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mont noir

Paperback Writer – how to get them?

19 January 2023 by admin Leave a Comment

Late in 2022, I “remastered” my two existing novels, Under the Black Sand, and Blood and Rain. I made slight changes to the contents and redesigned the books. The cover of Black Sand is now completely different. Blood and Rain is now available in a hardcover for the first time. Both paperbacks are now larger, a digest format rather than a pocketbook.

I haven’t revisited my catalogue like this before, but then I’m not sure if two books can be called a catalogue. Now that Mont Noir is coming and we have three books, maybe we can speak of a small catalogue.

It’s all nice and fluffy to read eBooks, but what if you want physical books? That’s possible now. You can go to Lulu and get them, but if you subscribe to the newsletter, you can reply to it and state what you’re interested in.

Books I sell directly cost less and are autographed.

I do have a limited stock of hardcover books that retail for €25 plus shipping, but the paperbacks seem to be most people’s favourites. Therefore I’m creating bundles of those.

Any paperback is €15
Get two for €25
Get all three for €30

That last offer is as close to cost price as can be.

I have calculated shipping at:
Netherlands: €5
EU €15
UK €20
Iceland €25
USA + rest €30

All the shipping prices are for packages up to 2kg, so you’ll just pay that once.

Obviously, if you are close to me, I’ll be happy to bring them.

Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter and you’ll be able to get any of these deals.

Filed Under: Blog, Novel, Promotions, Writing Tagged With: black sand, blood and rain, mont noir, novel, paperback, writing

A Book and a Cover

30 November 2022 by villia Leave a Comment

We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we do. If it looks bad, nobody will give it a chance. If the cover doesn’t say anything about the story, it leaves the potential reader confused. I have tried to have a professional designer create a cover for one of my novels. It didn’t work. I wasn’t happy with the results. Granted, it was a low budget job, but the problem was that they didn’t understand the project like I did. Perfectly understandable, as I wrote the thing. I’m sure big name authors have larger budgets, the designers probably read the manuscripts and have physical meetings with the author and publisher, but that isn’t realistic when you’re self-publishing.

So, I create my own.

When I designed the original cover for Under the Black Sand, I used stills from the short film that inspired the novel. I suppose it was part loyalty and part convience. I loved the actors, they did a great job and I wanted them to be… immortalised? On the cover? And they were the characters. I imagined them as I wrote the story. Also, the typeface is the same as the one I used in the film.

At the beginning of November, I put the finishing touches to Mont Noir and finalised the cover. As I was working on that, I opened the Blood and Rain design next to it. They do partially follow the same characters and I wanted them to have a visual connection. Since I was busy anyway, I opened the Black Sand cover. It didn’t work for me. I guess too much time has passed, the short film is decades in the past and I felt the cover didn’t do the story justice. Obviously, no slight on the actors, they are still awesome, but the story had grown beyond the short film. (If this thing ever gets filmed, they will still be my first choice.)

That’s when I got a designer to create a new one. As I mentioned, it didn’t work. I tried it myself. Grabbed a photo I’d shot in the Icelandic highlands last summer and worked with that. It received positive feedback, so I decided to republish the book.

The Under the Black Sand cover shows a desolate road in Iceland. You see a car and something that appears to be a ghost. The cover depicts a core scene in the book, shows where it all goes wrong. It is just one scene, but it reverberates throughout the story. The old cover crammed at least three scenes in and it was cluttered. This is more clean and hopefully does the story more justice.

As I was writing Blood and Rain, I experimented with different designs. It was always going to be red and black, the anarchist colours. Oh, I actually started with a 1950s style 5 cent paperback design, but it’s a 1930s story and I think most books back then were some kind of canvas designs. Back to red and black. I had a full body female silhouette with a gun, but it was too James Bond. Settled on a face. The diagonal line is the anarchist flag. The typeface from the 1950s design survived, as I used a kind of Film Noir type. The pattern coming out of her eye represents that even if she isn’t the protagonist, everything that happens radiates from her.

Blood and Rain

Mont Noir is just around the corner. It follows some of the same characters. Anarchism has been abandoned by most of them, at least in their daily life, so the red colour is gone. Instead, we have the blue of the Dutch skies and water. You see the plane and the danger. Interestingly, the typeface I chose for Blood and Rain is more pronounced here, as the title of the book uses it.

Lastly, and this is kind of a bonus feature, I published a book of poetry and odd bits in 2018. I had seven copies printed and have given away two of them. I will never have more printed and may or may not give more away. Some of the poetry are song lyrics I wrote while playing with the guitar. I never recorded any of them and they are forgotten, but the words remain. Silent songs, a book that nobody will read. A very personal work. Book of Silence. The cover represents this, as it is me, in relative darkness, facing away.

Book of Silence

Designing covers is something I love doing. As I’m working on a story, they are a great distraction when I don’t feel like writing but want to be close to the project. If I had a large budget, I would probably get someone more skilled to design them, but I would always be very involved.

Filed Under: Blog, Film, Novel, Writing Tagged With: black sand, blog, blood and rain, covers, design, mont noir, novel, writing

Mont Noir, where are you?

18 November 2022 by villia Leave a Comment

It’s hard to believe it’s finally – almost – here. My third novel!

I wasn’t going to write a sequel to any of my books, but life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. That’s also why it’s taken so long to get it out. The spark came in 2013, when I was visiting Belgium. On the border with France, I saw a sign, Mont Noir. What a cool name! I have to use that some time.

After Blood and Rain was published, in 2017, I started thinking about the next project. What would it be? I’d fallen in love with Celestina, the fierce anarchist we got to know in Blood and Rain. No, not a sequel. Maybe a fantasy thing? I plotted a story where the peasants are fighting a war against the gods. Celestina was not amused.

Mont Noir. The name kept calling me. Okay, fine. I came across an article that explained how Wilhelm Canaris, the head of German Intelligence had phoned Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Minister, in early 1939, informing him that a German invasion of The Netherlands was imminent. The Dutch War Scare, and I found old newspaper articles that confirmed this happened. It was a lie, but Canaris wanted to scare the west into preparing for what was to come. He disliked the Nazi regime and hated how the west was in denial about the danger posed by Germany. And so I had my story. Celestina had to go to Amsterdam.

It’s been years in the making, not because I write slow, but because I write sporadically. Work is busy, the house needs to be cleaned and fixed, and I wrote a series of short stories last year. All this time, Mont Noir slowly developed.

Recently I had it read by a few proofreaders and they loved it. It’s time to release the beast into the wild.

Publication date has been chosen, 12 January 2023 it shall be. You can check the book page here.

Filed Under: Novel, Writing Tagged With: Amsterdam, mont noir, novel, writing

Free Books! Happy New Year!

5 January 2019 by villia Leave a Comment

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

To celebrate the arrival of 2019 and the fact that I’m obsessively working on my third novel, and planning to publish it in 2019, I have created coupons that allow anyone to buy my novels for nothing.

The two first novels, Under the Black Sand and Blood and Rain are absolutely free at Smashwords for a short period of time.

If you don’t have them yet, jump over there and get them. Time is short.

And see you later in the year when Mont Noir becomes a thing.

The free novels can be found here.

Filed Under: Novel, Promotions, Writing Tagged With: black sand, blood and rain, mont noir, novel, publishing, writing

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