Tor is dedicated to supporting the independent book stores. They are vital for the book community, and we all benefit is they flourish and stay in business.

To that end, Tor is offering preorder incentives to independent book stores.

How does this work: the independent book store signs up for promotion and receives 15 key chains and 15 art prints in addition to the hardcovers. If you preorder a hardcover from one of those stores, you get a keychain and an art print at no charge.

The art is by Candice Slater and it is beautiful.

You can’t zoom in on it, because the file is too large to upload, but it is stunning.

As you can see, these are gorgeous. But because the economy is slumping, it is understandable that some indie stores want to have enough preorders before they commit to the promotion.

We are trying to connect readers and bookstores.

If you are an independent book store participating or interested in this promotion, please post a comment on this post with your store’s name, address, and how people can preorder (website, etc.)

If you are a reader looking to get these extras, please check the comments for the store near you. Once we have enough, we will make a list of stores and post it on the website. We have a limited reach, so if you do not see your favorite on the list, give them a call. This kit is on Edelweiss and the Kit ISBN is 9781250438478.

Supplies are limited. This is not a hard sell. I’m not trying to create a sense of urgency. We get paid the same whether or not the readers takes advantage of this offer. It’s just Tor printed a set number of these, so once they are gone, they are gone. Please be aware.

In other news, we’ve received the arcane editions of HL and there will be a giveaway next week. So if you’ve missed out, we will be giving away one full set.

Itsy bitsy snippet from Maggie #2 in honor of the book stores and those of you who have ever done research in a library pre-computer datatabases.

Hazing

“My lady?”

I looked up from the ancient book and blinked a few times, trying to get my eyes to focus.

Luminary Korin stood in front of me, his face a picture of polite anticipation.

“Yes?”

“May I borrow a moment of your time?”

I straightened and winced at my aching back. I’d spent the last five days going through the Chronicler’s collection. The paper catalogue was a nightmare invented by a sadist. Everything was cross-referenced, nothing made sense, and just as I thought I was getting the hang of it, it threw me some kind of bizarre curveball. Trying to find anything was pure torture.

Lorekeeper Orso offered no help, and I suspected he enjoyed making me work for every crumb of knowledge. This was some kind of weird academic hazing, and I had no idea what I had done to deserve it.

I picked up one of the catalogue cards I’d copied and showed it to Korin. “Does this make any sense to you?”

He opened his mouth.

“Don’t you dare, Scholar heathen!” Orso’s voice rang out.

How did he even know? He was in the back room copying the decaying scrolls.

Korin gave me an apologetic glance. “Professional courtesy prevents me from aiding you in this matter. Our two Holy Orders are at once related and at odds. You might say we are siblings, and we must respect each other’s fences.”

Back to work for me and happy commenting to you.

The post This Kingdom Supports Indie Stores With Extras first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Thank you, expert found!

Dear BDH,

I’m looking for an insect expert for some brainstorming regarding research for the book involving imaginary oversized insect monsters. If you are reading this and happen to be an entomologist who doesn’t mind answering a few questions, please email me at ilona@ilona-andrews.com.

Dear BDH, please do not volunteer your friends without asking them first.

The post Entomologist/Biologist first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

You do such a wonderful job describing people so that we can almost visually see them, the little details that just make a person come alive in our imaginations.  How do you keep from everyone blending together?  Do you search for images? Do you just imagine that person?  Do you people watch and think, that person looks like a __?  You are more subtle than white hat good guy, black hat bad guy, but you are still able to get that across or not as the case may be, when it’s a character we go back and forth on, is he/she a good guy, a bad guy, a neutral guy etc.

The problem with describing people is that if you just stick to the physical descriptions, many of them will sound the same. There are only so many hair and eye colors and skin tones to go around. Augustine and Declan Camarine both are tall, blond, and green/blue eyed. So is Arland. To make the characters distinct, we have to reach past the physical descriptions.

Augustine:

Augustine nodded, his stunning face a picture of businesslike politeness. He was inhumanly beautiful. A prince, with his blond hair perfectly styled to complement his flawless features, elegant, confident, just a hair away from absolute perfection. She saw it for exactly what it was – armor.

Declan:

She stopped just before the ring of wards and looked at his face. Her heart skipped a beat. His features were carved with breathtaking precision, combining into an overwhelmingly masculine yet refined face. He had a tall forehead and a long straight nose. His mouth was wide, with hard narrow lips, his jaw square and bulky, yet crisply cut. It wasn’t a face whose owner smiled often. His eyes under thick golden eyebrows froze the air in her lungs. Dark grass green, they smoldered with raw power. She suspected that if she stepped over the stones and touched his face, he’d spark.

(Declan is from ON THE EDGE.)

Most of us have a protective figure in our lives. Maybe it’s a parent, or a spouse, or a sibling. Someone who loves us and protects us. Think about that person. Chances are, what you are remembering isn’t just a set of features but a feeling that person creates.

Writing characters is kind of like that. You are trying to evoke a feeling in the reader, and if you are successful, they will fill in the blanks.

Imagine a medieval setting, a city drenched with rain, and a long bridge.

Today after four pm a man called Lecke would cross the Estret Bridge. He was a scummy, sniveling prick, the kind of character that makes you wait an entire book for a rock to fall on his head and crush his skull.

You’ve pictured something. Zero physical description, but most likely there is something happening.

He was a slight man, with reddish hair and sharp features, and something about the unsure way he held himself reminded me of a possum. I had a feeling that if someone set off a firecracker next to us, he’d fall on the ground and pretend to be dead to avoid the danger.

If you tag the way the character makes the protagonist feel, it will go a long way toward keeping the characters distinct.

He was a slight man, with reddish hair and sharp features, and something about the sure way he held himself reminded me of a mongoose. I had a feeling that if a line-backer-sized attacker lunged at us with a knife, he would take them down with a single kick, take the knife away, and end up on top of them, pressing the blade to their throat.

Same description, different people.

They reached his office, where Lina sat at a pristine desk, presenting the last line of defense to the visitors. The desk was crafted from polished metal with a single white orchid growing from a simple pot. His secretary chose to match the orchid today. A white dress hugged her body, perfectly tailored and form-fitting, yet elegant. Her deep emerald hair, wrapped in a trendy twist, shimmered with peridot highlights. Her eyebrows were black and shaped with laser precision, and she had selected green and black to accent her eyes and mauve to tint her lips. As always, the effect was stunning.

Lina looks like a white orchid. We associate white orchids with elegant settings and often professional environment.

As far as the actual physical description, yes, image searches are your friend. Find an actor or a stock image of a person you would like to portray and write down the vibes. Less is often more. Most of the time authors tag age, hair color, skin tone, possibly build. But not always. There is a reason why Tall, Dark, and Handsome exists. Most people will picture someone when given that description.

Without an emotional connection, Bear is just a German Shepherd. With it, she is the Best Girl Ever.

What if I cannot picture images in my head?

You might have aphantasia. That’s what the image search is for. I probably don’t have it, since I have no problem recalling images of people I’ve seen or picturing random objects with life-like clarity. Nor do I have problems recognizing people and I’m often able to correctly identify two similar looking actors. But if you ask me to imagine a character from scratch, I will end up with a smudge instead of a face. It’s just not something that I can do without reference. It hasn’t hampered me any.

Your supporting/side characters are always awesome and have raised my expectations of how clear and unique the side characters can be. I read another book recently where the main characters were distinct and well-developed but I kept getting the side characters mixed up because they were all alike and vague. For HA, what goes into developing side characters alongside (or compared to) your main characters?

We are all the main characters of our own story. Let’s take Barabas. In his own story, Kate is a side character. She is a friend and an ally, but his goals might conflict with hers. He has his own storyline.

This is a double-edged sword sometimes. The main character is our compass. We perceive their world through their eyes, and when our perspective changes, we are often overly protective of the view point character.

One of the interesting examples of this is Nick Feldman. Imagine the story from his point of view. You idolize your father and turn yourself inside out trying to get Greg to notice you, but no matter how hard you try, your father remains distant. And then your father shatters the family so he can go and take care of the daughter of some woman he apparently has been in love with for a decade and everything you know is a lie.

But you keep going. You follow in your father’s footsteps, despite his disinterest and abandonment. You join the Order, just like he did, and you excel. And then you find out that the woman he chose to guard is a monster with enough power to enslave an entire city. And her father is a bigger monster.

You confront Greg and ask him why, and he tells you that it is his duty. And then he dies, the bastard, leaving this mess unfinished and you holding the severed ends of your pitiful little feelings. Only later you understand that he was trying to influence this woman to keep her from becoming a living Armageddon that would cost thousands of lives. And you wonder, wouldn’t it have been easier and safer to just slit her throat and take out her and her father in the same blow? Why, it would be public service. If she gets a wild hair up her butt, she might enslave the entire country and there won’t be much anyone can do about it. Except that you are a knight and you have principles, but you do wonder.

Now she has a son. She wants to be friends. She says you are her brother and her kid calls you Uncle. Fuck this shit.

That is a completely different plot line. And you have to feel for Nick, who at one point was a little boy desperately wanting his father’s approval, but right now some of you are wanting to explain how none of this is Kate’s fault and Nick just doesn’t understand.

Hehe. My evil work is done here for the day.

The post Characters: Stories and Descriptions first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

We haven’t had a snippet for a bit, so here is Augustine being impersonating an impressive business owner.

Augustine’s office lay on the seventeenth floor. He’d chosen that location precisely because it was just under the top two floors. The eighteenth floor held a private training space. The penthouse business suite above it belonged to his late father. From the moment Augustine officially took the reins of MII, he resolved to never enter it again, and he hadn’t set foot there for years.

The elevator doors whispered open, and he invited Diana forward with a sweep of his hand. They walked across the spotless dark floor through his kingdom of tall white walls and cobalt-tinted light streaming through the sheath of blue windows that wrapped the building.

He watched Diana’s expression covertly. Her face was relaxed and pleasant, her eyes calm. Prime Harrison moved with smooth grace, almost gliding across the floor, and the Doberman at her side matched her stride. The dog’s natural ears were down, her mouth half-open in a canine smile. He had seen enough Dobermans in his line of work. They were cautious dogs, alert and restrained in a new environment. This one was doing a fine impression of a golden retriever. There was an odd synergy between the woman and the dog – both sleek, assured, and pretending to be harmless.

 They reached his office, where Lina sat at a pristine desk, presenting the last line of defense to the visitors. The desk was crafted from polished metal with a single white orchid growing from a simple pot. His secretary chose to match the orchid today. A white dress hugged her body, perfectly tailored and form-fitting, yet elegant. Her deep emerald hair, wrapped in a trendy twist, shimmered with peridot highlights. Her eyebrows were black and shaped with laser precision, and she had selected green and black to accent her eyes and mauve to tint her lips. As always, the effect was stunning.

Unfortunately, his newest intern had referred to that precise shade of mauve as “hot dog lips,” and now he could not divorce himself from it. Mentoring the youngest Baylor child came with its own annoyances.

He nodded to Lina and led his visitor to the right, where a translucent wall of white glass hid his office space. A nearly seamless door swung open, and Augustine invited Diana in with a sweep of his hand. She entered and sat in a chair, smoothing the skirt of her elegant grey business suit with a practiced gesture. The Doberman dropped on the floor to her right. Not a concern in the world.

Augustine sat behind his desk. His office was located in the corner where two walls of blue glass met at an angle and from his vantage point, he had a wide view of Downtown Houston. Unlike most people, he loved heights.

Diana glanced at a sign on the right wall, a quote without attribution. Trust Not Too Much in Appearances.

“Virgil,” she said.

It appeared that House Harrison believed in classical education.

“It’s a reminder,” he said.

“To you or to the visitors?”

“To me. We do our best to convince our visitors that we are trustworthy.”

“Is that why you chose a modern aesthetic for the building?”

He nodded. “Most people who want to hire an illusion mage come to us unsure what they might find. Consciously or subconsciously, they expect to be deceived. Our business requires trust, so we keep the interior simple, almost austere. Long unbroken walls, concrete floors, and transparent glass leave little room for illusions. People find it reassuring.”

“I see.”

She wasn’t giving him very much to work with.

“Are you truly trustworthy, Prime Montgomery?”

“That depends on your definition of trust. Will I keep everything you tell me confidential, and will I do everything in my ability to help you if we reach an agreement? Yes.” Augustine leaned back in his chair. “So, how may I help you?”

“Are you familiar with Zeus?”

“The Greek god or your brother’s tiger?”

“The tiger.”

She took a slim tablet from her purse, flicked her fingers across it, and showed it to him. On the screen, a massive animal stretched, vaguely feline, a distant cousin of a tiger if tigers had blue fur splattered with darker and paler rosettes and a fringe of six-inch long tentacles around their necks.

All the magic talents in the world fit into three broad categories: elemental, mental, and arcane. Of the arcane discipline, summoning was one of the least understood. Summoners reached into the arcane realm, a place of magic outside of normal reality, called forth monstrous creatures, and hurled these biological weapons at their opponents. Nobody knew exactly how any of it worked and the summoners were not forthcoming with explanations.

Zeus had been summoned by someone attacking one of the Baylors’ clients, and Cornelius had tamed it against all odds. Augustine had looked into it after the incident. No animal mage on record had even been able to bond with a summoned beast. Cornelius was the only exception.

That bond somehow kept Zeus alive and thriving. Creatures summoned by weaker summoners vanished when they lost focus. The summons of the upper level Significants and Primes stayed in the world permanently, but most summoned creatures had short lifespans, even with the best of care. They withered, like repotted plants that failed to take root. Sometimes it took days, sometimes weeks, but eventually all arcane creatures perished. With the exception of the organisms that were planted into a human host.

“We decided to call the species Tigrionex.”

Tigris, Latin for tiger and nex meaning violent death. “Tiger of slaughter?”

“Yes.” Diana slid her finger across the tablet. Another image appeared, still of Zeus. Wait, no. This blue tiger was slightly different. It looked a little smaller, and its blue fur had a slight purple tint.

Augustine glanced at Diana. “You obtained a second tiger?”

She nodded. “Cornelius and I had her summoned at great expense.”

The cost must’ve been astronomical.

“Her name is Celeste. I was able to form a pact.”

“Not Hera?”

“No. We didn’t want to jinx it.”

House Harrison had access to two summoned beasts and both of them had bonded to their tamers. Clearly, there was something special about that family.

“Zeus and Celeste were allowed to mate. Before you ask, it was voluntary on their part. We would never exercise our influence over our animals to force a breeding. It was a difficult pregnancy.”

“What about cloning or surrogacy?” he asked.

“That would have meant taking the choice away from them.”

So they would risk a massive investment for the sake of maintaining the animals’ autonomy. Interesting.

 “We almost lost the mother, but in the end a single cub was born.”

Another swipe of her fingers, and a new image. A shockingly adorable blue cub. He understood the need for secrecy now. If anyone found out about this, the Harrisons would be swarmed with requests.

“What’s the cub’s name?”

“Kitty.”

He blinked.

“It’s a placeholder name. We were hoping that when Kitty grew a little, Matilda would form a pact with her. My niece is very talented, and she sounds mature, but she is still a nine-year-old child. She makes reckless decisions. Cornelius and I will do everything in our power to protect her, but we cannot be everywhere at once.”

And Kitty would grow up to be a formidable protector.

“These animals are different. They are smarter, more aware, and the bond with them is deeper,” Diana said. “Because of the difficult pregnancy, we decided to wait to introduce Matilda and the cub. We want to make sure Kitty survives. If Matilda bonds with her and the cub dies, the trauma to my niece would be catastrophic. That’s why the Baylors can’t be involved in this matter. In the two months since they moved into their new compound, Matilda made friends with every mouse and bird on their property. She spies on them constantly. Nothing happens in that house that my niece doesn’t know about.”

“Can she hear through mouse ears?” he asked.

Diana looked at him for a second. “Vikilinta recording devices are one inch long, have the width of a pencil graphite, and weigh 19 grams. They’re voice-activated and record up to 400 hours of audio. A healthy adult mouse weighs between 40 and 45 grams, can carry twice her body weight, and can be convinced to wear a harness.”

And now he felt like a fool. What in the world was he thinking? The child was a budding Prime, not a mythical Beastmaster. Something about the connection between the tech and animals always short-circuited his brain.

“Of course. However, I can’t imagine the Baylors would look favorably on that kind of security breach.”

“I’ve stressed the need for privacy to her multiple times,” Diana said. “I do not believe her obsessive recording is malicious.”

“Then why?”

Diana sighed. Her face took on a slightly worn expression. “It is my understanding that a child subjected to early trauma, such as losing a parent in a horrific way, often seeks to establish control over her environment.”

“Matilda is afraid that she will miss something vital and the people she cares about will die.”

“Yes. You see now why we hid the cub.”

He understood perfectly.

“Matilda keeps the information she overhears confidential, unless something alarms her. For example, I know that Arabella visits this office twice a week, and she hasn’t told her mother or Catalina about it.”

Diana’s gaze turned direct and unblinking. The Baylors treated Matilda and Cornelius as family. She likely felt protective toward them. He wasn’t obligated to explain, but good business relationships relied on trust.

Augustine reached into his desk, took out a folder, and offered it to her.

Diana glanced at the contents. “Internship agreement signed by Nevada Rogan?”

“My sister attends Donovan High.” Normally he had a knee-jerk reaction to speaking about his family but for some reason it didn’t trigger in her presence.

Diana’s eyebrows rose. “Donovan? Not Heritage?”

Of the two high schools catering to the magically gifted, Heritage was far more prestigious. If you were a scion of a House, you went to Heritage, while Donovan took the rest.

“Yes. She attends under an assumed name.”

And an assumed persona. If Verena’s classmates ever met her off school grounds, they wouldn’t recognize her. Except for Arabella, none of them had any idea what his sister truly looked like.

“The principal and the senior staff are aware of who she is,” he continued. “My sister wanted it this way, and I acquiesced. Let’s just say that I understand what drives Matilda better than most people.”

An understatement of the year.

“Arabella also attends Donovan,” Diana said.

“Yes. They are friends.” The strangest friendship that sprouted from a bizarre crisis. “They’re both taking an AP course in House Business Administration, which requires 160 hours of internship with a business owned by a House other than your family.”

“You swapped,” Diana said. “The Rogans took your sister, and you took Arabella.”

He nodded. “It’s an arrangement that works for both children. I know that Connor and Nevada will not put my sister in harm’s way, and they understand that I will do the same for Arabella. Feel free to reassure Matilda. Shall we return to the matter at hand?”

Diana studied him for another moment and turned the tablet toward him. On it, a fat fluffy tiger cub took shaky steps on stubby legs. She stumbled over to her frightening mother and batted at the otherworldly beast with her small paw. Celeste lowered her head. The cub tried to pounce, fell, and let out a frustrated noise, a tiny baby growl.

“You understand that the recovery may require significant investment even with the discount,” he said. “Do you wish to see an estimate?”

“No. Whatever it takes. We will pay it.”

“Are you sure?” The Harrisons were a House, but their talents didn’t have many lucrative applications.

“Absolutely. This isn’t property, Prime Montgomery. This is a life.” Diana brushed her fingers over the recording. “We welcomed Kitty into this world, we assumed responsibility for her, and now she is scared and alone. Celeste knows that her daughter is gone. She relies on me to bring her home. Whatever it takes.”

A digital timer appeared in the corner of the screen, counting off seconds. Thirty-two hours, seventeen minutes, and twenty-three seconds.

“The time until Kitty needs the next shot of her medicine,” Diana said. “Will you help me?”

He looked into her green and gold eyes, and the words came out before he realized he had spoken. “Of course, I will.”

The post Friday Snippet first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I heavily debated posting this. I might still take it down, because I’ve long ago decided that the internet doesn’t need my “wisdom.” Also, I am bitter and jaded. However, we keep getting repeated questions and there is some weird erroneous stuff floating out there. With that caveat, here is the basic primer on who does what. If for some bizarre reason, you see some value in this and want to keep it for reference, here is the PDF.

It might have typos in it. Writing it was stressful, leave me alone. If you are a trad author and want something included in the PDF or this post, drop me a line through the contact form.

Manuscript – the file you are working on. Complete manuscript – finished work of fiction that has not been through professional edits.

ARC/Galley – Advance Reader Copy. File the publishers send out for early reviews. Usually, post-copyedit but before the proofread. See below.

Developmental/Content edit – the edit that focuses on storytelling: plot, pacing, characterization, etc. The content edit takes the longest to get and the longest to get through.  This is the time to make large changes if needed.

Copyedit – the edit that focuses on grammar, punctuation, fact checking, and narrative inconsistencies.  Clunky sentences, unclear sentences, mutating names, eye color, people sitting down after they already sat down – all of that gets corrected here.  Last chance to make significant alterations.

Proofread – final chance to fix minor mistakes. Do NOT make significant alterations at this stage. Every time you mess with your sentences, you are introducing errors that the copyeditor will not see. Also, the typography has been set at this stage, and the book has been prepped for printing. Minor fixes only, unless something really must be corrected.

The publishing house will often state that they will charge you money if you make too many edits at this stage. The wording can be found under the Editing Section of your contract and will read something like:

The cost of the Proprietor’s alterations in the proofs in excess of ten percent (10%) of the initial setting cost will be charged against the Proprietor’s royalty account, except that the Proprietor will not be charged for corrections arising from the typesetter’s failure to accurately reproduce the copy-edited manuscript.

I’ve never had it happen, but I saw it once.  The author rewrote significant parts of the book and repunctuated almost every compound sentence.  It is very rare, so don’t stress out about this and fix what must be fixed, but keep your corrections small.

If you are rephrasing sentences at this stage, try to keep the number of characters the same, so you don’t screw up the paragraph layout. If you add too much, the paragraph will run over and it’s a bigger fix on their end.

Yes: “Her dress was white.” (20 characters) -> “She wore white.” (15 characters.)

No: “Her dress was white.” (20 characters) – > “She wore a white gown that was the color of fresh snow that fell at the first hint of winter in the month of Freezeyourbuttoff.” (128 characters.)

To quickly find out the number of characters, highlight the problem in Word and click on the word count in the bottom left corner. Include spaces in your count.

People

People you usually have contact with are marked with *

Content editor*– the person who does the content edit. When you are published by a traditional publishing house, your primary editor does your content edit.  That editor is your main point of contact. They do not work for you. They work for the publishing house. You are not an employer and employee, but colleagues and peers. If you are coming from the selfpublished side, there may be a tone shift here.

 Your content editor is your advocate, and they usually know what they are doing. They are invested in your book’s success. They want the book to be a commercial and critical achievement. The function of the content editor is to shape the manuscript and identify problematic areas. They may suggest extensive changes, and they may propose solutions that will not work for you. If this happens, don’t panic. Address the problems themselves, even if you fix them in a way that the editor didn’t anticipate. As long as the problem goes away, most editors will be fine with it.

Occasionally, you will get an editor who will insist on their way or the highway. The buck stops with you. You can refuse to make edits but consider this route very carefully. Most of the time, if you don’t make the changes they suggest, the book will likely still get published. Cases where the book was pulled because of editorial differences are very rare and are usually initiated by the writer, but the publishing house has the power to cancel the book.

Look at your contract under something like Deliverables or Delivery of the Manuscript. The wording will be something like:

This is a very old contract boilerplate. Note that they reserved the right to edit your manuscript whether you like it or not. Your agent should get this clause crossed out.

What happens if you received an extremely light or no content edit: yes, this happens occasionally, especially if the editor has a large volume of manuscripts lined up. If the content editor checked out, there is not much you can do.  Trust that you wrote a good book and perhaps look for a new publishing partner for the next contract.

Editorial Assistant* – this is the assistant of your editor. This person is very helpful. If you need admin things, like updated files or clarification of schedule, this is the person to ask.

Managing editor* – this editor is incredibly important. This is the person who puts everything together: copyedit, proofread, etc. This is the deadline person, the on-top-of-everything person, and you may see their comments in the manuscript, which they will read several times, often saving your bacon when you mess up and nobody else catches it.

Copyeditor – the person who does the copyedit. Usually a contractor. Most of the time copyedits are outsourced. If you get a good one, always request them back. If you get a bad one, ask to switch.

More corrections is usually better than less, even if it makes you want to scream, because at least you know they scrubbed the manuscript. If you get a copyedit that is superlight, you are in trouble.  You can hire your own CE to edit on top of the publisher’s subpar copyedit. The publishing house will not care. If you scan the copyedit, and it is light, and you see a typo on page three they missed, you need to email the editor and ask if there is any additional time you can request to go through it. Usually, they can get you an extra week or two, although not always. Then you run to your favorite freelancer and chuck the manuscript at them.

People get very upset when this happens, because the publishing house takes a huge percentage of the profit and the expectation is that they will provide quality edits. Bottom line on this: you can waste a lot of energy being upset, or you can hire a freelancer. Since your name is on the cover, everything is your fault, and the readers will not care that the publisher’s CE fell down on the job. They will only care that the book has errors that detract from their experience.

Proofreader – usually a contractor. If you have your own private beta readers, now is the time to throw the manuscript at them and ask them if they snag on anything typo-wise. This is the final scrub before publication.

Art director – the person in charge of your cover.  Check your contract.  If it says cover approval, you can veto the cover.  If it says cover consult, you can offer an opinion, but they will go on without you. Everybody else’s opinion often overrides yours. The wording will be something like:

The Publisher will consult with the Proprietor concerning the following, but the Publisher’s decision with respect to such matters will be final:

upon the Proprietor’s written request, the cover concept of the Publisher’s initial edition of the Work;

An email is a written request, and trad publishing houses will absolutely talk to you about the cover.

There is a very limited amount of influence you can exert here. Once they paid for the cover, they like to stick to it.  Yes, you can occasionally get them to change it, but I’ve known people who flew to New York to make personal appeals and still failed. Take it from someone who has had more than one cover mocked by the readers: it is what it is.  Fight the good fight but save your energy. If the book has commercial appeal, word of the mouth will compensate for the damage of the ugly cover.

Cover artist – person who creates the cover image.

Cover design – person who creates overall look and adds typography to your cover.

Editorial designer – person who creates the layout and determines typography.

Publicity* – the person who arranges publicity that does not require money. Interviews, ARCs, social, etc. Book tour – publicity. Maybe be named as publicist, director of publicity, etc.

Marketing* – the person that is responsible for ads and other advertisement that requires money. Incentive boxes for preorders – marketing. Usually, marketing manager or director.

NOTE: marketing and publicity spheres overlap. Sometimes marketing will ask for an interview, and publicity will ask for commissioned art. When posting information on your website, such as “For review copies, contact NAME,” list the publicist, not the marketing manager.

Marketing and publicity are an iceberg. Authors do not see 80% of it. Sometimes that iceberg is tiny. I remember when “online promotion” meant your editor would mention the book title on their Twitter. Yes, you do still need promote on your own. Not, it’s not fair. The world is mean and publishing is meaner.

What to do when there is a conflict: go to your agent. They take their 15%. Let them earn it.

Gratitude Etiquette: get a lot of questions about this for some reason. It is always nice to acknowledge people who worked on the manuscript. Ask the publishing house, and they will give you a list. You are under no obligation to thank people if you don’t like what they did for your book. This is fully your prerogative.

Business gifts are nice but are never expected. If you send nothing at all, nobody will notice or be upset. A handwritten card is always appreciated. If you are sending gifts for the holidays, try to find out what people like. Don’t just send chocolate. Everyone sends chocolate. Sometimes people like cheese or will request a small donation in their name to their favorite charity. Please check to make sure that you are donating to the causes your recipient supports.

I need tea now. Oy.

The post Trad Publishing: Editing and Production Glossary first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

It is Monday, and I’m armed with Russian Country tea and a list of BDH questions.

The process of creating the Maggie cover through traditional publishing. How did everyone decide on the theme, covers, etc? Were there other drafts or ideas? Why is the UK cover slightly different in color?

We have now worked with several traditional publishers, so we are a little jaded about this process. Usually it goes like this:

Us: Here is the manuscript for a hypothetical book titled The Rose Dagger.

Editor: Sales hates the title. Can we change the title to Daggers and Roses?

Us: Yes.

Editor: What do you want on the cover?

Us: A green dagger with a white rose.

Editor: Here is a blue sword with a green snake around it.

Us: …

Editor: I will see what I can do.

One month later.

Editor: They made the sword two inches shorter, and turned the snake white. Marketing loves it, and we’re going to print.

Here is how it went with Tor:

Editor: Do you have anything you’d like me to keep in mind? Wish list items, recent covers you’ve loved, recent covers you haven’t loved, any aesthetic boards/Pinterest boards/etc? Anything you want us to know?

Us: We don’t want an item cover. We like this and we don’t like that.

Long and detailed conversation regarding the cover and the title, including who we are appealing to, what kind of cover style would be best, which colors are our favorite.

Editor: Behold a list of artists. Which artist do you like?

Us: We like Andrew Davis. (Although honestly everyone on that list was amazing.)

Editor: Andrew Davis it is.

A few weeks later.

Editor: Here is a sketch!

Us: Love!

A few weeks later.

Editor: Here is the color version.

Us: Love even more!

So it was a shockingly awesome experience. I have summarized it but there were many emails going back and forth. Hopefully, Tor is cool with us drawing the curtain back a little bit to show you how the design of the cover was chosen, because a lot of thought was put into this image and I want to give them credit.

The Cover Process

The primary function of the cover is twofold: it must be eye-catching and it must indicate the genre of the book.

The challenge here was to communicate several things. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is an epic fantasy, so we wanted fantasy elements. This Kingdom is also a portal fantasy, so we wanted something to point to that.

Type of cover.

We didn’t want an object cover. This would be an object cover, for example.

They are very beautiful, but there is an awful lot of them. If you search romantasy and object cover, you will find a plethora of books. Many of them have similar elements: sword, crown, flowers, etc. It’s a little harder to stand out.

Here is an excellent example of an object cover from Elisabeth Wheatley. By the way, the second book, Oath of the Wolf, is out.

We didn’t want a cover with people on it. The issue here is twofold again: if we put a couple on the cover, that would be a spoiler and it would also not match the book, because a couple communicates romance like Silver and Blood.

We didn’t want to put Maggie on the cover either.

This beautiful Dominion cover reads romantic fantasy and has slight YA/NA overtones, which is exactly what this book is – it is a romantasy with a young protagonist.

The Curse of Beasts and Magic cover communicates the portal nature and has a person, but also has paranormal romance/urban fantasy overtones, which are perfect for this story, since part of it takes place in our world. It is also clearly romance-centered.

None of this would work, because Maggie is never shown in our world and while This Kingdom has a strong romantic arc, it is more like Kate Daniels in a sense that the love story is there but not central.

So: epic fantasy, portal transition, no objects or people on the cover to appeal to a wide audience that likes fantasy.

Art Style.

The next question was art style.

We didn’t want realism.

This is an actual person with the art backdrop. Didn’t want that. This Kingdom is about a person falling into their favorite book. We wanted to get the “magic book” overtone across.

We didn’t want graphic style either.

This is very clean and geometric, but we wanted intricate and fantastical.

Colors.

This was very straightforward. Tor asked us what colors we liked and we said blue. We also expressed a preference for a lighter color palette. Again, this is to make sure the cover stands out. A lot of the romantasy right now follows a similar color scheme: dark background, saturated red or blue, and some kind metallic. It’s almost gothic-looking.

Cover elements.

The beast: one of the most prominent elements on this cover is a magical beast. While it doesn’t look exactly like that in the novel – the artist interpreted the description – the colors and the general shape are correct. This is a creature that is massive. It looks prehistoric, a mammal with a beak, and it can travel over great distances. It symbolizes travel, transition, and change. And it nods to the dragon in The Neverending Story.

The three circles: these symbolize the moons of Rellas.

The ocean spread before our boat, endless and calm. The clouds melted away, and an enormous sky reigned above, studded with glittering stars. Three moons spilled their light on the water: Prata, a giant silver crescent with gold tiger stripes; Drao, a much smaller ruby-red waning gibbous; and Broe, the smallest of the three, a grass-green, last-quarter moon. The view took my breath away. I smelled the briny salt water, I felt the wind and the steady movement of the boat under my feet, so it had to be real and actually happening. But it was so . . . magical.

The city: this is Kair Torren, the capital of the Kingdom of Rellas, where Maggie lands. This city is a huge part of the book. I’ve read a very kind review once that said that we tend to present cities as characters, and that is probably true. If Kair Torren was a person, it would be an old, experienced assassin who masquerades as a courtier by day and then ruthlessly murders his targets by night.

Kair Torren means castle towers. The city began as a castle looming on a hill and guarding a port. It could be seen from far away, and when people gave directions, they often said, “Go until you see kair torren.”

A little bit of nerding out: the word itself happened to be generated when we created the Rellasian language, and we loved it. There are many similar sounding words in several languages and they all somehow apply. We have Welsh “caer” meaning fortress, and the Norse “Kair” meaning rock or cliff; Hawaii “kai” meaning sea. Kair Torren is a heavily fortified city, situated in the hills overlooking the sea. This word pops up frequently in different fantasy books and games, usually meaning castle, and that also works because in our world, this city was in a book.

Okay, I will stop boring you with research now.

The Mage Tower: this is the first thing Maggie sees when she comes to, and it is a huge shock to the system. Not only does she recognize it, but it is also very clearly magic. There is nothing like that in our world. I have beautiful art of this tower from Candice Slater, which I will show you a little closer to the release.

You can see why we love the cover. It is packed with all of the things we wanted.

Foreign Editions

To date, This Kingdom has been sold to publishers in France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, and UK. Sometimes the foreign publisher retains the cover with slight alterations, and sometimes they commission an entirely new cover. This is driven by market considerations. They know what their audience likes and they try to appeal to them.

The UK edition uses the existing US cover with slight alterations.

The publisher felt that the UK market appreciates a more gritty sensibility so they darkened the edges and applied some texture.

I will post more foreign covers as they come along. What are some of your favorite covers?

The post Cover Sensibilities first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

The full-cast dramatized adaptation of Wildfire, Nevada Baylor’s third book in the Hidden Legacy series, is now available for preorder on the Graphic Audio website. They are currently running a promotion too until November 30th!

We’re getting Zeuses and dashing male secretaries with frying pans, evil grandmas and Prime trials – aren’t we, Michael?

The release is estimated for January 2026, and it will begin appearing on third-party retailers such as Audible etc once their listings update next week, well in time for Christmas.

We’ve had a few questions about whether the rest of the Hidden Legacy series will be dramatized. Horde at ease: the entire series is on their list, including the transition novella Diamond Fire, and the A Misunderstanding and Cool Aunt extras.

The Rogan POVs, as you already know, are included, and Wildfire’s POV will appear in all its Adé-Afẹ́fẹ́ glory at the end of the January release. Megan Hastie, our valiant director, also went to great efforts to find the perfect Alessandro (no less than 7 auditions) and the finalist has House Andrews’ blessing! As always, Ilona also worked  on pronunciation clips and other guidance to ensure everything feels authentic.

I do not, at this time, have any official information on the adaptation for The Inheritance by Graphic Audio. A quick reminder for those new to the full-cast productions: they are not commissioned by the authors. Whether a book is dramatized or not (or when) is not under House A control. GA are an independent company that selects which books they want to take on and approaches authors for the rights to those works.

I’ve seen answers floating around on social media suggesting GA would ideally like to adapt the entire Andrews catalog, which I would totally want to BARSA about! But, until everything is official and contracted, that’s just a suggestion, not something I can confirm.

It’s also important to note that these dramatized versions will never replace the traditional audiobooks released through the publishers or self-published by the authors. One is your cozy, unabridged, as-written audiobook companion, the other a full-cast, music-and-sound-effect cinematic experience based on a scriptified version of the beloved adventures.

The Inheritance traditional audiobook was released last week and it is extra wonderful! Hillary Huber and James Konicek did justice to our beloved mature protagonists and the breach.

I’ll be back closer to the Wildfire release date with the usual exclusive samples. If there’s a specific scene you’d like to hear, please let me know in the comments. Unfortunately, due to changes in the GA recording process, directors no longer handle the bloopers, so I won’t be able to obtain those anymore.

Until then, happy Friday and may all your preorders process smoothly!

The post Graphic Audio Wildfire Preorder first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

We’re staying in the realm of food today, but moving on to more sensitive matters. The kind that can divide nations, friendships, and apparently the BDH comment section.

Yesterday’s discussion of the appropriate substitution between heavy cream, double cream, single cream, whipping cream, half-and-half, clotted cream, and crème fraîche reminded me of this diplomatic incident. (To put your minds at ease, for the bean recipe you can use any type of cream that doesn’t curdle, but thickens when heat is applied. You can look at fat percentages if you want for guidance, as long as you don’t mention Miracle Whip and Cool Whip to me. I’ve had them explained so many times and I still cannot make heads or tails of it.)

You’ll be forgiven, with everything else going on in the world, if you missed the great cultural incident that was The Great Flapjack Dissension of ’25. It began innocently enough, with the Back To School fourth episode of season 16 of the The Great British Bake Off.

Flapjacks, not as you know them, indeed. Our American friends took to social media in horror.

“What are these granola bars? Where are the real flapjacks? Have the Brits finally lost it to tent fumes?”

Accusations of narrow-mindedness and language evolution digs were thrown back. The social media world of desserts was in a brûlée and there didn’t seem to be a way to peace.

In fairness, the Bake Off has committed culinary crimes against egg and country before, so the outrage was not unmotivated. One cannot mention the GBBO Mexican Week in polite company, but I recall the s’mores incident, when Paul Hollywood requested something involving Italian meringue (?), with chocolate ganache (??), sandwiched between digestives (?!), lightly singed with a blowtorch (!!!). And if that didn’t just take the giddy biscuit, he deducted points when the confection was “too gooey”. Those weren’t s’mores, they were s’lesses.

In this case, however, the flapjacks are perfectly legitimate. In the UK, flapjacks are an oaty tray bake, golden-syrupy and buttery squares of soft goodness. Apparently, up North people eat them with custard, though I still suspect that might be a joke my friends played on me. The name underwent the rebranding in the 1930s, but the details seem to be lost to time and treacle. If you know the explanation, please chime in!

In the US, they stayed more faithful to their original etymology, from flap (“to toss sharply”) and jack (“a generic object”), and are basically a pancake. It’s simply one of those differences of old, like biscuits (flaky buttery wonders, not actually ‘a bit like scones’ at all), and biscuits (shortbreads and cookies, live-in-a-jar sort of things).

The moral of the story is perhaps that when even the humble flapjack or random cream can divide us, we’ll simply have to double down on efforts to embrace our differences. If werewolves and vampires can share a cup of coffee and run together naked in an inn orchard…actually, you know, that might not be the best example of camaraderie in adversity. Steve does tend to take things literally, and I don’t want an international streaking incident on my conscience.

You get the gist though.

Come, thou shalt go home, and we’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting-days, and moreo’er puddings and flap-jacks, and thou shalt be welcome.

– William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act II Scene I

The post Bake on, Bake off first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.