“When you get some free time, write. When you get some lazy time, plan. When you get down time, world build. When your time comes, shine!” ― Ace Antonio Hall Ever have a novel you didn’t want to write? It kept nagging until you gave in. The Sciell’s Legacy (working title) Book 4 of The Merging…
It’s scary but worthwhile to step outside of your comfort zone. I specialize in fantasy and horror book covers and promotional images. Recently, my publisher (Aubey LLC), who I also freelance for, acquired an adult fiction Christian manuscript. She asked me to design the cover. The author emailed a drawing of what they wanted the book…
I always thought you needed to be an illustrator to create those nice fantasy landscapes. A couple of days ago, I was searching YouTube for book cover design videos when I came across artists creating fantasy images by piecing together different stock photos in Photoshop. I was like, “I can do that!” My publisher asked if…
With The Lost Sciell’s, Book 3 of The Merging Worlds series, release date this summer, I’ve been designing images. Those who subscribe to my newsletter got a first look at some cover designs. I’m in the process of updating the maps. Let’s take a look at how they’ve evolved over this series. I won’t be changing…
Being an author is about way more than writing books. Every Friday I post The Week in Links- a list of writing, book marketing, fantasy…articles from the week. I started this series to help authors and drive more traffic to my blog. I’ve done more specific resource posts which were popular. Some writing and fantasy…
A couple of weeks ago, I released Building Dark Worlds: A World Building Guide. It’s a collection of blog posts. Let’s go through the process of how this book came about. Collect Content I went through all my blog posts collecting the most popular ones on world building. Fortunately, I tag all my post so…
It’s time for another look behind the cover. My first non-fiction book Building Dark Worlds: A World Building Guide will be released in October. The cover presented a new challenged. I knew I wanted to use this image. I’m gathering my posts about #worldbuilding to turn them into an ebook #amwriting #darkfantasy http://t.co/K8TusX1NEu pic.twitter.com/ECiCKY4m5M — Auden Johnson (@audendj)…
I have two books coming soon! I talked about Devortus Reigns before- the book with dragons. It’s now called The Marked Hosts. I finished designing the cover. Getting it right was frustrating. I didn’t know what I wanted it to say. I wasn’t finding images that worked. Firstly, I’m noticing well over half my readership are…
Happy Memorial Day!!! Ever watch a video of an author reading their book? I’ve seen them. For some reason, I never got the itch to do one. That itch came about a week ago. Turns out, those videos are harder to create than I expected. The technical stuff was actually pretty easy… at first. I…
Try to think about marketing and brand building while your writing and editing your story. Don’t wait until you’re finished the book to think of lines to share on social media. Don’t just delete scenes that don’t work. Save them in another document and share them on social media. I shared this one on Instagram…
