10/01/2026
So, another Christmas has come and gone, and another New Year has begun. And like all of my stories, Apple Tree Hill (as it is temporarily named while I think of a better title) has grown and changed.
Lorraine (Rainey) Cobcroft
AUTHOR
So, another Christmas has come and gone, and another New Year has begun. And like all of my stories, Apple Tree Hill (as it is temporarily named while I think of a better title) has grown and changed.
Authors struggle to be noticed, and some truly brilliant novels attract only a handful of readers because authors aren’t marketers. So what if a Kickstart project enabled me to build a community managed by marketers?
I’d love to hear your opinions and ideas, please!
I’ve finally created a business website that I feel confident to share with the world. Now just waiting for www.rainbowworks.com.au to resolve so I can upload the site I’ve constructed.
My fourth novel is testing me. Read about the plan and what inspired it.
There’s another novel rattling around in my head….
This time, I’ve followed the recommended approach of creating characters and an outline and synopsis before starting to write, but still the blank pages are taunting me. .
After seemingly endless weeks of agonising over one after another suggested cover design and one after another criticism of drafts, a helpful Facebook contributor suggested I consider using Getcovers.com.
I was dubious. I have paid cover designers before and been deeply dissatisfied. They typically charge high rates - often over a thousand dollars. And they don’t read the book before conceiving a design.
Sometimes miracles happen,, though…
Every work needs a third eye.
The writer always misses errors. The human brain plays weird tricks on us at times, and one of the tricks it plays is to read something we wrote as we intended to write it - not as it is actually written. You can look at a misspelled word a dozen times, stare at it for ages, and it will persist in appearing to be spelled correctly. You see the letters that should make up the word in precisely the order they should be arranged, despite the error being one that would jump off the page when readers read. So…
I guess I didn’t give much thought to a title when I was writing my latest novel. Like many authors, I just write the story and leave the title to the end, hoping something workable will come to mind along the way.
My third novel was given the working title The Inheritance simply because that’s what it was all about: the inheritance. But when I sought critiques on the proposed cover design, a helpful fellow author remarked that The Inheritance was a work by a very well known author,
Titles do matter. The title is the book’s first impression. It can suggest the genre and tone. It can set reader expectations. Unique titles help books stand out, and hopefully make the work memorable. I believe A Will of Deceit suggests the genre and tone effectively - much more so than The Inheritance would have. I can only hope A Will of Deceit proves to be as memorable as it is apparently unique, and that it appeals. Readers, please comment!
I am not an artist. I am a writer. I am married to a talented artist - talented, at least, at using photos and Adobe Photoshop, not drawing or painting. Though I suspect he might be good at that to if he had ever thought to try. He’s created some stunning wall hangings and a few great book covers. But he’s busy with other projects right now, and I frustrate him with my indecision! He did, however, take time out to design something for my latest work, “The Inheritance”.
And I, always worried about what other people think posted the suggested design on a Facebook cover critique group page. The criticisms can thick and fast, so the cover dilemma continues! What will this book eventually look like?
Writing a few thousand words comes easily for me. Writing a hundred or less is a far greater challenge, especially when that hundred or less must grab the attention of readers and sell books. But what is frustrating is that it seems relatively easy to write a short marketing copy for other people’s books…. Not my own. So if you need help writing blurb or a pull quote or log line for your book, I am sure I can deliver. When it comes to my own work, I guess it’s a case of being too close to it.
A writer an agonise, for hours, over a single word. And on this date, I did.
