Mr. Mitnick's Harem or

Something overcame me yesterday, unfortunately, and I decided to revamp Mr. Mitnick's Harem.  Not rewrite it but change the title and cover and reformat.  So instead of doing the YA novella all day, I wound up struggling with the cover.  This is not to put you off of doing your own cover.  I want to do my own and want you to be able to do a good job on yours.

The set piece in Act 3 is a fiesta at the mission.  I thought okay cool, I'll quick get a photo of a fiesta.  No.  Okay, festival then.  No.  Okay, carnival?  No.  Okay.  Flamenco dancers.  No.  Are you kidding me????  I'm good at finding stuff, I can find anything.  Maybe I didn't look hard enough.  But I was looking at places I could pay for the image, not liberate it.

So kind of unfortunately I wound up exactly where I started--with an image of the mission.  Then I couldn't find a photo of the mission at night.  WHAT?  Fine.  I'll Photoshop it to night.  Then I couldn't get enough sky.  Sheesh.  It was overcast all day and I didn't want to search all my images from that delete incident a couple months back.  Finally the clouds move around a little, I rush outside and point the camera to the sky.  Solved.

I spend most of the afternoon turning day into night and trying to put lights on the mission--I'm sure Photoshop has a different/better way of doing it, but again, I couldn't find it even with a Google search.  I lift the mission off the original image and place it on the new sky background.  I'm going for dark, grim, foreboding and I start to realize, wait, this is a cozy.  This is a humorous, I hope, book.  I send it to Chris, the comedy writer.  He goes Yikes!  You have to lighten this up, put another element in it.  I write back "What, a clown?"

This cover is destined to be changed again.

What we would also like to determine is what, if any, effect there has been from the freebie weekend.  And surprisingly, there have been a few sales of Schtupid Cupid and Verrines.  I can't honestly say if SC lead to the sales of Not Low Maintenance.  It certainly wouldn't have lead to the sales of the Flashes but I sure was happy to see anything happening there.  Maybe Bad Apple1 probably did lead to the sales for BA2, so I am hopeful that's a trend.  Dream Horse is still going strong while the kids are home.  It's selling about 60 copies a day which I think I great for a middle reader book.  And got this terrific review on the Verrine book, thanks Serene.

5.0 out of 5 stars I can't wait to start making Verrines, January 2, 2012

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Serene (Marina, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Verrines: Sweet and Savory Parfaits Made Easy (Kindle Edition)

I picked this one up as a kindle freebie, and I really had no idea what a Verrine was- however this book soon educated me! And what an education! Verrines are actually tiny parfaits which can be made in a glass, and which contain different discernable layers. They can be sweet (such as chocolate and fruit), or savory such as salad. The writer did a great job of educating the reader, and including recipes that were both practical and easy to make.

Recipes look and sound good... And I really liked the inclusion of pastry cream which is something everyone is going to want to make.

This is hands down one of the better kindle books out there. Sample and see for yourself.