The week has been extremely busy for me with creating more benefits for the membership Portals (Tiers) at my Patreon page and getting ready my ebook of “The Fool’s Illusion” for distribution through Smashwords. The week’s also been a trying one for these two things. 

Patreon Discount and “Fool’s Illusion”’s New Book Cover

One of the benefits I’m trying to create for the Patreon Portals are book discounts. But, as I said a couple of posts back, in order to do that I need to publish my books on Smashwords since I’m not qualified for Kindle Direct Publishing’s (KDP) discount program anymore. [link] Yesterday, I hired a book designer to format my “Fool’s Illusion” manuscript for Smashwords’ ebook program. In order to convert my manuscript to ebook format he needed the book cover too. I thought I gave both the manuscript and book cover files to him until I found out this morning that I had only given him the cover’s illustration and not the full cover with the text (title and author name)! I was about to send him the complete cover when it occurred to me that I had created it using KDP’s Cover Creator software including one of its templates. I’m not sure if Amazon allows for a book cover made from one of their templates to be used to publish a book on another self-publishing platform so I had to email and ask them. 

Until I find out what the copyright situation is on Amazon’s book cover templates, I’m not able to provide the full cover to the designer and so I can’t publish the book to Smashwords until I get the book cover situation worked out. Don’t be surprised if I have a second cover reveal for a second new version of the cover to “The Fool’s Illusion” here in another week or so! 

“Fool’s Illusion” Halloween Sticker

One of the other patron benefits I’m working on is a Halloween sticker that I’m basing on the jester character from “The Fool’s Illusion” book cover. I’ve been making several concept sketches already and so I need to make a final sketch this weekend and start the colouring process and then its off to the printers. I’m trying to get all that done by early next week because Halloween is the week after! 

Virtual Halloween Events

Do cancelled Halloween events during this time of the plague got you down? Well, here are some alternatives that yours truly conjured up from that netherworld of cyberspace! Most of these are based in your blogger’s home area of Sacramento, California and the nearby San Francisco area, but who cares? They’re all online which the majority of Halloween events are going to be anyway! So the good news is that you don’t have to waste car fuel or a mass transit ticket to get to them! Instead you can attend them in the comfort of your own home!

Death’s Inquest: Ghost Tours: Ghost stories based on actual events in California’s capitol. Hosted by the Sacramento History Museum and Tours. 

A B Street Horror Story: A live reading of a play about a rehearsal of a live reading of a Zoom play! It’s set in a theatre with strange happenings. 

Boo!!! A Virtual Presentation of Spooky Stories: A presentation of scary stories told by nationally famous storytellers, including the ghost host of this event, Rodger McDonald. Presented by the Woodland Opera House, which has actually been said to be haunted! 

The Hydra: A Series for Experimental, Flash, Sci-Fi, and Horror: Live readings of shocking and startling stories. Ghost hosted by the Association of Black and Brown Writers and by speculative fiction author Audrey T. Williams.  

And I’m not sure if this has been streamed live, but fellow author/blogger Emerian Rich has kicked off a series of readings on YouTube called “Tales of Horror”! Live or not, it’s worth the watch! 

That’s all for this week! Tune in here next week for our Book-To-Movie review. You can say it will be a Halloween special, particularly one fit for this time of the pandemic. How will you be celebrating Halloween during this time? Feel free to provide your answers in the box below. 

Until next time . . .