A month has been picked and the year has finally come that my first novel is going to be truly released. It has been a long back and forth journey since 2011 and I can’t wait to get this going. A few people know the story behind this novel… It all literally started with a dream. I’m being truly serious about this. I had a dream about Rena, and vampires. It was an intense dream. Even to this day I can picture it all. The colors and smells were so distinct that I felt as if I was there. Starting at a school, there was fighting, death, love, happiness, confusion, and anger all rolled into this dream. It was amazing and I couldn’t wait to write it all down. There was no hesitation. When I woke up, I jotted all details down. In 2011, I started writing it, and within six months; a full manuscript was complete. However I did a horrible thing after that… This is a piece of advice I would offer to anyone writing a novel, or anything for that matter: Don’t rush your work, don’t run with something like this, take caution. All P’s and Q’s need to be taken care of. I rushed it, and although the novel did receive quite a few downloads, it also received quite a few negative reviews. There were so many things missing, but I couldn’t wait to get it all out there. Even the first handful of covers were horrendous…this was what also got me into making covers and into graphics design in general. I knew I could do better. The reasoning behind a great book cover…there are so many reasons. I know the saying is “don’t judge a book by its cover.” However, so many people do. When they are searching on websites or even in stores, it’s what grabs the interest first. You want the cover to speak a thousand words to the possible reader and to draw them in telling a story. You want the cover to tell your story. Money must be put into this, unless you have the graphics design skills, please don’t do something basic. Let someone help you, or work on it over and over as I did. I started with graphics design because I wanted to do my own book cover. It took A LOT of time and tries, and years to where I finally was able to create one that was good enough. Remember that this is important, not something to put aside. Put the money toward the editing and cover. When the book is put out on display whether on websites or on shelves, the cover is the first thing anyone will notice. So make it stand out, make it Pop, and let it show your fans what they are about to dive into. However, I didn’t realize what I had done until I wrote the second book and realized I was still missing so much, that I pulled everything from production. It needed to be redone from the beginning. Jen, a very close friend of mine, said words that stuck… “You tell a great story, there’s so much potential.” That made me feel good, and the thought that she would take on a mess was incredible, but as the publishing option diminished; I continued to take her words with me and finished the rewrite. And finally, on February 10th, 2020, Book 1 of the Blood Origins Series: Yearn for Blood will be Published by Willow Moon Publishing. The cover is gorgeous and I can’t wait for the book to be out there. It definitely took some lessons learned, but it was all worth the wait.
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AuthorTiffany Heiser Archives
February 2020
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