Tag: Amy Lane

Amy Lane, author

Scattered Thoughts Best Book Covers of 2012

Once again its time to talk book covers and book cover design.  I have talked previously about my favorite covers from childhood and how the mere sight of a great cover in the window of a bookstore would draw me in like the scent of cheese to a mouse.  If the cover is the magnet the publisher and author uses to attract readers, there are certain principles of design that used to be taken into consideration to make that cover the one that grabs peoples attention, that yells look at me, that makes them want to know what that book is about.

For printed books, the designer has to look at several things such as book size, typographic palette (how blocks of text are located on a cover), book covers, book spines and fonts. With respect to eBooks, spines aren’t relevant, nor is book size, at least how it is normally used in the publisher world. It’s not the actual physical size that matters here with eBooks but that readers are often looking at a smaller graphic when choosing eBooks.  So now smaller has to make an even greater impact.  All the other design elements remain the same.  Book covers, whether for print or electronic books, must be compelling enough to make the reader to choose that book, to persuade the customer that what is inside is fascinating, marvelous stuff.

Another rule is that the book cover should match the book it is being designed for. Whether the design is simple or rich in detail, elegant or street tough, uses a cover model or an illustration, there should be no disconnect between the subject matter inside and out.  I can’t tell you how many times I thought nice cover but what does it have to do with the subject of the book? And it if is a book series, then all the covers should be similar enough to brand each book a part of a series, one glance tells you who the author is and what series you are reading (ex. Abigail Roux’s Cut & Run series with a singular object on the cover). A great book cover makes you anticipate, endows you with a need to discover.

On every review I write I also mention the covers and the cover artists.  There are always some cover artists who continue to turn out one enticing cover after another, there are some artists you  can identify just by looking at the style of the design or paintings on the cover (Paul Richmond, Posh Gosh). And then this year saw a new artist or two whose cover reached out with it’s compelling designs and emotional overtones.  This  year also saw a trend towards retro illustrations and design which I loved and others whose richness in color and detail left me gasping in delight.  It was hard to narrow the covers down as there were so many worthy of mention, so I did break it down into a few categories.

So here they are, Scattered Thoughts Best Covers of 2012(with apologies in advance for the formatting problems):

Historical Novels:

On the Trail to Moonlight Gulch by Shelter Somerset/Artist Anne Cain

The Mystery of Ruby Lode by Scotty Cade / Artist Reese Dante

The Celestial by Barry Brennessel/ Artist Winterheart Designs

On the Trail to Moonlight Gulch2

The Mystery of Ruby Lode 2

The Celestial 2

]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contemporary Novels:

Acrobat by Mary Calmes/ Artist Anne Cain

Mine by Mary Calmes/Artist Anne Cain

Mourning Heaven by Amy Lane/Artist Paul Richmond

Sidecar by Amy Lane/Artist Shoshana Appavu

Time Gone By by Jan Suzukawa/Artist Anne Cain

Turkey in the Snow by Amy Lane/Artist Catt Ford

Wake Me Up Inside by Cardeno C/Artist Reese Dante

Acrobat2

Mine 2

Mourning Heaven 2

 Sidecar2

Wake me up inside 2

Turkey in the Snow cover

Time Gone By cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantasy/Supernatural Novels:

The Ronin and The Fox by Cornelia Grey/Artist Nathie

A Token of Time by Ethan Day/Artist Winterheart Design

roninandthefox_2

A Token of Time 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Novels:

Burn by TJ Klune/Artist Catt Ford

Josh of the Damned, Triple Feature by Andrea Speed/Artist LC Chase

Riot Boy by Katey Hawthorne/Artist P.L. Nunn

Burn2

Riotboy2

Josh of the Damned TripleFeature2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Series:

Infected Series by Andrea Speed/ Artist Anne Cain

Knitting series by Amy Lane/Artist Catt Ford

Leopard’s Spots series by Bailey Bradford/Artist Posh Gosh

Lost Gods by Megan Derr/Artist London Burdon

Gilbert 2

Stone Rose 2

Infected Lesser Evils 2

How to Raise An Honest Rabbit cover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were so many others I wished to include and I know you have your favorites too.  Write and let me know who you feel should have been on that list (King Perry, Fallout to name a few that came close).  Check out the individual reviews to see the covers in greater detail and read about the books they so beautifully covered!

Play It Again Charlie cover

Thanksgiving is Over, a Leftover Turkey Recipe and the Week Ahead in Reviews

Thanksgiving is over, the leftovers have been divvied out to family and friends, and the thought of cooking at the moment leaves me a little numb. On top of everything, I ended up the next day in an emergency care after hours clinic for a fever, sore throat and massive ear aches. So yeah, there’s that too that seems to go with the holidays.

Still the memories of family and good times are warm even if the leftover turkey isn’t and it leaves me plenty of time to read, review and knit a scarf or two as presents for the nieces.  The cold weather here in Maryland is bitter, the bird feeders stocked to the brim, and the terriers are snug in their (meaning my) bed.  If you need some books to fill your eStockings, here are some I definitely recommend:

Monday 11/26:                                Mourning Heaven by Amy Lane

Tuesday 11/27:                                A Slice of Love (Taste of Love #4) by Andrew Grey

Wednesday 1128:                           Cherish (Faith, Love, & Devotion, #4) by Tere Michaels

Thursday 11/29:                              Spice ‘n’ Solice by KC Burn

Friday 11/30:                                   Black Magic by Megan Derr

Saturday 12/1                                   Holiday Stories

Dad’s Leftover Turkey Pot Pie (from allrecipes.com)

Prep Time: 30 Minutes
Cook Time: 50 Minutes
Ready In: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Servings: 12

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups frozen peas and carrots
2 cups frozen green beans
1 cup sliced celery
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup chopped onion
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1 1/3 cups milk
4 cups cubed cooked turkey meat – light
and dark meat mixed
4 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat an oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. Place the peas and carrots, green beans, and celery into a saucepan; cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer over medium-low heat until the celery is tender, about 8 minutes. Drain the vegetables in a colander set in the sink, and set aside.
3. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, and cook the onion until translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in 2/3 cup of flour, salt, black pepper, celery seed, onion powder, and Italian seasoning; slowly whisk in the chicken broth and milk until the mixture comes to a simmer and thickens. Remove from heat; stir the cooked vegetables and turkey meat into the filling until well combined.
4. Fit 2 pie crusts into the bottom of 2 9-inch pie dishes. Spoon half the filling into each pie crust, then top each pie with another crust. Pinch and roll the top and bottom crusts together at the edge of each pie to seal, and cut several small slits into the top of the pies with a sharp knife to release steam.
5. Bake in the preheated oven until the crusts are golden brown and the filling is bubbly, 30 to 35 minutes. If the crusts are browning too quickly, cover the pies with aluminum foil after about 15 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Review of Knitter in His Natural Habitat (Knitting #4) by Amy Lane

Rating: 4.75 stars

Stanley loves his job as floor designer and store manager of Ewe’ll Love This yarn store, he loves his condo and his cats. And at 35, by following his strict regimen of diet, exercise and new hair plugs, he’s looking pretty darn amazing. So why is he feeling sort of hollow?  Ever since Craw dumped him for Ben and true love, not even going to the clubs for a quickie is appealing any more.  In fact, just watching  Craw and Ben together highlights to Stanley just what he wants in his own life but he’s not sure how to get it or if its even possible at his age.  So instead of looking for love, Stanley finally decides its time to learn how to knit to fill the void in his life.  Then a funny things starts to happen,  As his knitting progresses, so does his life start to knit together.  He finds a family in the people around him, from Craw, Ben and Ariadne to the store owner and her daughter. And then the new delivery man walks into the store and into Stanley’s life. Johnny is unlike any man Stanley has gone out with.  Huge, older with an air of the city and East Coast about him.  He likes opera, the theatre and Stanley.

Johnny is just settling into his new life in Boulder and his new job.  But he has plenty of secrets and a dark past that only one person in Granby knows about.  Just when Johnny and Stanley realizes the depth of their feelings for each other, Johnny’s past arrives in town to threaten them both and everyone around them.

A Knitter in His Natural Habitat is the fourth book in the wonderfully endearing Knitting series and each book just keeps getting better and better. We started off the series with Craw and Ben in The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters (Knitting, # 1).  It was cute and as adorable as the critter on the cover. And as much as I loved Craw and Ben, it was the ancillary characters that really captured my attention. In How to Raise An Honest Rabbit, it was Aiden and Jeremy, who took possession of my heart, especially Jeremy, our broken little bunny of a man.  They are all back of course as well as some splendid new characters unforgettable in their own right.  Especially look out for Jeremy who figures large in this new story but more than that I can’t tell you unless I want to head into spoiler territory.

With this fourth installment, Amy Lane turns her attention to Stanley, someone we meet in the very first book.  Stanley was Craw’s bed buddy to use the mildest of terms.  To Craw, Stanley meant someone he could count on for casual sex without complications with someone he saw only when he was delivering his yarn to the shop.  Unfortunately, Stanley’s feelings were a little more engaged than Craw realized and Stanley was very hurt to find himself dumped not only for a younger man but someone Craw was deeply in love with.  One of the marvels of Amy Lane’s characters is that they are so very real in every aspect.  Stanley is meant to come across as a superficial, flirty little queen on first impression and he does. But just as quickly we see the loneliness and pain underneath the artifice he has constructed to fool others.  Again, the author flips the perspective and we see Stanley and Craw’s “relationship” from Stanley’s POV and what a difference that makes.   I love the details the author gives us that adds up to a complete portrait of a man who has reached the age of 35 without having one meaningful relationship and now realizes it.  From his tan, his egg-white omelets and this rainbow  painted condo, each personal detail is perfection.  Layer upon layer piles up until Stanley and her other characters breath, flirt and knit their way across the pages, larger than life.

This of course, includes Johnny who we met briefly in How To Raise An Honest Rabbit.  Johnny and Jeremy come from the same dark past and Johnny played a huge part in Jeremy’s survival.  And much like a East Coast fish out of water, he is so different from every other character in the story and that makes him perfect for Stanley.  I loved his courtly manner towards Stanley.  In Stanley’s world, Johnny’s small gestures and gentlemanly behavior is just what is needed to win him over.  I immediately got how and why they meshed so quickly.  As I have said before, Amy Lane understands relationship dynamics and uses that to create realistic romances for her characters, an aspect of her stories I also love.

But it’s not just the romantic angle of Amy Lane’s stories I look forward to, it’s the family of characters she creates and brings together that enriches her stories and embed themselves into our hearts and memories.  Here it is the group of people that gather around Ariadne in her hospital room as she awaits the birth of her first child.  The doctor has put her on extended bed rest due to complications with her pregnancy and you fear for her  and the unborn child’s safety even as person after person comes to knit, gossip, and tend to her emotional wellbeing.  I wanted to climb into their midst and settle in with my knitting as well. There’s Stanley working the stitches on his first scarf, and Alice who bonded instantly with Ariadne, and of course, Jeremy and Aiden whose sex life speculation enliven each knitting session.  It’s the author’s ability to make them all so real that when she causes them pain, we feel the impact as intensely as the characters.

I know that Amy Lane considers some of her stories light and others dark in nature but I just don’t see that.  Even her “lighter” efforts have  dark threads running through them, and such a thing is necessary if her characters are to be truly human. One of the aspects of the Knitting series is that each person has a “true color” that represents them.  Jeremy sees Aiden’s true color, not as Sunny Sky Blue as Craw sees him but the blue of a sky streaked with the dark shades of purple and black  This is the darkest, most angst filled of the series so far.  In fact, at one point, I felt that I could have smacked the author silly with a hank of heavy worsted because of  the pain she caused one beloved character.Deep breath. And that is also the reason that it didn’t get 5 stars.  I needed the ending to be more complete, the characters more settled after the traumatic events towards the end of the story.  This series isn’t over yet so I feel that is coming, which is great.  Because as much as I have come to love these people, I need it to see them happy.  I trust Amy Lane to deliver that too.

So don’t dawdle, run, jump and skip over to the next eBook store and pick this one and all the rest up.  You will love them as much as I do.

Cover:  Catt Ford’s covers for this series continue to delight and enduce  smiles.  How can you not love this cover?

Note: Along with great covers, I love the titles of each chapter.  Here is chapter two  “Sometimes a Perfectly Placid Knitter Will Startle”. Love this series for so many reasons.

Here are the books in the series in the order they were written and should be read:

The Winter Courtship Rituals of Fur-Bearing Critters (Knitting #1) read my review here.

Super Sock Man (Knitting #2)

How To Raise An Honest Rabbit (Knitting #3) – review here.

Knitter in His Natural Habitat (Knitting #4)