A Cover Story by Victoria Chatham

My new cover!

AVAILABLE HERE

We all know the adage that you don’t judge a book by its cover. I have, especially in my early days of purchasing e-books, done exactly that and then been hugely disappointed when the quality of the content failed to match the quality of the cover. These days I look at the cover and then click on the ‘Look Inside’ button and read the excerpt before I decide whether to purchase or not.

I must admit that the last thing I thought about when I started writing my first Regency romance was the cover. It was a tough enough job to get the words flowing without having the angst of considering how those words would all be wrapped up in a neat package. I was totally ignorant of fonts, colors, and layout and had no idea how to create an attractive, appealing cover. Thank goodness for cover designers and, in particular, Books We Love’s own cover designer, Michelle Lee.

First e-book cover

I was so pleased with the first cover because it contained all the elements I thought I needed. My heroine, Emmaline Devereux, had long black hair, so the image of the girl was bang on. I needed a horse because she loved horses, and the old house in the background depicting her family home was so reminiscent of a house I had loved and lived in for more than ten years. But then my daughter made the comment that the image of Emmaline looked more like a schoolgirl than a clever spy capable of surviving the Peninsula War 1807 - 1814 when Napolean clashed with the Spanish Empire. Oh, oh. One burst bubble as I reconsidered what the image was actually portraying. 

Thanks to Books We Love, I had the opportunity for a new cover design when the book went into print. Again, Michelle Lee pulled in all the elements I requested on my Cover Art Form.

First print cover

The result, as you can see, is a more adult female image. I still had to have a horse to convey her love of horses, plus my hero. A similar female image graced the cover of His Ocean Vixen, Book 2 in the series but with the third book, His Unexpected Muse, coming in February 2019, I thought a new look all round might better pull the series together.

By now a little more savvy about cover design, I looked at the covers of the Regency romance best sellers on Amazon and noticed that invariably there was just a female image against an attractive background. Publisher Jude Pittman was again in agreement with the update and I spent most of one Sunday scrolling through images until I found a few that I thought worked. I am now totally happy with the image and feel that, finally, His Dark Enchantress has grown up.

After I revealed it on my Facebook author page, I had quite a few people contact me to tell me how much they liked it, most much more so than the previous two. I'm now looking forward to the update for His Ocean Vixen and next year for His Unexpected Muse. 

Visit Victoria Chatham here:

 AT BOOKS WE LOVE

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The Scales of Justice And Time Are So Finicky

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Some people are known by monikers that do them justice and others not so. Oddly enough, this blog is about British Columbia’s first Chief justice, Matthew Baillie Begbie who, after his death, became known as The Hanging Judge.  I was going to portray him as a bad guy in the new novel, The Joining that I’m editing, due to his little known reputation, however he was anything but that once I looked into his history and what he had done. 

He left his law practise in 1858 in Cambridge, England, and came to the fledgling territory of Vancouver Island. He formed many of the early legislations and founding acts to make BC the province in Canada it is today.

Begbie travelled up and down Vancouver Island and the mainland, before and after the two colonies joined to become British Columbia, sometimes travelling as many as 3,500 miles a year, and twice he walked over 350 miles, in order to bring law and order to all parts of the province. He would then show up for the court case, whether it was on a stump in a field or in a barn, dressed in his wig and judicial robes, instilling the awe and respect of the Justice Department to many a backwoods miner or small-town crowd.  Obviously a man of intense vigor and stamina, he would astound many with his decisions and lawful will.

He garnered more respect from the native populations than any of the few scattered white populations doing unheard of things like speaking several native languages and making fair and just decisions, which were unheard of at the time. He was also known for allowing people on the witness stand to swear on their own highly religious objects instead of the Bible. Begbie was one of the first judges to try a white man for accosting a First Nations person, and find him guilty. Many First Nations tribes called him Big Chief for the respect he garnered among them. He even brought in legislation that when a white man died without a will, his common law native wife was entitled to the estate.

He also shot down many highly biased laws, like the one proposing a heavy tax on the length of pigtailed hair among Chinese launderers or the one proposing a head tax on Orientals.

He stood for and upheld the notion of “equality of all men before the law.”

The man was a paradox, a staunch Victorian, even knighted by the Queen herself. He hated hypocrisy, was friends with many American Republicans, and, while fond of women’s company, he never married.

An accomplished artist, Begbie would draw many witnesses in the court room and what he saw on his journeys, could sing, and acted in many play productions. At the age of sixty-one he canoed up the Stikine river to northern BC for a court case.

Many of the newspapers hated the man for his stance on the minorities of the province and wrote articles blasting his views. Perhaps that is where he got the disrespectful moniker The Hanging Judge that people only remember him by, when in those days most sentences were death by hanging.

After all the years of serving this province in a fair and just manner, I’m sure he’d be turning over in his grave at the injustice of his nickname.

For a teaser of my upcomimg novel, check out the video link below.

https://youtu.be/4Yr2LuvKZos

Frank Talaber’s Writing Style? He usually responds with: Mix Dan Millman (Way of The Peaceful Warrior) with Charles De Lint (Moonheart) and throw in a mad scattering of Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get The Blues). 

PS: He’s better looking than Stephen King (Carrie, The Stand, It, The Shining) and his romantic stuff will have you gasping quicker than Robert James Waller (Bridges Of Madison County).

Or as is often said: You don’t have to be mad to be a writer, but it sure helps.

My novels on Amazon are at:  https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Talaber/e/B00UC407R0

https://www.facebook.com/FrankTalaber/

https://www.facebook.com/franktalaberpublishedauthor/ (My facebook short story page)

Learning to Grow Lettuce Plants in Water by J.Q. Rose

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Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Learning to Grow Lettuce Plants in Water by J.Q. Rose

My husband and I were in the floral and greenhouse business for nearly twenty years, so I was familiar with the term, hydroponics. According to Dictionary.com, hydroponics is "the cultivation of plants by placing the roots in liquid nutrient solutions rather than in soil." 
In the spring of 2017, hydroponics became very real to me when Gardener Ted decided to try growing lettuce and a few other plants by building a system of pipes to grow plants in water. 

He has grown lots of vegetable and annual plants as well as foliage plants, mums, glads, and Easter lilies in our commercial greenhouses, and he plants a vegetable garden which produces delicious food all summer for our family in Michigan and a small garden in winter in Florida for us. Yes, he gardens twelve months out of the year. A dream come true for him.

Lettuce and other plants growing in Gardener Ted's  hydroponic system
Photo by J.Q. Rose

He's always experimenting with new plants and new ways of raising them. But learning how to grow healthy plants in water is definitely not like raising plants in soil! Figuring out how to move the water through the pipes, adding nutrients to the water, and keeping the pH at the right level led to huge challenges for him. He soon learned the weather conditions affected the nutrients in the water. Warm, cold, wind, humidity, etc.affected the growth of the plants. Gardener Ted knew how to deal with weather conditions when plants grew in soil, but figuring out what to do to keep his plants healthy when their roots were only in water was a puzzle, at times frustrating. But he triumphed over the unknown and developed a working growing chamber which produced healthy plants.

Delicious speckled lettuce grown using the hydroponics system
Photo by J.Q. Rose

He followed through on producing lots of lettuce grown hydroponically, but the garden lettuce seemed to grow faster. I liked the hydro lettuce because it was clean when he cut it, whereas the garden lettuce had sand and soil on the leaves. 

This spring of 2018 he made improvements to his system and his plants are growing beautifully. We are enjoying a delicious, as well as, a pretty salad every day. And one other perk when gardening, he enjoys sharing his harvest with neighbors, friends and family.

Are you a gardener? Do you have experience with hydroponic growing? 

Click here to connect online with J.Q. Rose