Michelle McCleod's Blog

Check out the covers for my upcoming serial, Rare Stakes. Six episodes means six covers...what do you think?

A quick blurb about the serial:

Mel doesn’t believe in monsters, which is a problem, because they all believe in her.Amelia (Mel) Larson is an FBI agent who, with a little help from her psychic abilities, can solve cases that would take months to crack with traditional investigation methods.  But then she’s assigned a case that bites back. There’s a Dracula killer on the loose in Cleveland. He’s bathing the city in blood, taking victims and bleeding them dry. It’s up to Mel to put him behind bars, but this time she’s not the only psychic on the case.Ambrose D’Avignon is tracking the killer too, not to bring him to justice, but to murder him. When he asks for Mel’s help, things go sideways because he’s not just psychic, he’s undead.Dracula is real and all the other vampires want him dead. As it turns out...they feel the same way about Mel.


When will Rare Stakes be published? I'm hoping to have the first three episodes out by the end of February with the next three to follow in early March. It all depends on editing though, which sometimes takes longer than anticipated.

Happy Holidays! Santa may be done for the year, but my romance writing friends and I are just getting started! We have a really spectacular and fun giveaway for you. As usual, we have books on sale at a steep discount, most at 99 cents for an instant fix AND a 'grand prize giveaway' with gift cards and a kindle fire BUT what makes this give away different is each author is also having a special give away for their newsletter subscribers.

What does this mean for you? Every time you enter the 'grand prize' giveaway via Rafflecopter you're also entering an additional giveaway. The more author newsletters you subscribe to, the more you could win.

What are they giving away? I can't tell you! It's a secret...as in secret Santa. The authors will tell you what their newsletter prize is when you subscribe. I do know some of them have really expensive designer goods for you. This is definitely a giveaway unlike any other you've seen before.

This sale and giveaway run from December 26-28.




 

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy Holidays! This week I'm participating in a blog hop AND a giveaway. If you came from the blog hop, welcome! Below are a lot of goodies for you to enjoy! I've got books and gift cards galore!

For the blog hop, each blog is giving out a prize. In my case that's a copy of Psychic Appeal, plus there's a great raffle going at the end of this post...over $200 in prizes. To win even more prizes, visit the other blogs in the hop (listed below).

First up, my blog hop book, Psychic Appeal is now available! If the phrase 'zombie bank heist' grabs your interest, you'll enjoy this story!

        Top 100 in Psychic Romance!

             
             Amazon              Nook

HOW TO WIN: Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win an e-copy of Psychic Appeal!

FANTASY ROMANCE SALE!!!! The books below are 99 cents each!



                          



                                           



                             



                         




a Rafflecopter giveaway
Now go visit the other blog hop participants and win even more prizes!

Rinelle Grey

Stacy Claflin

Vicky Loebel

V.A. Jeffrey

John and Annette Gisby

Sean Van Damme

Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick

Jeroen Steenbeeke

Elizabeth Baxter

Becca Price

Annette Gisby

Chrystalla Thoma

Ryan Sullivan

Christine Pope

And comment on the main blog hop post for a chance to win a gift card and Hobbit swag! 

Happy Holidays! If you came from the blog hop, welcome! Below are a lot of goodies for you to enjoy! I've got books and gift cards galore!

For the blog hop, each blog is giving out a prize. In my case that's a copy of Psychic Appeal, plus there's a great raffle going at the end of this post. To win even more prizes, visit the other blogs in the hop (listed below).

First up, my blog hop book, Psychic Appeal is now available! If the phrase 'zombie bank heist' grabs your interest, you'll enjoy this story!

        Top 100 in Psychic Romance!

             
             Amazon              Nook

HOW TO WIN: Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win an e-copy of Psychic Appeal!

Now go visit the other blog hop participants and win even more prizes! We've got gift cards and Hobbit related goodies!

Rinelle Grey

Stacy Claflin

Vicky Loebel

V.A. Jeffrey

John and Annette Gisby

Sean Van Damme

Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick

Jeroen Steenbeeke

Elizabeth Baxter

Becca Price

Annette Gisby

Chrystalla Thoma

Ryan Sullivan

Christine Pope

And comment on the main blog hop post for a chance to win a gift card and Hobbit swag!

Who's ready for some holiday cheer? To celebrate the release of Psychic Appeal (currently Top 100 in psychic romance!). I partnered with some other authors to set up a great fantasy romance sale--all the books you see here are just 99 cents or even free in some cases.

PLUS there's an awesome give away...just in time to help out with your holiday shopping. (Note the giveaway opens tomorrow 12/4 and goes through 12/7.)



                                                          Amazon
                                                           Nook


                                        
                              Amazon                   Amazon                Amazon  (FREE)
                                                                                            Nook (FREE)

                                            
                              Amazon                  Amazon                    Amazon                
                                                               Nook               

                                                   
                                 Amazon                 Amazon                  Amazon
                                     Nook                     Nook                      Nook
       
                                               

                                                  Amazon                 Amazon (FREE)
                                                      Nook

Psychic P.I. Sofa Parker never thought she'd date a ghost, but when she accidentally kills her boyfriend, the phrase 'eternal love' takes on an unwelcome meaning. Then one of her cases results in being stalked by a necromancer, betrayal by dragons, the meddling of druids and the spark of a new relationship that drives the lovesick ghost of her boyfriend to come back from the dead...anyway he can.
Anticipated release date: Dec 1, 2013!

I'm pleased to announce another short story release. Chase the Night is a dark, erotic fantasy with vampires and is part of the world building for the upcoming urban fantasy, Crime Bites.  I also made the cover with a lot of help from a graphic designer friend. Slowly, slowly learning Photoshop!
After vampires decimate Kafele's bedouin tribe, he thinks he has finally found revenge in the dark embrace of a vampiress...only to learn his quarry has other plans.
Chase the Night is free on Smashwords and waiting for Amazon to price match.

I have another short story out today titled Man Eater. It's free on Smashwords with other distributors to follow.

This book also marks the first time I created an ebook cover in Photoshop CS5. There's a steep learning curve with Photoshop, at least for me, and, not finding the help I needed online, I made a video tutorial of the process I used to create the Man Eater cover.

I figure I can't be the only one trying to learn Photoshop and wanting really basic instruction so the video is below for your amusement or education, whichever applies most to you.

By the way, the video is not the greatest quality...I'm technologically challenged, but, if you can put up with my camera work, you'll be all set to make simple ebook covers in Photoshop in ten steps in just ten minutes.

The key to these simple covers is finding really great stock art, something with different textures and depth to the image. The Man Eater cover is nothing more than the picture,a  background color and the text. There's no shading, no special effects because the picture itself is of high quality.





Below is the process written out. You can copy/paste it and print it out for reference. I've also elaborated on some things that I didn't mention in the video.

How to Make Book Covers in Photoshop CS5: A Basic Tutorial for Beginners

1. Buy stock art from a stock art site such as iStockphoto.com or similar.

2.Crop the photo as required--for example, if you just want to use one part of the picture, crop that now-- and save to your computer. (You can crop in PS, but, as a beginner, this is easier).

3. Open Photoshop CS5 and open a new file using the settings: 6” x 9” 300 dpi/pixels per inch. Give it a name, but note this is not your book cover file, it's a working file that will make the actual book cover in a minute. We are using this just to establish the background color. I like to pick up a color from my stock art with the eyedropper tool, if you want to pick from the PS color palette that's fine too--you can just skip ahead to the bucket fill step.

4.Click file, click place, select picture.  This inserts the picture so we can use the eyedropper tool to establish the background color.

5.Size picture to fill screen as desired.

6. Click the eyedropper tool to select color from picture for top and bottom margins. Now we're going to open a new file to do the actual cover--as there's no way I can find to use the paint fill bucket without covering up the photo (it actually can be done, but requires deeper knowledge of PS, which I lack right now).

7.Repeat step 1, then click on paint fill bucket tool. Be sure foreground color from the eyedropper is visible in bottom left of tools and fill in the white 6x9 cover. Click on that color, then take the bucket and click on the book cover to 'fill in' the background color for your ebook cover.

8. Click file, click place, select picture to insert stock art.

9. Size picture to fill screen as desired, keeping in mind this is going to be the actual book cover.

10.Click the text tool and type in title, selecting font and font size, type in title on top, author name on bottom---center text as necessary.

Note: font color is selected in upper right menu. Usually, the program tries to type the title the same color as the paint bucket fill so you need to manually change it.

The story with Paypal's stance on erotica continues to unfold across the internet. I thought I would do a quick round up on some of the more important essays and opinions on the topic.

Most Recent Updates: 

Visa has issued a formal statement saying they were not behind Paypal's decision to censor erotica. Note that this is contrary to media reports and Paypal's own statements to both retailers and consumers.

"Although our company rules were not the impetus for PayPal's decision, these issues are important to us, and we'd like to share our point of view with you.

In general, Visa takes no position with respect to lawful goods and services bought and sold by the people and the companies who use our payment service. As the largest payment network in the world, with billions of cardholders and tens of millions of retailers and individuals selling goods in nearly every country of the world, our goal is to offer the best way to pay everywhere and for everyone. In fulfilling this mission, we strive to respect the many different perspectives that citizens of the world hold, and we avoid taking sides when those opinions differ." Full post here.

Paypal finally issued a statement on their blog, however, they are not posting all comments and readers report seeing different comments, both in content and quantity, at different times. Further, Paypal's statement provides yet another different data point on their position that has not previously been made public. Paypal just can't get their policy together or provide cohesive, consistent action.

My comment on Paypal's blog post is below, which they have yet to publish according to what I can see and what others have verified for me:

"Can you clarify what is meant by images associated with erotica? That's not a statement I've heard before from Paypal on the issue. As far as I've read, erotica books don't contain pictures beyond a cover.

How exactly does this policy protect your interests? Also, how does this policy protect your interests when traditionally published books containing content that violates your policy are still sold on sites using Paypal? And how does this policy protect your interests when content in violation of your terms is still for sale on Ebay, your parent company?

Further, when your policy effectively dictates the confines of a genre, you are limiting speech."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a letter you can sign that will be sent to Paypal's CEO. Please sign it as it's from an official advocacy group, coordinating with other advocacy groups--this is the petition to sign in my opinion. To be on the safe side, don't use the same email your Paypal account is under .

There's been media covers, of variable quality on the issue of Paypal censorship:

Forbes ( excellent dissection of Paypal's faulty logic)
Reuters
Wall St. Journal
MSNBC
CNET
Publisher's Weekly ( one of better articles)
New York Post

The other big news story that broke this week was the Department of Justice's announcement that they would be filing a lawsuit against publishers for price fixing. The upshot is NY Publishers colluded to jack up ebook prices. Since the effect of Paypal's policy has been to remove independent authors from small bookseller sites, which effectively reduces ebook price competition, inquiring minds wonder if this was the larger strategy at play.

I continue to believe this entire situation has nothing to do with sex, but is more about market share and pricing. Indies are vulnerable, without a large corporate conglomerate protecting our interests, and erotica is even more vulnerable yet, especially as it very successfully encroached on prime real estate publishers were used to owning.


Lastly, please welcome a new sub genre called Paypal Satire. Yes, now people are writing books where Paypal gets screwed without a safe word. They are quire funny and I encourage you to check them out. Buy them before Paypal bans them!


Make Love the Right Way or You're Going to Hell

Two People Having Sex

Depression Era Sex

Missionary Possible

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Previous Updates

Mark Coker, head of Smashwords, is in the process of issuing a rallying cry to the 'troops' in an effort to fight the moral censorship of Paypal and credit card companies. Please set up an account so you can receive his emails on the subject, and, while you're there, show your support by buying a book.
   
The National Coalition Against Censorship has weighed in with a letter to the CEO of Ebay. 

   "If PayPal's concerns were limited to restricting the sale of illegal content, the policy would beunnecessary, since it already holds users "independently responsible for complying with allapplicable laws in all of your actions related to your use of PayPal's services, regardless of the purpose of the use." However, the apparent purpose and clear effect of the policy is to prevent booksellers from distributing content that adults have a legal right to receive.Given PayPal'sdominant role in processing online transactions, the policy will have a dramatic effect on online sales of materials that do not even arguably qualify as obscene."

There's also a statement from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which highlights the insidious nature of corporate censorship. The US constitution protects Americans from government censorship, but there's no such recourse when companies act as censors. When it comes to corporations, people will only have as much freedom as they are willing to fight for.

Note, the links to the two petitions are at the end of this post. Please sign them. Corporations respond to numbers and, if we can amass a show of force, they will reconsider their position--they've been very responsive to petitions in the past.

Previous Updates:

Well known and respected erotica writer, Remittance Girl has "formally sent a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, alleging the targeted commercial suppression of women's literature by PayPal on the grounds that it specifically stifles the free speech of a 'persecuted gender grouping'."  This is not something that the US court system would support, but the European legal system may take action as their laws on discrimination are quite different.

New York Times Bestselling author, Michael A. Stackpole has spoken out against Paypal.This is something that affects the entire industry and I'm grateful any time an author with a strong audience is willing to wade past the buzzwords Paypal has used to make their actions more palatable.

There have been too many traditionally published authors (as well as some indies) poo-pooing the independent casualties. Well, as you'll see if  you keep reading, Paypal is also targeting publishers with their morality sweep. Solidarity is the way to move forward. If you want to publish your story, you're going to have to accept some of the raunchier indie stuff too.

Confused on all the details? Not sure why anyone would support incest? Stephanie Draven has some great clarifications on the terms involved in this debate. She clears up confusion about whether this is censorship. A pet peeve of mine has been, whenever I say it's censorship, someone comes back with 'it's not the government doing this so it's not censorship.'

The First Amendment of the US Constitution does not own the word censorship nor provide its sole definition. There are academic sources covering different types of censorship, look them up. When a near corporate monopoly starts banning an entire genre and attempting to police fiction, that's censorship.

By the way, Paypal continues to sell all sorts of hard core porn across the internet. Apparently it's just erotica they have a problem with--Unless, of course, they decide to police sexual content in other genres, which is the slope we're sliding down at the moment.

And if you're looking for a humorous take on the issue, check out this link. Don't drink or eat while reading and, if you do, don't say I didn't warn you.

Lastly, I have reports from good sources that traditionally published books are being banned as well. This has spread beyond independent authors. There hasn't been any official word from affected parties and I don't know if there will be--my sense is publishers want to keep their heads down and off the chopping block. However, I hope they come forward and serve the greater good. Paypal cannot be allowed to dictate the content of fiction.

There are two petitions you can sign and don't think they don't help, they do. Paypal has been responsive to petitions in the past on GLBT rights issues. If we can make a show of force, we may turn the tide. Hopefully before your book is banned.

One is on Change. org.

Another one is on Care 2 Petition.

The story with Paypal's stance on erotica continues to unfold across the internet. I thought I would do a quick round up on some of the more important essays and opinions on the topic.

Most Recent Updates:

Mark Coker, head of Smashwords, is in the process of issuing a rallying cry to the 'troops' in an effort to fight the moral censorship of Paypal and credit card companies. Please set up an account so you can receive his emails on the subject, and, while you're there, show your support by buying a book.
   
The National Coalition Against Censorship has weighed in with a letter to the CEO of Ebay. 

   "If PayPal's concerns were limited to restricting the sale of illegal content, the policy would beunnecessary, since it already holds users "independently responsible for complying with allapplicable laws in all of your actions related to your use of PayPal's services, regardless of the purpose of the use." However, the apparent purpose and clear effect of the policy is to prevent booksellers from distributing content that adults have a legal right to receive.Given PayPal'sdominant role in processing online transactions, the policy will have a dramatic effect on online sales of materials that do not even arguably qualify as obscene."

There's also a statement from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which highlights the insidious nature of corporate censorship. The US constitution protects Americans from government censorship, but there's no such recourse when companies act as censors. When it comes to corporations, people will only have as much freedom as they are willing to fight for.

Note, the links to the two petitions are at the end of this post. Please sign them. Corporations respond to numbers and, if we can amass a show of force, they will reconsider their position--they've been very responsive to petitions in the past.

Previous Updates:

Well known and respected erotica writer, Remittance Girl has "formally sent a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, alleging the targeted commercial suppression of women's literature by PayPal on the grounds that it specifically stifles the free speech of a 'persecuted gender grouping'."  This is not something that the US court system would support, but the European legal system may take action as their laws on discrimination are quite different.

New York Times Bestselling author, Michael A. Stackpole has spoken out against Paypal.This is something that affects the entire industry and I'm grateful any time an author with a strong audience is willing to wade past the buzzwords Paypal has used to make their actions more palatable.

There have been too many traditionally published authors (as well as some indies) poo-pooing the independent casualties. Well, as you'll see if  you keep reading, Paypal is also targeting publishers with their morality sweep. Solidarity is the way to move forward. If you want to publish your story, you're going to have to accept some of the raunchier indie stuff too.

Confused on all the details? Not sure why anyone would support incest? Stephanie Draven has some great clarifications on the terms involved in this debate. She clears up confusion about whether this is censorship. A pet peeve of mine has been, whenever I say it's censorship, someone comes back with 'it's not the government doing this so it's not censorship.'

The First Amendment of the US Constitution does not own the word censorship nor provide its sole definition. There are academic sources covering different types of censorship, look them up. When a near corporate monopoly starts banning an entire genre and attempting to police fiction, that's censorship.

By the way, Paypal continues to sell all sorts of hard core porn across the internet. Apparently it's just erotica they have a problem with--Unless, of course, they decide to police sexual content in other genres, which is the slope we're sliding down at the moment.

And if you're looking for a humorous take on the issue, check out this link. Don't drink or eat while reading and, if you do, don't say I didn't warn you.

Lastly, I have reports from good sources that traditionally published books are being banned as well. This has spread beyond independent authors. There hasn't been any official word from affected parties and I don't know if there will be--my sense is publishers want to keep their heads down and off the chopping block. However, I hope they come forward and serve the greater good. Paypal cannot be allowed to dictate the content of fiction.

There are two petitions you can sign and don't think they don't help, they do. Paypal has been responsive to petitions in the past on GLBT rights issues. If we can make a show of force, we may turn the tide. Hopefully before your book is banned.

One is on Change. org.

Another one is on Care 2 Petition.