A TREAT for your Halloween 🍬

Exciting news! I will be doing an IG Live with the fantastic author Susan Zell Griffith on Oct 29^th at 9PM Eastern!

I met Susan at DragonCon. Here’s a shot a fan sent over of us all laughing together, which we did for quite a lot of that amazing panel.

When I saw the cover of her newest book, The Monstrance, I knew I wanted to talk about it with her in depth. I’ve read the review copy now, and I think pretty much all of you will also love this story, which is set in Jazz Age NYC, with magical weapons and monsters, car chases, gorgeous world building and complex (and fun!) characters, and a hint of romance.

So put the date on your calendar 📅 and celebrate an early Halloween with Susan and me, talking about monsters and kick-ass female protagonists and all that jazz! 🎶

Before I get to the next part of the email, I would really love your opinion…

The reason I’m asking the above question is because a terrible thing happened to me last week…

I started the year working with a marketing company who said my online book sales are low because I need covers that hit my genre better. I mentioned this in a previous newsletter. I was not delighted about it, but I understood it.

So I spent the last nine months working to fix this. After a couple seriously false starts, I found a business that specializes in book covers for a reasonable price, and the owner promised me they could do a cover of the artistic quality I'm looking for. I sent him an example of a digital painting by the artist Chris McGrath and asked if they could make me covers with that level of artistry.

He assured me that this type and level of artistry was absolutely something they could provide. He said, "We have lots of artists on the team who would love to take that on and can competently craft something right in line with that."

They have a form on their website that says you can select “NO AI.” And they also have the promise: “Unless you request the use of A.I. in your book cover design, we will NOT use any A.I. tools or images in your design whatsoever.”

I fill out the form, selected NO AI, worked with the artist on multiple drafts, and finally there was new cover art I could work with.

I put in hours prepping the new cover for publication, laying it out in InDesign, doing the ebook and audiobook variations, etc.

When I went to upload it to Amazon yesterday, Amazon told me the cover was AI-generated. 

Heart sinking, I reach out to the company and ask them for a document to send to Amazon declaring that the art was not AI-generated, since I had put "No AI" specifically on the project from the start

They just got back to me and said, "The AI assistance was used because your character description and requested pose were very specific, and stock photos alone would not fully capture what you envisioned."

I thought that was called "making art." 😭 Indeed, having a specific character in a specific pose is a normal commission for a fiction book cover.

I’ve done no marketing of my books this whole time, waiting for those shiny new covers to make my books more marketable and set up a whole new marketing scheme around it.
Meanwhile, I've had almost no income from my books, because what is the point of trying to market them online, when the current covers are proven not to be optimal for convincing new readers to try the books. It would literally be throwing good money after bad.

I honestly thought I'd finally come through this period of limbo, and was finally about to get my book sales back on track. And now, to not only be back at the starting point, but with previous options already exhausted, I just feel utterly lost.

At least it was caught in time. The idea that I would have been going around proudly telling everyone that my books were entirely AI free, from the first word to the last period, from the interior art to the cover … when indeed AI had been used, is horrifying. And, of course, eventually it would have been realized somehow, and I would have been having to put out some damage-control statement about how I had no idea AI had been used, which no one would have really believed. Ugh. A nightmare.

This is not how I want to be heading into Halloween week—so far it feels like it’s been all tricks and no treats for me. I won’t lie, this one hit me really hard. Imagine me as a fighter in a ring, knocked down yet again, blood dripping out my nose, blackened eye, bruises everywhere. Imagine it as a still image, with the caption: “Will she get up again, folks? Is this it for ‘Rampagin’ Raven’ Belasco?”

As I spit a mouthful of blood onto the mat, I don’t have an answer in this moment.

However, I do at least have the cutest Halloween pup the world has ever seen. It’s a real comfort. And you, my beloved newsletter readers, get to be the first to see this year’s Halloween costume!

Next newsletter will have the punkin carving pictures, and if I’m lucky, I be able to tell you I’ve found a new artist for the covers 🤞 Happy Hallowe’en 🎃 and Feliz Día de los Muertos 💀 Until two weeks from now, be good or be good at it! 😘

💭 I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

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