Author ~ Echoes of Avalon

Though you can make fantastically effective trailers for your book with free stock images, simple slide show animation, some text, and no sound, you’re better off having a little bit more than that. Naturally, the quality increases exponentially with the amount of money your throw at it.

Such is the case with sound. Mood music is what makes your nerves tingle, your hair stand on end, and goosebumps rise on your skin in the theater during an exciting trailer, or have your emotional heartstrings tugged during a dramatic one. Music is where it’s at, baby!

Now, you can’t just use music from your favorite artist in your promos. There’s this pesky thing called rights and royalties that prevent that from happening (well, with enough money almost anything is possible, but I’m going to assume that’s not the case here), so you won’t be using a Rolling Stones song anytime soon.

But there is plenty of free music out there or you can get some for, well, a song (yeah, I know, terrible pun).

Where do you find such music? A simple internet search “free stock music” will give you an adequate list of sites, but your are always best querying those in your community who have personal experience with such things. I posted a question on the forum of my writers group, Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA). I was certain that many of the authors there had previously used music in promos and they didn’t disappoint by the skads of suggestions they gave. Some of the more useful ones included:

Freestockmusic.com: A decent collection of quality works in a variety of genres. As the name of the site implies, it’s all free. A common quote for each sample often says, “100% royalty free license that allows you to use the music in all types of productions, for worldwide distribution, forever. There are never any licensing fees.” It’s hard to beat that.

Soundcloud.com: A ginormous collection of music and sounds showcased by a community of talented artists. If Facebook and CDBaby had a love-child it would be Soundcloud. The challenge of this site, however, is sifting through the shear volume of awesomeness and trying to narrow it down to what you are looking for. It seems to cater mostly to up and coming performance artists (heavy in R&B), but there is plenty of other offerings as well. I didn’t spend enough time to figure out how you download the music, how “free” (if at all) it was, or what the licensing agreement was. But I did hear mostly good things about it.

Incompetech.com: A one man extravaganza of music by artist Kevin McLeod. He offers a substantial collection of a variety of music and sounds of great quality. Though he asks for donations, music is free so long as you credit him in any work that uses his music. If you can’t or don’t want to credit him, then there is a “Non Attribution” license you can download starting at $30 for one piece, and then incrementally increases for additional music. There is a list of similar artists on Kevin’s website.

Purple-planet.com: Probably the smallest collection (that I could tell) of the sites listed here, but still good. It’s a free collection of royalty free music available for download, composed and performed by Geoff Harvey and Chris Martyn. All music can be used free of charge for web-based projects e.g. YouTube in exchange for a link to their site. Donations are welcomed. They specialize in music production and sound services for games, multimedia, TV and film. Specialists in Surround Sound 5.1 production. Large additional track catalogue available for licensing.

Stockmusic.net: A huge library of royalty free, diverse, and pro-grade music and sound effects for all occasions. You do have to pay, though. Depending on your needs and the depth of your pocket book, you’ll pay anywhere between $29.95 (individual pieces and small collections of sound effects) and thousands of dollars (for huge libraries of entire genres). This isn’t as scary as it sounds. I found the most perfect music for a project, a collection of 18 works, for $129.95. Each work alone otherwise would have cost $39.95. A relatively easy to understand blanket-license agreement accompanies each purchase for use in personal projects (TV, film, podcasts, etc), or you can license for more public use (restaurant background noise, elevator muzak).

I spent many a night just sitting with my laptop with headphones, sampling what was out there. I found lots of cools stuff, much of it free, but purely by coincidence or fate I found a collection at Stockmusic.net that fit like a glove. Every element I was looking for was in the package. It was too perfect to pass up, so I didn’t mind paying the fee, and the fruits of which can be seen in the movie trailer for my book, Echoes of Avalon.

Here is a sample of the intro to the trailer:  FilmEdge2_Epic_Z262-TheWorldAwaits-Schatz

Coffee houses are refuges for relaxation, watching the world go by, or

Echoes of Avalon Available at Savona Coffee House, Vancouver WA

delving into a new world by kicking back with a good book while sipping your favorite concoction to sharpen the mind. Such is the goal of Vancouver’s Savona Coffee House, a quaint little corner shop across from McMenamin’s and Beaches on the waterfront. They offer a calm ambiance, a wide assortment of brews, ice cream, and other tasty treats.

If you didn’t bring your own book in which to disappear, you can find my very own “Echoes of Avalon”, a novel of epic historical fantasy with a touch of romance, to help get you started on your journey of diversion and entertainment.

Savona Coffee House

1898 SE Columbia River Dr.
Vancouver, WA 98661
(360) 695-0678

For a limited time this weekend, March 2nd through March 4th, my novella The Tower that appeared in Chaos Theory Magazine will be available on Amazon as a free Kindle eEook ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Tower-ebook/dp/B007DMIK7I ). The Tower came about as a need to give substance to the villain in my novel Echoes of Avalon. My wise editor, Sarah Cypher, insisted that my villain was two dimensional, a card board cut-out and stereo type of bad guys. She said he needed motive. A history. People needed to understand him and find him believable. Thus was born The Tower, a flash-back sequence on the life of Loki. The eBook novella ends with bonus material, the first chapter to Echoes of Avalon, and a fantastic piece of art work by artist David Greene. And if you miss the free promo it is only $0.99. Also, you can find it in Amazon’s Lending Library.

UK blogger, and devourer of books, Eloise Hopkins honored me by reviewing Echoes of Avalon. I’m always surprised at the many ways people will describe my story. What impressed them, what could be better. She didn’t disappoint and introduced readers a perspective I did not consider. See it here: http://elloisehopkins.blogspot.com/2012/02/book-review-echoes-of-avalon.html

New copies of Echoes of Avalon are available at Vancouver’s most venerable independent bookstore, Vintage Books. The paperback is on the shelf and on the counter is a display holding author-signed souvenir bookmarks that can be bought with coupon codes for downloading the eBook.

eBook Purchase Display: Get an Author-Signed Souvenir Bookmark

I mentioned in my earlier blog, the Modus Operandi for creating a specific image that will appear in my movie trailer blog follows a certain process. That includes previewing rough drafts of the image, suggestions for changes, stamp of approval on a final rough draft, then the final completed image.

I’d like to walk you through that process for one image here.

When working with the artist, David Greene, I first emailed him a list of descriptions – one for each image – and then I sat down with him and verbally clarified what I’d like to see for the image we were currently working on. When necessary I even drew very rudimentary stick figures for him, but mostly he was keen enough to understand right away what I was looking for.

After the first image he made for me, I had a good idea how fast (and talented) he was at making the rough drafts and how he could adjust on the fly. That filled me with enough confidence to be fairly demanding when making suggestions for changes.

For the most recent image we were working on I sent him the written description: “Image1 (Black and White, pencil/charcoal): Patrick is on his knees before a burning Jerusalem circa 1099 AD. He is wearing chainmail with a white surcoat over it. The surcoat is smeared with soot and blood. It also has a red cross emblazoned on the chest (classic ‘Crusader’ style). The cross should be bright red and the only color in the image. Patrick has a ‘What have I done?’ look on his face and his arms hang limply at his sides. A Norman style helmet (conical cap with nose card, a la ‘Bayeaux Tapestry’) rests up-ended on the ground near his knees as if he just took it off, set it down, and it is in the process of rolling away.”

After a brief discussion, David took the idea and ran with it. Within a couple of days he had these rough drafts for me:

Image "A" Provided by David Greene

Image "B" Provided by David Greene

Both were great starts, but I did not like the angle. I did not want to see a full frontal image. I suggested that I’d like to see the character more at an angle. Soon David had this image to show me:

Kneeling-Face Covered

I liked it much better, but now I was concerned about the character covering his face. I wanted a viewer to see the pain on the character’s face, imparting the significance of the moment. Again David adjusted and came up with this:

Kneeling, face exposed-but now not enough of an angle

Closer. I suggested a compromise between the last two images – the previous image’s angle, plus the exposed face. Also, I made the final suggestions of having the character looking skyward. David excitedly accepted the suggestions and in a few days I gave the stamp of approval after seeing this:

Final Rough Draft Approved for Green Light

My final input was to point out that I envisioned the character having an appearance similar to that of Brandon Lee, the actor and son of Bruce Lee who tragically died while filming The Crow. I even emailed links of Google images of Brandon. That turned out to be unnecessary, as David was already familiar with, and a fan of, the actor.

After all this back-and-forth, all the nit-picking on my part, and the tweaking. David came up with this final awesome image:

Final Image - "Patrick at the Fall of Jerusalem"

My friends and colleagues were just as astounded as I was (though, due to technical difficulties, the image here is blurry and does not do the final image justice). I received a print out of the image just in time for a book signing where I put it prominently on display. I’m fairly certain it went a long way towards selling more books than I normally would have. Customers are much more willing to buy a product when they have a clearer image of what the product has to offer – in this case a clear image of what transpires in the pages of Echoes of Avalon.

Which brings up an interesting point: Even after these images have been used in a movie trailer, they still will be quite effective by themselves as promotional tools for all sorts of occasions for a long time to come. Money well spent.

These images, and future ones, can be found on the Echoes of Avalon Facebook page. Check them out here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.247839491948866.60569.196323337100482&type=3

If you write, chances are you do it for one reason: To share your writing with others. Few, if any of us, write something just so that we can stick it in a drawer never to be seen again. We aspire to be story tellers on the grandest of scales. The Holy Grail of story telling is to publish so we can reach a world wide audience. To achieve that goal, we must do many things. From me, to you, to Stephen King we are obligated to jump through many hoops to promote our stories. One of the most common hoops is to simply explain our story to whomever will listen.

For example: You’re at a cocktail party and someone approaches you, saying, “I heard you wrote something. Tell me about it.” You’re being asked for a brief over view. A summary…a synopsis. Which is precisely the same thing a publisher or agent will ask when you approach them for representation. It is also what a bookstore owner or manager will ask when, as a self published author, you inquire if they will sell your book on their shelves. They first need to know what it’s about, and briefly.

If you can’t give them a memorable synopsis, you won’t get very far. It’s also important to realize there are different kinds of summaries to give depending on who you are addressing. A publisher or agent will eventually want to know the entire plot to determine marketability. An individual or bookstore, however, doesn’t want to know the ending, they just want to be intrigued enough to consider purchasing. Regardless of your audience, your summary must start out the same: With an attention grabbing line or phrase somewhere in your introduction that hooks the audience into learning more.

“Hook” is the appropriate literary term for this device. An entire book could be written on the topic of hooks alone. In fact, there is a literary agent who devoted a portion of her blog to hooks and invited readers to participate in a “best hook” competition. She no longer blogs but you can learn much by reading her archive at http://misssnark.blogspot.com.

For a publisher or agent the hook will figure prominently in your query letter, which is a single page document that introduces yourself and your story while seeking representation. Once you’ve grabbed their attention, the rest of your synopsis should seal the deal and make them take the next step. They will either ask for a full blown synopsis, an outline, sample chapters, or all the above.

As mentioned, an individual or bookstore will not ask for that much information. Their summary will be more succinct as will be their hook which will be more like the tag line you hear during a movie trailer or see on a poster. They should be motivated to buy your book immediately (or at least tell others about it, effectively becoming your viral marketing).  A summary given to this audience is called “The Pitch” (as in sales pitch, because that is essentially what it is). You want it long enough to give all the intriguing details, but short enough that you don’t lose their attention. It is very similar to what job seekers and self-promoters call an “Elevator Speech.” It’s just long enough to sell yourself while you have a potential employer or client trapped with you in an elevator.

If I were trapped with you in an elevator, my pitch might sound like this:

“Every fairy tale has a grain of truth to it. If you could go back in time and see the actual event that inspired a fairy tale chances are, because people are as complex as they are, it would be far more interesting than the resulting childhood fantasy. That is what I had in mind when I wrote my novel ‘Echoes of Avalon’—a fairy tale for grown ups. It starts out in Medieval history as Sir Patrick, an Irish knight returns from the First Crusade in the Holy Lands. He’s lost his faith in people and God and is haunted by an apparition that follows him, pointing accusingly. In this state a stranger finds him and offers a new beginning as a knight protector on the fabled Isle of Avalon. Skeptical, but with few options, Patrick takes the offer. From here the story slips into the realm of fantasy as Patrick is introduced to ghost, goblins, and talking wolves on an island harboring a secret academy filled with the youth of the world’s nobility. It is here Patrick is tempted to believe again…and fall in love. That is until the ultimate villain arrives with sinister plans for the island, and the woman in Patrick’s life. Patrick soon learns that before he can battle monsters, he must first defeat his demons.”

That clocks in just under a minute. Plenty of time for an elevator and it won’t lose anyone’s attention over coffee or cocktails.

It’s not enough to write a great story. You have to share it by first promoting it. The most fundamental task of promoting is simply giving your listener an intriguing summary. Hone your pitch. Craft your synopsis. It’s worth it.