Of Sound and Sea gets a cover

...and I learn some new skills.

Since you will discover that I am very cheap, and I already use GIMP for editing pics for my etsy store, I decided to get into using layers and text to make my own book cover. Yes, I'm still writing the book and only have a handful of short stories for it right now. However, I have picked the title and I super love it. Plus it's a great motivator to be able to get a picture of what I want the finished book to look like. So there it is. Feel free to let me know what you think, and any tips you might have for making book covers, as this is my first attempt and I expect to make more in the future.

If you're interested in making book covers too, here is the tutorial that I used: How to create an ebook cover with GIMP

I do have one confession to make. The photo I used is not of the sound or the sea. It is in fact the Potomac. I couldn't get down to the NC coast to take a picture, but I took this one at Westmoreland State Park here in VA and the driftwood and water seemed to invoke the sound so I'm using it.

Windy Friday

I'm sitting here in my home office listening to the wind beat against the sides of the house and avoiding doing laundry. What better way to put that off than finally getting to starting the blog that I've been thinking about for a while. I've been feeling a little lately like a leaf in the wind getting blown around by birthday and holiday plans, funerals, and a million other things that have been keeping me from writing regularly. So, it seems fitting that I should just stop dealing with that stuff to get started on this. Taking control right? This is all in advance of actually publishing something in ebook form which I intend to do in the next few months. I am working on formatting and editing a story, "The White House", right now and hope to have it available through Smashwords and on Kindle in the near future. It's the first in a gaggle of short stories that I've been working on based on local legends and history of the southern Outer Banks of NC.

Seeing as this is a brand new site and I have very little to say at the moment beyond ,"Hey, here I am". I'll keep this post brief and just invite you to checkout the Excerpts and About Me pages to get acquainted. Feel free to leave comments, I love feedback even from trolls.  I promise I'll write more later when there is more to write.