Custom Ebook Cover Design

Hello, everyone!

As some of you readers might now know, I have been offering my services as an ebook cover designer to the public. I do all of my own covers and have lately started doing work for writer friends.

I intend to charge cheaply for covers, and have even done some for free in exchange for promotion of my work. I believe having a community of creative people with different skill sets is essential and lucrative; if we all can in one way or another pitch in towards each others' works, we can help each other succeed in ways that we alone could not otherwise.

Click here to visit my Ebooks Page and have a look at the upcoming titles I've done the covers for.

Also, here are some links to books by author friend, Scott Richards, for whom I have done the covers for his latest works.

Click on the images to visit their respective Amazon.com pages.

Landon's Prison (synopsis):

On the last night of his life, all Landon Price wanted to do was make a cake in memory of his father’s death. A trip to the corner store for milk changed everything when some local thugs tried robbing the place. Trapped inside the store, officer Price called for back-up, but a lucky shot to his chest ended his life. True to his nature, he died bravely protecting others.

And then he woke up.

Surrounded by walking, talking insects, trapped in a body he has no control over, Landon finds himself in a situation impossible to explain. What’s worse, his career spent safeguarding the innocent now seemed for naught as his body – wild, with a mind of its own – slaughters and wreaks havoc upon those that created it.

LANDON’S PRISON is a sci-fi action adventure set aboard an alien ship where a genetic experiment has gone awry. Landon must discover what’s happened, and try to gain control of his prison before it murders every living thing aboard the ship.

 

 

Spiritually Deficient (synopsis):

John Catcher is a normal man with an abnormal job just trying to relax, eat some pizza, and watch his soaps in peace. This is his daily routine, and has been ever since the rest of his team deemed him "unfit" for field work.

No! That's fine!

See, John Catcher watches possessed items. Angry ghosts, ancient and evil spirits, demons minor and major - really, anything capable of possessing a human. It's his job now to, well, babysit them. It sucks, but he gets plenty of TV time.

Or, he would have if someone hadn't summoned one of his charges.

What starts as a simple fetching of a stray demon prince turns into a full blown catastrophe when he returns home to find his house had been broken into, and the rest of the vessels gone. To make things worse, his only lead is a young paranormal investigator staking out the place that refuses to tell him who did it unless John agrees to let him come with.

He's going to miss his soaps...

New episodes released every Tuesday!

If you feel like you'd like to talk about me doing your next ebook cover, leave a comment below, or send me a personal email at xavier.granville01@yahoo.ca or theideapool@gmail.com

 

The Post of Things To Come

Hey, folks. Just thought I would do a quick update as to talk about what The Idea Pool has in store for publishing in the next few weeks.

My good friend Tyler Sellars and I are hard at work on a new 10 part serialized novel, which we will be giving away the first episode for FREE, and selling the full set of 10 novellas for 5.99.

At the same time, I am even more hard at work currently trying to finish up my first 60,000 word novel, Now Hiring, to be released mid October, much later than I expected due to the book growing in length and detail each time I sat down to write it.

I recently, alongside, challenged myself to write 12 separate shorter works to be sold as a collection. The catch was that I would use four single word writing prompts to come up with the ideas for each of the stories. (Eg. Dust, Rain, Lock, Balloon)

The process has been quite fun; developing the individual storylines went in directions I never would have expected and I am quite happy with some of them so far. The expected length of the full length shorts will eventually range anywhere between 5,000-30,000 words. The ultimate goal of the whole collection of short stories for all 12 is around 100,000 words.

Other than that, I am just adjusting to my move to Toronto and taking in the sights of the city while looking for part time work to keep my head above water.

Look forward to more releases soon! Until next time: Be Awesome!

Troubles with Port of Call on Kobo

So I recently uploaded the first short story I ever self published on Amazon onto another platform, being Kobo, the Canadian company that I bought my eReader from.

So far I've had some slight trouble getting the formatting correct using their uploading system but I think its worked out fine enough for this first attempt.

Because of an error in the system, I now have two separate copies of the same short story up online for FREE, though both of the formatting on each seem to be off.

The book is available for FREE at Kobo for time being here:

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/port-of-call 

and here:

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/port-of-call-1


 I hope everyone enjoys the free copy despite Kobo's screw up in the formatting. Hopefully Amazon will do their price match soon and everyone will be able to get this short story for FREE in a short while. I will have several titles being released within the next month so stay tuned for updates in the near future!

Hurting My Hand

Hey guys, haven't updated in a while. This is one of the things I've been up to:

HURTING MY HAND!
This is a few riffs from one of the acoustic songs I'm working on off my upcoming solo CD. I've only recently started getting into fingerstyle guitar so it's something I'm just exploring now. Hope you all dig it!



Also, as a quick plug, I'm going to recommend checking out my buddy Chris' video reel, featuring music by yours truly. It's called 'Rebel without a cause' and Chris' photography really makes my music look greater than I could have imagined when writing the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDqda6mPI4M

Review: Edge of Darkness

I'm sorry but this needs to be discussed. After what seems like decades since Mel Gibson has shown his face in a film, he has returned and just thought we'd all be OKAY with it. I mean, this is the guy that for the past four years has been in the news beating on officers about anti-Jewish psychobabble and directed Apocalypto. I remember clearly seeing those fake heads rolling down those Aztec stairs and was thinking, maybe Mel Gibson isn't as sane as we all hope his is. Maybe we're all more just too scared of him to otherwise not say his films are questionable. Either that or you do a film about Jesus and you get so many check and black marks to your name its really hard to determine what you can say about the guy.

'I'm gettin' too old for this shit," a wise man once said. That's what Mel Gibson could have said before he signed on for Edge of Darkness. I wouldn't have cared if I ever saw Mel Gibson's face on screen again if this movie hadn't of come out either, but alas, it did and now I'm faced with the jaw dropping realization that perhaps Mel Gibson should be seen more often. I'm not saying I want him playing the goofy father in the latest Disney movie with Miley Cyrus' newly revealed third personality or to be the voice of some CGI Dreamworks pic, I more mean if every once in a while, some corporate/legal thriller with need of ass-kickery came out with Mel Gibson slotted in for the main role, you might catch me in the theater more often.

Edge of Darkness is a quick to the chase mind bender based around a police officer losing his daughter. Police assume that he was the primary target for the killing and begin to build their case around that assumption, whereas Kraven (Gibson) isn't easily convinced and begins to investigate his daughter's life in search for a possible reason why someone could have wanted his daughter dead.


I know I'm a sucker for the lost child angle, there is nothing worse than a parent losing their son or daughter, Minority Report, Shutter Island, these films just seem to get to me emotionally because of that angle. It's something that not only is universal but is in my opinion very effective when captured on film. There is something about the grief of loss that when really explored in film transcends words or images, take Minority Report for instance: you really feel John Anderton's apartment when he or Colin Farrell's character walk into it. It looks like a terrarium, like the place he lives is its own environment; his apartment in every way reflects his state of being: it is divided, on edge, disorganized and a place of excess and haunting memories. Having such a powerful emotional drive behind a character not only connects the character to the audience, but also to the cinematographer because now he can capture that raw emotion and have the ability to subtly explore those themes through images and little half hints that you may notice and get something from if manage to catch.


There is something universal in this theme, the loss of a child. Those who have gone through it understand the loss, those who haven't can only imagine. Mel Gibson's revenge is the same as Liam Neeson's need to save his daughter in Taken, and though I can see many similarities between both Taken and Edge of Darkness, I personally think that Edge of Darkness is a much less of an action film and more a personal story and a personal story is always the best to get your audience really rooting for your characters.

That is what this film did more that anything, kept it a personal story. You really do feel that Mel Gibson has lost the only thing that mattered in his life, Thomas Kraven's little girl was the only girl in his life and she was taken away from him and now he's got nothing left but a lot of unanswered questions. Some of the best segments are those of Kraven at his home and in the flashbacks with his daughter as a child, what the filmmakers managed to pull off was building the character's back story and history without ever going into it to explain it all, much like in Minority Report with Tom Cruise's apartment, Thomas Kraven's home just screams this man's life in every shot, every close up of a photo album or picture frame, case file, chair, that old mantelpiece, whatever; the viewers see this home as a place that once held love and history.

And then there's the legal/corporate mind game and the action and all that. I've managed to talk quite a bit about the emotional draw of the movie and not much about the very well done and executed fight scenes and explosions and car crashes and mystery and what have you. I can say a number of things about all the nice action and confusion along the ride but I think this review has gone on long enough for you to be bored by now or maybe enticed to see the film. What separates Edge of Darkness from any other corporate thriller these days is its deeply rooted personal themes and humanity. This film is not something new, merely it is something very good. Mel Gibson, hats off to you, you crazy, crazy person.