

I hope this comic strip manages a chuckle or two, despite the jab at Florida at the end.

Until my next post, peace and love everybody. And for my readers who still follow my blog, I am still busy getting my Vree Erickson books back into publication with Amazon. More on that later this year.

Rude Awakening [comic strip]

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I spent January away from WordPress while I worked on some art and writing projects. Since retirement from my 9-to-5 job, I’ve been busy planning to republish my books at Amazon and setting up a workspace so I can paint again.

Last week, I found more Louie and Bruce comic strips. Two were heavily damaged from age because I didn’t draw them on archival paper. They were test runs of ideas and were never published. But they were always a part of the Louie and Bruce storyline.

So, I cleaned them up on my computer with barely any difficulty. The first one, which is from January 1982, is today’s featured post. It shows our friend Louie having a dream. The figures (except Louie) in the dream are out of focus. I illustrated those characters by using broad strokes to minimize detail. They are secondary people in Louie’s life during his first year as a student at his community college. He dreams of being someone important to them, perhaps a desire to overcome his insecurities.

The other characters were based on models from a fashion catalog. By the way, plaid shirts and blouses were popular apparel for women in the early 1980s. And a lot of “tough guys” wore sleeveless shirts.

I’ll probably post the rest of my finds in the days to come, but I don’t want to take too much time away from my projects. Until then, peace and love.

A Louie and Bruce Christmas Surprise [comic strip]

Steve Campbell4 Comments

While going through more boxes in storage, I found this Louie & Bruce comic strip among my papers from teaching cartooning to kids years ago … I think it was 1988.

I know … I thought I had finished writing about my old strip, but chance and fate had other plans.

With Christmas five days away, this strip fits with the season.

This comic strip is unique because I’m not the sole author. While teaching, I had my students help write the strip by first calling out ideas and then dialogue. This way, they saw the strip grow from beginning to end.

I’m not sure why we chose Christmas and Santa for a theme during a summer class, but the theme was fun to work with and caused a lot of laughter and excitement in the classroom … especially the idea of Louie sitting on Santa’s lap as if he were still a little boy.

Merry Christmas everybody, and Happy Holidays.

Teaching Art Is FUN

Steve Campbell4 Comments

Not long after I stopped drawing my Louie and Bruce comic strip, I began teaching art courses to adults and children. One of the youth courses was Drawing Cartoons, so I used my strips as teaching aids during the 6-class course. About halfway through the course, we discussed anthropomorphism—giving human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects. From that, we created the character, Frank The Dog.

From Frank The Dog came Fred The Dancing Dog and his all-girl entourage. This lesson introduced drawing action and showing movement in the cartoon.

I enjoy teaching children because their ideas are fresh and inventive. This in turn sparks new ideas in my mind. Teaching art to children is an adventure to an end I never envision when I create my lesson plans. And bottom line: children are funny. They make drawing cartoons, which is already fun to do, a delight to do.

When I teach my classes, I have subjects on slips of paper that students choose from a hat. The subjects range from short and tall, narrow and wide, round and square, to various emotions and animals. A random drawing of “short, wide, round, silly, pig” resulted in the pig illustration above. The subject of crazy resulted in the cat illustration next to it. And from a random suggestion, the cat became a slob as I taught them how to refine their drawings.

Teaching at school may be what teachers do for work, but artists teaching children (and adults) at workshops can be a wonderful experience for those of us who can draw it (or paint it) as well as teach it to others. And with a classroom full of different personalities, there’s never a dull moment. Every day is a new adventure. You never know how the adventure is going to end, but it’s fun to find out.

Louie and Bruce Singles, 1982, Part 2 [comic strips]

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Old jokes and gags were common in Louie and Bruce’s world. I sometimes stole gags from TV, tweaked them, and used them in my strips. The snowball gag above is probably older than my dad, and he’s in his eighties. But it was a perfect gag for Leroy.

Mark Twain said that because of humor, “…All our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” That sunny spirit was my life in the 1980s, and it transferred easily to my comic strips.

Of course, my sense of humor began when I was a child and drawing comic strips began in grade school, well before the 1980s. But the 80s was a decade of big possibilities that saw me take aim at an adventurous future by getting married and beginning a family. Some people may find the idea of marriage and raising children daunting and downright terrifying. But I went into it happily.

I believe being funny is possibly one of the best things you can do for your health. And if you can’t be funny, at least enjoy the humor around us and laugh. After all, laughter is medicinal for relieving our ailments.

The above strip is a variation of a gag that ran throughout Louie and Bruce at various times. Leroy could perform magic, but he was not a magician. Nor was he a magical being. He had magic ability and no one in his world made a big deal of it. His magic was only a tool to perform a gag, which is what his character was: a tool (used in the nicest way) to play out a joke.

Comedy is a fundamental part of human nature—there’s no such thing as a completely humorless individual. Many of us are drawn to comedians, sitcoms, silly pet antics—anything and everything that makes us laugh. Finding something to laugh at attracted me to the Sunday funnies in the newspapers. Eventually, I copied what I saw. As I matured and understood the process of telling jokes and drawing my own characters, a cartoonist was born.

When I drew comic strips during the 1980s, I was a cartoonist of the farcical. I wrote comedy based on improbable coincidences with satirical elements too ridiculous to be true. My mind buzzed with that kind of humor and it was practically a celebration when I drew it.

My Louie and Bruce strip employs what psychologists call “Affiliative humor.” This involves finding humor in everyday life about things that everyone might find funny. In a comic strip, Affiliate humor can easily become Situational humor, aka the anecdotal sitcom. I was a fan of anecdotal strips such as Dick Tracy and The Adventures of Tintin, and I really loved the humorous anecdotal comic strips such as the early college years Doonesbury strips of the 1970s.

Laughter is good for the heart. And scientific research has shown that laughter not only reduces stress and betters our mood, but it increases our immunity as well.

When I came through life-saving surgery this year, I needed to take a new look at my life and make some changes—most notably, reducing stress. Most of that stress was job related. Changes at my workplace two years ago created a havoc-wreaking environment that put me at the helm of constant problem solving. I cared too much about the quality of my department’s work to watch it crumble from poor design and leadership. I worried about the future of my department and I let those problems follow me home.

The laughter had stopped at work—no one was happy anymore—and I rarely laughed at home. Then something gave and I ended up in the hospital. I decided my job wasn’t worth dying for.

While I healed, I found some of my old comic strips, which had been missing for decades, and I learned to laugh like my old self again. But moreover, I felt truly happy again.

Laughter has become one of my all-time favorite stress management strategies because it’s free, convenient, and beneficial in so many ways.

The above strip introduced Leroy’s new look. Gone was the carrot top, never to return.

I think there’s a special joy from getting a new haircut and hair style—the chance to reinvent yourself and feel different. It’s no secret that a haircut can make us feel good, make us shine, feel more confident.

Of course, some people can get silly about haircuts/hair styles and go wild and crazy with them. I can see the clan at Louie and Bruce doing this. Maybe it’s time to bring my old strip out of retirement. Who knows?

Louie and Bruce Singles, 1982, Part 1 [comic strips]

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Leroy is Louie’s brother. Louie has a pointed head and Leroy’s is flat. I referred to him as a carrot top—not because his hair was red (which it wasn’t), but because the three hairs that grow from the center of his head reminded me of three stems of a carrot after the leaves have been chopped off.

I drew Leroy’s first comic strip (above) in December of 1981, but didn’t reveal it until a month later in January of 1982. I drew a weekly run of single strips that year, many of them since lost.

The character with Leroy in the above strip is Mike. I didn’t feature him often, though he and Leroy were best friends. Like the rest of the characters, Mike was single. His favorite music was hard rock and his favorite band was AC-DC. His sister, Gloria, became Frank’s girlfriend that year. She was a softer, saner side of the guys and was never fazed by their crazy world.

When Leroy wore hats, readers confused him with Louie because their lower faces looked the same. But Leroy had the magic touch—an idea I stole from Doonesbury, the college years.

I think Leroy’s flat head may have come from Bull, the grumpy, cigar-smoking truck driver, pounding on it. This was a running gag that often ended with Leroy’s head squashed inside his shirt.

I’ll finish up Louie and Bruce with more strips from 1982 in my next post. Until then, peace and love.