Book Cover Junkie Interviews Historical Romance Author Jean Hackensmith

I have been writing since the age of twenty. (That’s 47 years and, yes, I’m disclosing my age.) I am the proud mother of three and grandmother to four wonderful grandchildren. After losing who I thought was the love of my life, my late husband Ron, in November of 2011, I met Rick. So, it is definitely possible to have more than one “love of your life.” Rick and I were married in July of 2018 and are still going strong today. He is my soulmate, my confidant, and my biggest fan. He has read every book I have ever written (even the romances!) 

Next to writing, my second passion is live theater. I founded a local community theater group back in 1992 and directed upwards of 40 shows, including three that I authored. I also appeared on stage a few times, portraying Anna in The King and I and Miss Hannigan in Annie. I am sad to say that the theater group dropped its final curtain in 2008, but those 16 years will always hold some of my fondest memories. 

I moved from Superior 15 years ago, seeking the serenity of country living. I also wanted to get away from the natural air conditioning provided by Lake Superior. We moved only 50 miles south, but the temperature can vary by 20-30 degrees. I guess I’m a country girl at heart. I simply love this area, and am lucky to, once again, have someone to share its beauty. I love the solitude, the picturesque beauty of the sun rising over the water, the strangely calming effect of watching a deer graze outside your kitchen window. Never again, will I live in the city. I am an author, after all, and what better place to be inspired than in God’s own backyard.

Let’s Connect!

Website: https://www.jeanhackensmith.com.

X: https://x.com/Author911 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/jean-hackensmith-61554012674412/ 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/32957713?ref=nav_mybooks

 Interview:

Tell us about your book! What inspired you to write it?

I grew up in Superior, Wisconsin and have always wanted to write a series set here. "A Dream In The Wilderness" is the beginning of that series. Right now, there are three books total in "The Wilderness

Saga", with a fourth to be released in January. With Superior being one of the largest shipping ports on Lake Superior, there is so much history. Years ago, my co-author, Kathe Birch and I started the Gitche Gumee Saga, which was set in Superior, but we only got four books done before Kathe passed away. That series is out of print now, and I simply could not bring myself to revive it without her, so I decided to start a whole new one. I'm glad I did.

How did you choose the title for your book? Did it come to you right away, before you started writing it, or did it come later?

Back in 1837 when "Dream" begins, Superior was all wilderness. In fact, the whole northern half of Wisconsin was covered with thick forest. It was said back then that a squirrel could cross the state and never touch the ground because of all the trees. (That line is actually in the book.) So, wilderness personified. My main character, Sarah Bentley, has a dream of being a teacher. She realizes that dream when she arrives in what will one day be Superior. In fact, in the book she starts the first school in a barn loft. (Totally fictional, but cool.) So, she dreams of being a teacher and she does it in the wilderness. Hence the title.

Tell us about the cover design process. Did you have a basic idea of what your book cover would be like? 

Yes. I knew exactly what I wanted on the cover. The farm in the background, Sarah reading to the children (she took a job as a nanny to a farmer's three children, by the way. That's why she's in Superior. It was a few years before she started the school.) And I also wanted Caleb, the children's father, in the background and I got exactly what I wanted.

Who is your cover designer and how did you find him/her?

My cover designer is Ingrid Jones. She's from South Africa. I find it incredible that with the technology these days, I can work with a cover artist from half-way around the world. I found Ingrid on a design website called DesignCrowd. She was one of a half-dozen artists who submitted cover ideas for the science fiction novel I wrote with my son, Joe, titled Exodus. I chose her cover, because I was amazed at the talent it displayed. We work independently of DesignCrowd now, and she has done every one of my book covers ever since. In fact, I had her go back and redo all of my older covers, as well, so every book you see on my website (www.jeanhackensmith.com) was done by Ingrid.

What has been the readers’ response to your cover?

Quite honestly, a few people thought it was AI generated, because it is that good. It's not, by the way. In Ingrid's own words, she does use AI to tweak the covers when she's done, but the design itself and all its components are done using photoshop. She is also a member of several graphics websites where she gets the images.

What tips would you give to authors who are looking for a cover designer?

Try DesignCrowd. It is affordable (I paid only $100 per cover and I think that got me designs from like 6 different artists. The more you pay, the more artists will submit designs.) It also has an easy to work with platform. Very user friendly.

Anything else you’d like to say about your book?

Just that if the comments I've been getting via Facebook and Instagram ads are any indication, it's a very good read. Thank you!

A Dream in the Wilderness is available at https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Wilderness-Saga-Book-ebook/dp/B0DJS19HMH.

 

 

Book Cover Junkie Interviews Zombie/Horror/Comedy Author Andrew Marc Rowe

Born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, Andrew Marc Rowe had no idea that the human psyche and the nature of reality were going to end up as his prime fascinations in life. Perhaps he had more than an inkling that he would not wake up one morning as a jock doing sports things, given his penchant for nerdiness like mythology and fantasy and science fiction, but matters of the spirit and philosophy were the furthest things from his mind as an adolescent. More his speed were the most puerile and juvenile expressions of toilet and sexual humour offered up on silver platters by stand-up comedians and nascent Internet peeps.

People grow up, though, or so Andrew has been told. His interests expanded, limited world views were shattered, horizons increased in scope. Mental health problems became intractable, psychedelic medicines and following one’s dreams were recognized for their curative powers. Atheism became raving pantheism became ‘wrong question, dude’ as Andrew found himself no longer young enough to know everything or believe anything. Instead, he finds himself writing characters who think they know everything.

If you really want to stroke Andrew’s ego, tell him you’ve never read anything like his work before. It makes his writing nearly impossible to market but at least I’ve got chicken, as young Leroy Jenkins once proclaimed to a bunch of nerds in the mid-aughts.

What’s that? You want bog-standard biographical info? Lawyer, father of one, man nearing middle age who gets his jollies pushing and bending and licking the literary envelope.

Happy?

Andrew Marc Rowe’s latest book is Hi De Ho, Infecterino! The Come Up.

Website & Social Media:

Website ➜ http://www.andrewmarcrowe.com 

Facebook ➜ https://www.facebook.com/andrewmarcrowe 

TikTok ➜ https://www.tiktok.com/@bawdybardwrites

Tell us about your book! What inspired you to write it?

My book, Hi De Ho, Infecterino!: The Come Up (The Parasol Files #1), is my take on the zombie horror genre. Except that it's a psychedelic-soaked zombie horror comedy. My fiction is pretty much exclusively raunchy comedy, which skirts the line of bad taste and frequently goes over it. It's also usually filled with my insights into spirituality based on my own experiences. I was born an atheist in an atheistic family. Technically, we're United Church, which my old man once said is a step away from heathenism. Really, though, I grew up totally skeptical of all things religious. Why should I believe in anything of which I have no direct experience. My frustrations led to me eventually getting a copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and thumping it like I was a Baptist with a Bible.

Ye gods, I was a bit of an insufferable nerd as a teenager.

Anyway, I fell into a depression in my twenties, one that eventually saw me go down to Peru, drink ayahuasca, and have my own direct contact with spirit. I am in no way part of any organized religion, but when the inutterable reality of Source or God or consciousness itself comes to you and then infiltrates your life, at some point the skepticism breaks when things keep getting weirder and weirder and you have to admit that there is more to this whole reality thing than was previously assumed.

There's no putting a psychedelic experience into art, not really. The real stuff is ineffable, which means it cannot properly be put down on paper. All of the religious texts fail at their one job, in my view, be it the Bible, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita or whatever. They cannot give you an experience of the divine. Psychedelics, on the other hand, can. The McKenna brothers once talked about psychedelics as being superior to religion because the only thing that is required is courage, not faith. You've got to have the balls to put the substance in your mouth and that's enough. Religious experiences are not guaranteed with psychedelics, but they certainly are possible, with the right set and setting.

The Parasol Files takes those ideas, mixes them with Adam Sandler CDs and the edgy (read: offensive) comedy I've always loved, and puts it in the context of a zombie apocalypse. Someone can take one look at the book and think 'this is some dumb BS where the guy wants to get away with making a million dick jokes,' and that's true, to an extent. It also plays on apocalyptic horror, though it's meant to have a much lighter tone than say, the Walking Dead. It's a shit mix of the sacred and the profane, which is, in my view, the best kind of ice cream sundae there is.

How did you choose the title for your book? Did it come to you right away, before you started writing it, or did it come later?

My process starts with a title. I barely have any idea what I'm about to write, except some vague notions of genre. I actually thought I was ripping off a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode, the one where Ned Flanders became a zombie. Ned never actually said 'Hi De Ho, Infecterino!' in the show, but it was a bit of a Berenstain Bears effect. So, it turns out it was brand new creative, not something ripped off. The title suggests the vibe of the story - it's not exactly sedate, and it's meant to be funny.

Tell us about the cover design process. Did you have a basic idea of what your book cover would be like? 

It drew inspiration from Dr. Strangelove's cover, with the fellow riding the bomb down to Earth. The zombie on the cover is doffing his mushroom cap, to give it a bit of ye olde 'tea and crumpets' jolly English type of verve, and the bomb is heading into London (that's Big Ben below). I told my cover designer what I wanted and they gave it to me, more or less.

Who is your cover designer and how did you find him/her?

I use Miblart, which is a Ukrainian service with multiple artists working under their flag.

What has been the readers’ response to your cover?

I have been told that it is beloved. I never actually heard any laughs, or even smirks, but that is the intended effect.

What tips would you give to authors who are looking for a cover designer?

Don't skimp.

Anything else you’d like to say about your book?

I'll go with blasphemy-lite: it's as important as, if not more important than, the Bible. 

The Boat Repair Bible by Bloomsbury Publishing, of course.

See what you've done with that question? Now I've engendered the ire of the boat repair enthusiasts, and everyone knows what they're like.

Hi De Ho, Infecterino! The Come Up is available at Amazon.

Book Cover Junkie Interviews Crime/Police Procedural Author Andre Spiteri

André Spiteri is the author of award-nominated crime thriller Back From The Dead and other novels featuring struggling characters with troubled pasts. He was born on the sunny island of Malta in 1982 and lives in Edinburgh with his wife, their two daughters, and two cats. 

Website & Social Media:

Website ➜ www.andrespiteri.com

Instagram/Threads ➜ https://www.instagram.com/andrespiteri_  

Tell us about your book! What inspired you to write it?

Vanity Project is a police procedural set in a fictional city in Scotland, and the first of what I hope will be a series. A freelance cybersecurity consultant is stabbed to death in his home. At first it looks like his wife did it. But the case runs much deeper.

I don't usually have a specific idea in mind when I sit down to write (I'm not trying to dodge the question, promise!). My first book, Back From The Dead turned out quite complex — frame narrative, multiple POVs, and a non-linear timeline. So, with Vanity Project, I knew I wanted to do something more straightforward — a linear storyline with one main POV. That being said, other than an opening line, an initial scenario, and a vague idea of where I needed to end up — and by that, I mean I knew that, at some point, my detective would need to discover who the killer was — I didn't really have a plan. I don't usually do. Finding out what happens as I write is part of the fun for me. And, I reckon, if I don't know how the story will end, it will keep my readers guessing, too.

How did you choose the title for your book? Did it come to you right away, before you started writing it, or did it come later?

Initially, the title of the book was Weapon of Vanity, and the boring truth is that it came about out of practical necessity. I needed to name the file I was writing the story in so I could save it, couldn't think of anything, and went with the name of the first song that popped into my head: Weapon of Vanity by the Swedish death metal band Soilwork.

I knew it didn't quite work as a title, but I reckoned I'd worry about that later. I did like the ring of it, though. And then, without going into too many specifics because I don't want to reveal too much about the story, I realised that what my killer was doing was essentially a vanity project — an attempt to make themselves feel better about something they'd been through because they couldn't handle an unpalatable truth. And denial is kind of the central theme of the book. All the major characters are in denial. So I thought it worked nicely and it stuck.

Tell us about the cover design process. Did you have a basic idea of what your book cover would be like?

Yes, in the sense that I knew it had to be genre-specific. In spite of the saying, people do judge a book by its cover. It needs to set expectations. So I wanted a cover that, right off the bat, would tell potential readers 'This is a murder mystery.' I also wanted it to be bold and graphical. The vast majority of my readers are on Kindle, so the cover needed to look good as a thumbnail.

Who is your cover designer and how did you find him/her?

My designer is Dominic Forbes. He did a cover I really liked for another author in the same genre, so I reached out to him.

What has been the readers’ response to your cover?

Very positive. Everyone has commented that it looks great.

What tips would you give to authors who are looking for a cover designer?

I think the key with book cover design is that it's not an art project. It's about setting the reader's expectations, particularly when it comes to genre. If you've written a thriller, your cover must look like a thriller cover. If you've written a romance, your cover must look like a romance cover. Otherwise, you're making it harder for yourself to market the book. You need somebody who can help you visualise that. 

Anything else you’d like to say about your book?

I'm especially proud of this one, because it was much more challenging to write than my first book — the sophomore slump is real! So I really hope it resonates with readers, and that they enjoy it. 

Vanity Project is available at Amazon UK and Amazon US.