2 Aug 2018

Jason and Lily Gets a Cover Update

by | posted in: cover reveals | 4

Any of you who pay attention to my rambles probably know that Jason and Lily is my personal favorite out of all the books I’ve written.  But you might not know that, compared to the other books in the series, it doesn’t get a lot of love.  Or at least not a lot of sales.  Out of the entire series, it has the best overall rating on Amazon, and people who read it seem to really like it.  But despite that fact, sales on J&L are sporadic at best.  I’ve tried practically giving it away at 99 cents for a long time and the price change did not seem to make a difference.  I’ve updated the cover once before to bring it more in line with the rest of the series, and that didn’t do much for it either.  But I’ve had a stinking suspicion all along that the cover simply wasn’t good enough.  I mean, I know it’s a prequel and all, but I don’t get why readers who want to read everything else in the series would not want to read the prequel that sheds so much light on things.  So, yeah, I’m blaming the cover.

The original cover…

…was meant to look like Lily’s journal… because the book is Lily’s journal.  That made a lot of sense to me, but it wasn’t very pretty or eye catching when it came down to it.  It also wasn’t quite in line with the other books.  Movin’ on.Cover of Jason and Lily

The current cover…

…is OK.  It goes with the series, and for me, it means a lot.  I’m willing to admit, though, that prospective readers might not get the oranges (having not read the book yet).  And I imagine if I were judging the book by its cover, I might wonder if it was about fruit farmers or something.  Clearly Jason and Lily needed a makeover.  I thought about this (and put it off) for a very long time.  I meandered through a range of possibilities, bouncing them off Pol.  Here’s what one conversation was like:

Me: How about sungoggles?

Him:  Boring.

Me:  Um… how about playing cards?

Him:  Boring.

Me:  A gun?  Throw in a glass of whiskey.

Him:  Also boring.

Me:  …An alligator?

Him:  How about an alligator wearing sungoggles drinking a glass of whiskey while playing cards?

 

We both liked the last idea, but, alas, where do you get an alligator who will do that kind of thing for cheap?

 

The thing that I eventually came to was that Jason and Lily needed to have Jason and Lily on the cover.  I don’t usually like to put characters on my book covers because I know we all like to imagine them for ourselves.  But this story is so much about people that it just needed to have them.  That led to more ponderances about poses and so on and so forth, and I kept putting it off.  Until… now.  At long last, I have a cover for J&L that I think finally does the book justice.  I am really over the moon with this cover, as I think it captures the heart of the story beautifully.  So, without further ado… here it is.   I hope you love it as much as I do.

18 Sep 2016

Cover Reveal: Fairytale Evolution Book One

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nextbook

The big city is no match for a blue-eyed farm girl with impressive Zung Pow skills and a flair for unconventional magic.  At least, that’s what Honaia tells herself when she’s unexpectedly assigned to a handsome city mage for apprenticeship.  The problem is, she never really expected double agents to be involved.  Or dragons.  Or crazy rips in the Space-Time continuum, for that matter.  But when it comes down to it, none of those things expected her either.

Flipped is the first book in the Fairytale Evolution series.

Contains: Language, violence, faeries.

 

It’s time to introduce you all to my newest heroine, Honaia (Huh-NY-uh), known to her (crazy) sisters as Honey.  Here’s a handful of snippets from the story:

 

Honaia smiled back at him, a sweet, childlike smile that, along with her dazzling blue eyes, had long been known to make the boys of Greenwood Glen go weak in the knees.

 

Honaia had never been mugged before. She’d seen it on holovision, though. Tears started to pour down her cheeks. She wanted to lay down and give up. But then, behind the tears came something else. A wave of sheer rage. The audacity of these stupid men. They wanted to mug her, did they?

 

“Righteous,” Honaia agreed, enthusiastically embracing the distraction from her own problems. “When do we start?”

 

She did the most sensible thing an apprentice mage could do. She screamed and ran.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed these!  Look for more snippets and teasers coming soon!

 

 

17 Oct 2015

Cover Reveal: Elegy (E, Book 4)

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Hey guys!  I’m still working away, trying to get Book 4 ready for publication.  I know I’ve been pretty quiet about updates, but that’s because I’m focused on getting this book done.  I still don’t have an official release date.  I’m hoping it won’t be too far off, now, though.  I’m probably going to be skipping a lot of the book-release-hoopla this time around and just focus on getting the book to readers as soon as possible.  All that said, here’s the cover of Elegy.  Hope you all like it!

 

Elegy cover

10 Mar 2015

Eden (E, #3) Cover Reveal and Release Dates

by | posted in: cover reveals | 9

Here we are, leading up to yet another installment in the E series.  This time around, I decided to forsake all the hoopla and just do a quiet cover reveal right here at home.  So, without further ado, here’s the cover:

Cover of Eden (E, #3)

I have to say, this is my favorite cover so far.  I love the way it turned out, and I hope you will, too.

I’m aware that the blog has been pretty quiet lately, but you know what that means, right?  Yep, I’ve been busy writing!  So, the official release date for Eden is June 13th.  And following that, the prequel (which I am beyond-excited about) will be released on July 23rd.  More on both of these books coming soon.  🙂

Hope this finds you all well and happy!

16 Feb 2015

Cover Update

by | posted in: cover reveals, progress updates | 3

I’ve been contemplating updating the covers of my books for quite a while. I liked the covers, but I wanted something simpler, more streamlined, and a style that would be easier to carry across the series, uniting all the books visually.  Well, it was time to really start thinking about the cover of the third book, which meant it was also a perfect time to think about updating.  So, without further adieu, here are the new covers:

E cover e2cover

The cover of Book Three, which is entitled Eden, is also done, though I may end up tweaking it a bit here and there before I release it.  The writing is moving along— sometimes faster and sometimes slower.  Yesterday, for instance, I didn’t get any writing done because I was working on book covers.  But today the writing will resume.  We’re about halfway there.  The first chapter has gone to my editor and come back with only a few bits of red pen, yay!  And we are shooting for release somewhere around June.

10 Sep 2014

Cover Reveal: David Estes’ Brew

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Salem’s Revenge strikes without warning or mercy, ravaging the powerless human race under the forces of united gangs of witches, wizards, and warlocks. During the slaughter, Rhett Carter’s foster parents and sister are killed, and his best friend and girlfriend are abducted by a gang of witches calling themselves the Necromancers, who deal in the dark magic of raising the dead. Rhett’s sword-wielding neighbor with a mysterious past saves Rhett from becoming another casualty of the massacre and teaches him the skills he needs to survive in this new world.

Rhett is broken, his normal high school life of book blogging and football playing shoved in a witch-apocalyptic blender. The only thing he has left is his burning desire for revenge. Armed with his new witch hunting skills and a loyal, magic powered dog named Hex, he sets out into the unknown with one mission: hunt and destroy those who took away everyone he ever loved.

But Rhett isn’t just a witch hunter; he has secrets of his own that he has yet to discover, secrets that his enemies will stop at nothing to keep him from.

And discovering the truth about himself is the human race’s only hope.

David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. David grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife. They now live together in their dream location, Hawaii. A reader all his life, he began writing novels for the children’s and YA markets in 2010, and started writing full time in June 2012. Now he travels the world writing with his wife, Adele. David’s a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, and prefers writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table.