R.K. MacPherson burst onto the urban fantasy scene earlier this year like one of Isaura Durand’s arcane lightning-bolts with the publication of Stormcaller, the first book in his Stormcaller Cycle.  Suddenly, Seattle was alive with magic as a young, untried witch struggled to master powers of a kind her eldritch mentors had never encountered, and hungry demons and murderous blood mages zeroed in on the Emerald City to control or kill her. Even the FBI got in on the act.

R.K. designs his own covers, and he does a great job of it, as you can see. With the publication of Assassins, the second Stormcaller book, however, he decided to turn the formatting and interior design chores over to Zone 1 Design.

Bring on the Red!
Back when all books were printed on paper, a writer could only dream of a publisher adding color to her books. Each color required a separate printing operation for every page on which it occurred, and the process was far too expensive to be used on all but a few special titles. With the coming of e-books color became free for all authors, though many still don’t take advantage of it. Even rendered on the monochrome screen of an e-ink device, colors translate to shades of gray that set a book's design apart from the usual black and white. On tablets they create a really standout effect, and help carry a theme through from the cover to the interior of the book.

For Assassins, I chose dark red brush-stroke ornaments and matching headers to echo the cover colors while setting this book apart in a subtle but distinctive way. 

Use your book to sell your book
Every author should take advantage of the opportunity offered by one book to sell his other books. Catalog pages provide great advertising by exposing readers to your cover, your sales copy, and a handy link to make a purchase right from the page. It's one of the best free marketing tools available to indie authors.

Working on Assassins was a lot of fun for me. Trying to match the sophisticated drama of R.K. MacPherson’s lovely cover in the interior design was deeply satisfying. I hope I’ll get to work with him again.

Assassins is on sale now at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, and all Amazon stores worldwide. It will soon be available at other e-book retailers, too. 

The image of the earth repeats throughout the book, both in its peaceful blue-marble appearance and its fiery end-of-the-world mode. It appears in various sizes on the title page and at the ends of sections.

The logo for Cherrylog Press, Daniel’s publishing company, came about after a search for photos of abandoned cars to evoke the mood of the James Dickey poem “Cherrylog Road.” This stock photo by Andrejs Pidjass (NejroN Photo) fit the bill nicely, and the typeface Honest John’s  helped evoke a 1930s feeling in a green sampled from the photo, then saturated to help it stand out from the more muted colors of the old car and the surrounding greenery.

This is the premiere publication for Cherrylog Press, and Daniel has more projects planned for the future. Watch this space. Meanwhile, give yourself a reading treat and buy Echo Beach from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com.au, or any Amazon store worldwide. It will soon be available at other online stores, too.

Misery, the protagonist of Craig D.B. Patton's excellent short story Misery Loves, is...well...miserable. She doesn't love company, and she doesn't love much of anything else either. Which just might be her biggest problem.

When Misery's roof caves in, letting in altogether too much sunlight to suit her, she ponders her options for getting it repaired. Humor is altogether useless. Joy makes her cringe, and Anger would only make things worse. Honesty offers the advice Misery really didn't want to hear—call on Love. 

Misery was first introduced to readers in the virtual pages of Aeon Thirteen, in 2008. She makes her second appearance as of today in this short story e-book available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, and all Amazon stores worldwide, with cover, formatting, and interior book design by Zone 1. 

Misery Loves will be available soon at other e-book stores, too.

From Craig's introduction to Misery Loves:

“Fantasy stories are meant to surprise us—both those who write them and those who read them. Some take us to richly detailed alternate worlds. Others speak directly to the strangeness and mystery that lurks around the edges and just beneath the surface of everyday life. All have the freedom to be outlandish for the sake of exploring some facet of the human condition....” 

Misery Loves explores the human condition with humor and insight.

Craig's Whistling Kettle Press has also produced a chapbook of stories about moments when the boundary between the explicable and the fantastic vanishes. Lifted Veils is available direct from the publisher.