MISSING – a novel

 

Missing – a novel.

This is my first attempt at writing a full length–well 75000 words–novel.

The idea for the book came after attending family gatherings, mostly funerals, where my relatives where strangers. These people I knew existed but never met regularly, mostly never.
When I first started school at five years old, all of my relatives lived within a twenty-mile radius. On my father’s side they were farmers, on my mother’s side they worked in engineering.
I left school at sixteen and travelled, so I was the one who disappeared, and I suspect I am the stranger in the midst.
I recently met two of my relatives the same age as me, I remember starting school with them. I always thought they were my cousins, but discovered they were my father’s cousins. You can imagine there was a long discussion about who was who and an attempt at constructing a loose family tree.

Out of the discussion came the origins for my idea for the novel Missing. I pondered the thoughts of family bonds, trust, and misconceptions.

Missing–The story is of a young woman on the quest to find her parents and discover why as a child someone had placed her into care. No one would explain why.
She finds the house in the village where she was born and from there she traces and discovers her relatives. Her investigate disturbs them as she comes closer to the truth about the whereabouts of her parents.

I have passed the novel back to the proof-reader.
Well, I need a break from it.

Alibrasphere will publish the book at the end of April or early May.

Book Covers – Really!

Book Covers – Really.

A great cover for a book is at the forefront of any publishers’ sales plan.  The professional design is produced with the aim to hit the market in the correct genre with author’s name, sometimes, highlighted more than the title.
Readers know what they want, and what authors they enjoy reading most, in which case it is the celebrity author’s name that is given prominence on the cover. Just a brief preamble leading to a question below.

Independent authors are advised to get professional work done in both editing and cover design that they can afford. Great advice – but stubborn old me just didn’t listen in this case.

I have had my short story collection, ‘The Listener” gone over by the edit process and ‘oh boy’, what a process. I am told it is very much better than the 2014 version.

I stuck with the cover with a small change – on the front cover font and back cover blurb.

I have done all this as an exercise in procrastination, if there was a medal or a university course for procrastination I would probably have gone for the PhD. I should be writing my novel instead, keep laughing.

The original camera shot.

Photo by James McEwan

I took the source photograph while on holiday in Dresden, Germany. I found it fascinating that someone or some people went to a lot of effort to paint the picture. I never found out who or why. I had not started to write back then and the idea of a book cover came to me many years later.

This is one part of the advice I did follow, make your cover unique. (I missed the effective part).
An advantage over using stock photographs is that I own the picture.

My first cover.

The latest cover – matte -done in MS Word. 1.6Mb version – Printed copy is 11.5Mb

Here are my questions:
Is the MS word cover good enough?
I am considering using GIMP and or Adobe professional for future covers.
Of the two covers above, which is better; to give prominence to the title or author’s name?