Friday, March 28, 2014

Through The Oracle’s Mist Spotlight~Guest Post~Giveaway

Title- Through The Oracle’s Mist
Series- Vengelys Series #1
By- Aedan Byrnes
Genre- Historical Paranormal Romance
Published By- Drake Valley Press USA

Blurb-
In the blackest night, with the moon and stars to guide him, she would always be there waiting…
Cyrenna thought she died the day she watched Tynan and his brothers jump through the banishment portal in an act of solidarity with Rigor. Little did she know, it would be the first of many deaths she would experience in her quest to claim his heart. She would surrender not only her immortal soul, but a mortal one repeatedly. Through a deal with the great Oracle, she has multiple mortal lifetimes to change the direction of her future and have a chance with Tynan.
Her journey spans the ages from the GenPei War in Japan and the Silk Road west, to Cromwell, the Three Kingdoms and modern times, bringing her one step closer to forever until she makes a misstep. Then, the burden falls to Tynan. The only thing that is absolute is her fervent hope that he will come, but there’s one big problem.
Through it all, he doesn’t so much as know her name.

Links-

About the Author-
There is no simple description for Aedan Byrnes. Obsessive, dreamer, reclusive, compulsive, outdoorsman and wordsmith would be among the list if one were started. The displaced Gael lives in the upper Midwest with family between jaunts wherever the road takes him. A frequent traveler, he is as likely to be found rock climbing or spelunking as sitting fireside dreaming or aimlessly floating away.

A lifelong lover of words and writing, he claims a diverse reading appetite and his writing reflects the myriad influences. A self-proclaimed 'reader's writer', he looks for the emotional and the sensory in word combinations, not just the visceral comprehension of phrases in the stories he crafts and his love of all things literary shines through.

Links-




Guest Post Topic--Should you Judge a Book by its cover-why or why not?

     Absolutely…not. To me the cover is like the previews before a movie. It is there to grab your attention for a moment and lure you in to ask for more information. To this end, you should be assessing if you have an interest that is piqued by the cover, nothing more. Does it call to you? Does it offend? Does it speak to you of things that you are curious about or passionate about? A book’s cover is the bait, not the catch. To judge a book, you need to read the book.
     A good cover will entice you emotionally to look further, but the story itself is the only measure one should use to judge a book. Great reviews or recommendations will appear on the cover sometimes as will a synopsis of the tale, do you then judge the story based on them? No, you may however make a buying decision based on them and that is why they are there. The job of the cover is to strike an emotional chord, be it joy, rage, curiosity, passion….so that you will open the cover and look further.
     Some covers are meant to trigger what makes us happy, some to make us sad or outraged. Some covers will pull at the emotional triggers to be overcome by that which we do not have, or to encourage us to dream of better. Others still will reach to a place of confusion so that you feel that you must read on to find out the message behind the cover. These would all be successful covers if they get you to retrieve it from the shelf and open the book.
     At the end the cover is to trigger a buying decision. While the story itself is what is to be conveyed, in this time of less than no time, a good cover will entice you to grab the book and put it in your carriage for purchase to check out more thoroughly later. While as authors we would love to believe that you grabbed our book after careful consideration and a longing to read the tale, we are realistic in our beliefs too to know that sometimes, it is what grabs you as you walk down the aisle at market and don’t have the time to consider further. This is okay with us…we only hope that when you do get time to escape, it is our cover that compels you to open our tale first and then that you love it and tell your friends.

2 comments:

  1. I agree to a point on the "don't judge a book by its cover" advice but there have been times that I have simply passed over a book without looking further into it because the cover lacked that something to draw me in. Whether it was poor graphics or just another in the long line of same old-same old cover lining the shelves. I am a very visual person and the cover is what first draws me in, then the title and how it relates to the cover before I reach for that back cover synopsis.

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  2. Although there are many times when I am lured by a cover, more often than not it is the title that will eintice me to pick up a book. Even then, I don't just stop w/the blurb but sample several random paragraphs to see if I am able to connect with the writing style of the author.

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