Creative Image Creation Roundup, Part 2: The One-Trick Ponies

Yes, that is Tom Cruise taking a selfie with a photo of me.
See how much fun image creation can be? 

In addition to the workhorses I talked about in my previous post (items #1-11), there are specialty programs that might be a better fit for your art project. If you don't need all the bells and whistles, or get distracted by too many options, check some of these out. 

For example, if you just want an inspiring quote about writing, there are a bevy of places to get that done. If you just want to slap a quote from your book on a beautiful photo (but don't have any beautiful photos), that's easy, too. I pointed out whether each site requires a login, since I'm biased towards the the ones that don't. I can't even remember my own phone number most days, let alone a billion usernames and passwords. 

Now go forth, experiment, and have fun!  

12. LivLuvCreate

Use this site to make sharable quotes with pretty backgrounds. I've used this one a fair amount for work. It's great for reaching a younger audience because they have pics of celebrities you can shamelessly use to promote your own work. I've made Taylor Swift and One Direction graphics that are, if nothing else, eye-catching. Basically, you pick from a huge variety of background images, slap on your text, add a filter (if you want), and right click to save that puppy. All your images are saved to your username, but you have the option of keeping them private if you don't want them displayed in a public gallery. This is also a fantastic place to find the kind of background images that hipster edit memes make fun of. If you're into that sort of thing. 

Login required? Yes 

Bonus! You can submit your OneDirection fanfic here, too.
(Please tell me you don't have OneDirection fanfic.) 

13. Pinstamatic

This is solely to help you kick ass at Pinterest. It helps you pin things other than pictures, which sounds weird, but can actually be helpful. You can pin quotes, stuff from Spotify, a Tweet, etc. For writers, the easiest thing to do is to make a quote, and grab a great line from your book. To do that, all you do is paste your quote into a blank box, add an author name, and apply the style you like best from their scrollbar. No muss, no fuss. When you're done, just hit "Pin." If you want to grab the image to use elsewhere than Pinterest, you have to copy it and paste it into another photo editor.

Login required? No

Pinstamatic deserves attention just for the beauty of their home page design.

14. Pinwords

When I typed this into Google, it asked me, "Did you mean pinworms?" No, Google, I didn't mean pinworms, and freakin' a, what the hell is a pinworm? Anyhoo. This is a quote-image-making site. You can upload an image of your own, or use one of their pre-supplied backgrounds. You choose your theme, click on the sample text, and update it with your own. Easy, breezy, beautiful, Cover Girl. 

Login required? No

Pinwords: simple yet effective. 

15. Quozio

This is another quote-making site. Just enter your quote, and add the author. Click "Go," and scroll through a bunch of pre-formatted backgrounds and font choices at the top of the window. You can't customize the font, size, or background, but it's an incredibly fast way to get something on paper that you can post if you're pressed for time. Most of the backgrounds are solid color, but there are also some generic forests, trees, leaves, flowers, cloudy days, rain puddles, footprints, and the like for all your inspirational quotation needs. Right-click on your image to save it, or use their "Pin It," or "Send" buttons.

Login required? No

Quozio requires you to enter a quote before checking out
the available backgrounds and styling options.

16. Recite

See how cool Recite's
graphics turn out?

Another entry in the crowded quote-making site field. Here's the thing: this one's styled a hell of a lot better than most of the others. It produces much better graphics, to the point where my cover artist asked me who did the artwork you see at right. That's saying something, because this guy is a genius when it comes to covers, artwork, and styling in general. To get started, just type your quote in the blank box and click "Create." Preview your quote by scrolling through the image carousel below the blank box. When you hit one you like, click "Create." The only downside? You'll have a little bit of branding on your image. I didn't give a crap. The result was so good I didn't care. It's small and relatively unobtrusive. Throw them a bone. 

Login required? No

Recite shows you right away how your quote looks in all their templates.

17. Keep Calm-o-Matic

Should be self-explanatory based on the title. The "Keep Calm" thing is wildly overdone, but if you're determined to jump on the bandwagon, this is how you do it.

Login required? Only if you want to keep your creation private

Keep calm and try not to be a douchebag.

18. ShareasImage 

With this site, you can add text and filters to any image and share it to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+. You can grab photos right from Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram, and then output them back to social. They want you to install it as a bookmarklet or browser add-on, which I'm not fond of doing. I'd rather grab the image and drag/copy/paste/save/re-upload to PicMonkey or BeFunky to avoid running yet another add-on to my browser (I've already got six; it's enough). You can click "try the app," but on my computer, it took forever to load and I just quit. Still, it can produce pretty things to post on the fly, if you need that sort of thing. They used to make you pay to create more than 3 images; now they don't. Score for cheapskates everywhere!

Login required? No, because you're using a browser-add-on

ShareAsImage works as an extension in your Chrome browser. Because who
doesn't need yet another extension constantly running in the background.

19. Inspirably

Another quote-making site. You paste in your quote, add a name (author), click "Submit," and you'll go to the "Designing" phase. There are quite a few choices here in terms of backgrounds, from abstract to crystal-clear photos of landscapes and people. Your quote will always be available for everyone to see, however, so be aware before you release the Kraken. 

Login required? Not if you right click and save your image once it's done. Otherwise, it asks you to log in with Facebook.

Inspirably has a lot of high-quality photos you can use
as quote backgrounds, which is a big selling point.

20. QuotesCover

Yet another quote-making site. Who is paying for all of these? That's what I want to know. Anyhoo, to use this one, you can either choose one of the pre-loaded quotations (Frederick the Great, Ninon de Lenclos, Federico Fellini, Marie Curie, etc.) or enter your own in the box on the right. Be sure to select "Viral Status" after you select your quote. The colors and backgrounds aren't wonderful here. They remind me of those concerts in the 60s and 70s where they squirted colored water onto an overhead projector so all the high-as-shit concertgoers had something to trip out on besides the bad fashion.

Login required? No

QuotesCover asks you to choose your quote before seeing the
styling available. Most of it is abstract and kinda psychedelic.

21. BeHappy.me 

There's not much to do here except build your quote. Type it in, include the author (if you want), choose a font, and choose a background. It has "Behappy" branding on the bottom, and is pretty limited. Basically, you get a square with words in it. If that's what you want, awesome. You also have the option to download a Facebook cover from your quote, or submit your quote to be put on products for sale and earn 30% of any sales. 

Login required? Yes

This site is like those people who are always telling me to smile.
What if I want to make a quote about death, doom, plague, and everlasting damnation? 

22. Findings

This site lets you clip quotes you want to save or share from wherever you find them online. The downside? Your quote has to be online already. You can give them a font/background, and add them to your collection or share them on social media. You do have to login, either via Facebook, Twitter, or by creating a username/login. It's a drag, which is kind of the opposite of their slogan: "The easiest way to quote and share on the web."

Login required? Yes; login with Facebook or Twitter

Findings isn't the most stylish quote maker out there, but it gets the job done.

23. ProQuoter

Like Findings, you can create a fast image for social media sharing. Unlike Findings, you can type your quote in if it's not on an existing web page. Include the author if you want (it's optional). You can add the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar if yours isn't, like mine, already as crowded as Imelda Marcos's shoe closet. It can post your quote to Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter.

Login required? No

ProQuoter, styled with all the flair of a
Communist-bloc apartment building.

24. Roflbot

Fellow meme lovers, rejoice. This is where you make those images that have cats, dogs, rednecks, or babies captioned with those white block letters that display the creator's piquant wit. You can use a random picture they offer you, upload your own, or enter a URL to caption a picture that's already been posted somewhere else. Remember, folks: with great meme-making power comes the responsibility not to suck. Also to spell shit correctly. One time, I found the perfect Conway Twitty meme...just take a second to absorb the fact that I was in a situation that called for a Conway Twitty meme...but then I realized the meme said "Cownway" instead of "Conway." Now take a second second to absorb the fact that someone actually created a Conway Twitty meme. It's a strange world we live in.

Login required? No

I can haz meme.

25. Citrify  

This one is designed to help you spiff up your selfies. It can reduce red-eye and wrinkles, plus air-brush out your zits. You can also adjust things like hue, saturation, and brightness. There are some nifty filters here, including "Obamify" and "Hulk."  I'm not in the habit of taking selfies (no smartyphone), but if you are, check this one out.

Login required? No.

Citrify: when bad photos happen to good people.
Or you're like me, and just plain unphotogenic.

26. Chisel 

Add text to photos, using either your own images or their library of almost 4,000 images. You can share directly to Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and more. The biggest drawback is having to create an account. The good news is that some of their images are amazing, so it's worth the time to prowl through them and pick out some favorites. The landscapes are something else. My favorite quote in their home page background image: "Plan over bourbon. Execute over coffee." That kicks the shit out of the obligatory Lorde quotation that floats above and to the left of it.

Login required? Yes

Is it just me, or does that kid to the left of the site name look really creepy?

27. Picfull

This site aims for simplicity. You upload a photo, slap a filter on it, and you're done. You can save it or share it as needed. If you don't have the time or energy to make many choices (I know I get exhausted by having a lot of options sometimes), this clean, easy-to-use site is a welcome alternative.

Login required? No

Make your own Warhol-esque pics with Picfull's filters.

28. Online Image Editor

This site is for basic photo edits, as well as creating animated GIFs. In terms of photos, we're only talking the basics here: resize, crop, add text, or add borders. The cool thing you can do here is make a GIF. Plus, you know those sparkly glitter messages girls post to other girls' Facebook pages on their birthdays? Yeah, you make those here. You can add animated rain, flags, glitter, and more to any image. When you want to indulge your tacky side, this where you go. (Everyone has a tacky side. Don't deny it.)

Login required? No

So tell me Online Image Editor...what is it you do again?

29. IMGflip.com 

Want more GIF magic? Step right up. You can start with either images or video. You can also download your GIF for sharing. If you create an account, you can store it for retrieval with each login. You'll have a small watermark on the image, but it's a free service, so that's fair game. If that bugs you, you can pay to upgrade your account. 

Login required? Optional

IMGflip. Because the world never has enough GIFs. If you pronounce
that as the plural of a peanut butter brand, I don't think we can be friends.

30. Gickr

Here's another GIF-making site. Upload photos, make GIFs, hilarity ensues. 10 photos max per GIF. Hope that doesn't cramp your style. 

Login required? No

Gickr's interface is clean and easy to use. The only bad part? You have to say
"Gickr" if someone asks you where you made that butt-kicking GIF.

31. Quick Picture Tools 

This site offers a fast, free way to add one or two simple things to your image: rounded corners, blurry edges, etc. There are 12 total tools you can use here: embossed text, wallpaper calendar, multiple picture wallpaper, rounded corners, stripe frame, printed photo, combine images, embossed line frame, line frame, blur edges, add text, and crop.

Login required? No

Quick Picture Tools is exactly what it sounds like.

32. Pho.to 

This site has several sub-sites that let you do different things with your photos: edit, enhance, makeup touch-ups, etc. The most unique features are down at the bottom of the screen: Funny.Pho.to and Cartoon.Pho.to. At Funny, you can put your face into a celebrity photo, which I find hilarious. Yes, that's Tom Cruise taking a selfie in front of a picture of me...just one example of the fun you can have on this site. You can also add text and remove the pho.to watermark on Tom's shirt, if you care. You can also put your face on magazine covers, which would be awesome if you're promoting a book (do it for yourself, or your character). There are also some creepy-as-hell "human-to-animal montages" that are probably going to give me nightmares. If you need to get over an ex, pop their picture into the creepy orangutan montage and there you go. 

Note: Occasionally, I got error messages when clicking to a new features...try again and it will probably work. It took me two tries to get the photo above created.

Login required? No

Pho.to has my everlasting gratitude for the celebrity photos you
can insert yourself into. I find these things hilarious.

33. Glitterboo

If you ever wished you sparkled just like the vampires in Twilight, here's your chance. Add glittery effects to photos of you, your pets, your possessions, or anything that seems dull on its own. Play wit "night lights," "glitter," dappled light," "reflection," and "night and day." Pictures with high contrast turn out the best, according to their tips.

Login required? Yes

So, as I was saying, the secret to achieving world peace is...oooh, shiny....

Okay, that's it for part 2. While I was researching, I found four more "workhorse" image manipulation sites that got added to the original post. Click here to go back and check them out.

So now that we've covered workhorse do-it-all photo editing sites and one-trick ponies, what's next? I'm so glad you asked. 

In part 3, I'll turn my attention to some of the more boring but necessary kinds of sites: one-step photo resizing, making icons, doing product placement shots, converting images to different formats, removing backgrounds, creating charts, and other stuff that used to take a crap-ton of time but can now be done in a couple clicks. 

Have you used any of these sites, or created a freakin' masterpiece? I'd love to hear about it. Here's a little something I made with LivLuvCreate for work:

Don't let anyone tell you image marketing is boring. :)

Creative Image Creation Roundup, Part 1: The Workhorses

This is how I feel when I try to make art.

3/2/14 update: scroll down to the bottom of the post to see four sites added to the list!

I suck at art projects. I don't understand typography. I don't understand placement. I'm okay with color, but really, everything I know comes from a MAC counter. But in today's oh-so-visual world, we indie writers have to produce a staggering quantity of visual products for social media, our blogs, our websites, and what have you. This can be extremely stressful if, like me, you have the aforementioned defect of sucking at art.

Well, I've been trying to fix that and I figured some of you might be, too. I've been compiling a mile-long list of the image creation and manipulation programs I've found in Evernote. Suddenly, I realized...I shouldn't bogart the helpful information. So this is me...not bogarting the helpful information.  

Note the first: I didn't even look at any apps that are only for phones. I don't have a smartphone and never will, so anything I do has to be done on a desktop.

Note the second: These aren't sources for images...these are where you go after you already have those images. I've got an image source post in the works, but for now, just have fun with these. 

Part 1: The Workhorses

This post is about the programs that do it all: basic editing, adding text, adding effects, adding filters, and adding frames. Basically, they make it easy to look like you don't suck at art.


1. PicMonkey
My favorite. I honestly don't know what I'd do without this program. It's easy, fun, and I love the fact that no login is required. More companies should make it this easy to use their service. You can make collages, including Facebook covers. You can tweak profile photos. You can add lip gloss to your selfies. You can zombie-fy yourself. You can make nifty title cards for videos. There's not much you can't do with a little exploration here. 

PicMonkey is my favorite image editing site of all time.
Not that I'm biased or anything.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free (some effects are behind a paywall; however, I've done fine without them so far. I want them, but I've done fine w/out them)
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Easy to use
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product
Good: Best mix between ease of use + features offered
Good: They name their three image quality levels after actors who have played James Bond

Bad: There is no way (that I know of) to group or ungroup overlays without merging them all down to the background image. You have to know what you're doing so you can merge each overlay as you get it right. If you only want to merge your last overlay, you're hosed.
Bad: There is no way to curve words a la Word Art or Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator. I tried to do this manually, almost went blind, and still had crooked letters.


2. Pixlr 
Pixlr.com's "Editor" is close to a full-on Photoshop replacement. However, before I knew this existed, I taught myself to use GIMP, which is why I'm only talking about Pixlr Express and Pixlr-o-Matic here. They're the most comparable to the idiot-proof art solutions I'm listing here. 

The Express features are your basics: filter, crop, recolor, etc. O-Matic offers a fast way to slap a filter and a frame on an image. O-Matic gives you sample images to get started with, which I like. Express does not. I can't really figure out the difference between Express and O-Matic.

My one gripe here is that you can't always tell what their icons do, and THEY DO NOT HAVE HOVER TAGS. For the love of all that is holy, when I hover over a function, something should pop up to tell me what it is.

O-Matic is a little confusing to first-timers. After you choose a photo, you select a filter. You're shown 25 default filters, but you can also access 13 Creative filters, 11 Soft filters, 9 Subtle filters, 7 Too Old filters, 20 Unicolor filters, and 15 Vintage filters. Who has time to go through all these? Not me, but if you've got time on your hands, go for it. Second, select an overlay (bokeh, burn, etc.). Third, select a frame. Download to your desktop, and you're done.

Pixlr features beautiful design, but it may take you
a time or two to get the hang of it.

Good: Available as a download, on FB, as a Chrome web app, or for your smartphone
Good: Free, no paywall!
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product
Good: Easy way to make images look old or vintage

Bad: Not quite as intuitive as, say, PicMonkey.
Bad: Time consuming to go through all filters. Almost too many options here.
Bad: Can't tell difference between two of their products


3. BeFunky
It's a lot like PicMonkey. You can edit a single photo or create a collage. You don't have to register, but if you do, you can subscribe to streams for inspiration. Streams include big-picture concepts like "love," "travel," "LOL," etc.

It's organized a lot like PicMonkey, too, with a left-hand vertical nav bar. They make it easy to make a Facebook cover, which is nice. While you're in the "Essentials" menu, the bottom choice there is "Facebook cover," where the selector appears over your photo so you can size it just right.

I'll admit: the effects are bananas. There's a lot to pick from, which is both good (choices!) and bad (it's overwhelming and insanity-causing among perfectionist art-disabled neurotics like me). There are a crapload of filter categories, and often a crap-ton of choices within each subcategory. When you pick a filter, you can tweak things like highlights, shadows, and effect amount with an easy-to-use slider bar. Tintype is freaking awesome. Line Artopia is fun to play around with. 

You can add frames (Grunge Frames and Filmstrip kick ass), along with text, overlays, and textures. I could take a couple days off work just to play with all the good stuff they have here.

I haven't used this one much, mostly because the choices are overwhelming. But I get the feeling that you could really fine-tune some images here and get way closer to the look you want than in PicMonkey. You can save or print your image when you're done.

The highlights of BeFunky include "grunge" and "fiilmstrip" frames.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free, no paywall
Good: No need to register, but you can if you want
Good: Overwhelming choice of filters, textures
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Annoying ads on top
Bad: Almost-overwhelming choice of filters and textures

4. Canva
Design the ever-loving hell out of a flyer, Facebook fan page cover, sheet of paper, or social media post. You have to get on the waiting list (I got my creds in a day or two) to get an invitation to Beta. It's a little (okay, a lot) overwhelming just because of the sheer variety of what you can do. It seems very handy for creating a logo or crest. 

Basically, it's a way to add flat graphics (all the rage in the web design world) to a background you upload or one of their templates. It's super-easy to make a hipster-style logo or Facebook cover, in other words. All those gourmet hot dog bun companies, founded in Brooklyn in the 1980s? They probably made their logos here.

Your hipster logo is just minutes away.
(The Sarcasm Factory: Est. 1977)

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: They offer 5 tutorials that help you get started
Good: Overwhelming choice of layouts and text
Good: Nothing's behind a paywall
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Must log in/register
Bad: Almost overwhelming to choose a layout or text
Bad: Some layouts don't let you add your own background image. If it starts with flat color, it stays with flat color.

5. Ribbet
Very similar to PicMonkey and BeFunky. Upload a photo and then crop, recolor, add filters, shapes, and text to it. It's also available as a browser add-on, so you can have these tools available to you anywhere you go in Chrome. Another interesting feature here is that they're teamed with Zazzle to create customizable designs on salable products. It's probably not the road to early retirement, but if you have a knack for this kind of stuff, it could be fun.

The basics are on your left (crop, rotate, recolor, sharpen). The goodies are along the top of your workspace: effects and filters, stickers, frames, and more. Stickers are just what they sound like: digital stickers, cartoon-like or icon-like add-ons you can superimpose on your photo. What's cool here is they give you an idea of what each filter will do; you see the same frog image revamped with the filter. Cairo's is funny (the frog is wearing a pharaoh's headpiece). Night Vision is kind of cool. So is Neon.

They also have a "Sandbox" with effects designed by people who don't work for them. Most of them are way out there and I'd never use them, but hey, they're there. You can also make a collage instead of working
on just one photo, if you like.

The big ads are kind of a drag, but I understand. It's hard out here for a pimp.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free (some effects are behind a paywall)
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Wide range of filters to choose from
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Overall cheesy feel
Bad: Ads are distracting

6. Photovisi
This is a photo collage tool. It's not really meant for sprucing up a single image the way the other sites are. That being said, you can make kick-ass imagery for a blog post that compares multiple items, or advertises all of your books, for example.

The samples are gorgeous...great for stitching together
your book covers for a FB background.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free, no paywall
Good: Gallery of samples so you can get ideas
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Login required

7. iPiccy
Overall, this is a lot like most of the other tools. You can add effects, text, textures, do touch-ups, and more. You have several options for choosing a photo: upload, take a shot from your webcam, grab it from Flickr, or from a URL. You can paint, make a collage, or blend photos together.

There are fancy-pants tools like clone, curves, levels, and liquify. This is a bit too advanced for your average art dumb-ass like me, so I stick with the basics. In my life, when things get liquified, something really bad has just happened that probably requires Lysol.

As for filters, the usual suspects are here: lomo, polaroid, focal black & white, etc.  Depending on your project, they have a few filters are are super cool: Snow, Scanlines, and a kick-ass old west Wanted poster. That alone is worth visiting the site for. You enter the name of who's wanted, the reward amount, and bingo...your ex is now wanted dead or alive. You're welcome.

If you click "textures," you can overlay a grunge texture on your image. I love grunge textures. Yes, it's hipster of me, but I can't help it. Sometimes you just need a little grunge.

More grunge goodness here at iPiccy in the texture selections. 

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free, no paywall
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product
Good: Create your own Wanted poster
Good: Good font selection

Bad: Not quite as intuitive (Click on the stacked paper icon to add text? Wha?)
Bad: You might have to say "iPiccy" out loud when someone asks you how you made that image.

Okay! That's it for my roundup of workhorses. I hope you have fun playing around with these.

Next week, I'll continue this theme with some "one-trick ponies": sites that are less versatile, but can still be the right tool for the job. Stay tuned.

UPDATE

I found a couple more workhorse sites while researching and writing the second post in this series, Creative Image Creation Roundup, Part 2: The One-Trick Ponies. Here they are, with a brief summary:

8. Dr. Pic 
This one reminds me a lot of Ribbet, visually speaking. Here, you can resize, crop, rotate, add text, sharpen, etc. Choose your format (JPG, PNG, etc.), and save to disk or web. 

Easy-to-interpret icons on the left tell you what features are available.

9. LunaPic

This one is yet another entry in the "free photo editing" site field, but it's a hell of a lot more robust than many other entries (plus, they have tutorials!). Unfortunately, the options look a little overwhelming, so if you're in a hurry, this probably isn't the site for you. Given a few minutes to play, there are a lot of interesting options here. Hover over "Draw" and you'll see options like "Motivational Poster," "Stained Glass," "Twitter Mosaic," and "Glass Tile," among others. The "Effects" menu has just as many cool-looking choices. Choose "Dollar Bill" to put your picture in the center of a dollar bill, use the "Lego" effect to make your photo look like it's composed of Lego blocks, or make your photo look like it's underwater with the "Water" effect. There is a lot to explore here, and given the time, you could create some pretty cool homemade marketing materials. 

A generous supply of effects, if you've got the time and patience to sort through them.

10. Fotor

This one lets you edit a photo, make a collage, or make cards. Once you upload a photo, you can crop, rotate, adjust tone/color, etc, play with curves, resize, add text, effects, a frame, clip art, or save/print/share. You can also run your photo through "HDR" to make it look super HD. They give you a "compare" feature, which puts your "before" and "after" side by side. I didn't notice a difference in the rose photo I tested. 

Is that gold glitter in their background? Hmm, I wonder who their target audience is...

11. Pixenate 

This one offers the standard array of photo-editing tools: crop, resize, flip, rotate, improve color balance, smooth, brighten, straighten horizon, remove red eye, white teeth, adjust color/hue, and drawing over the photo. Your options for your finished product include saving to disk or uploading to Flickr.

Easy fixes for red eye and bad teeth, plus straightening photos with a crooked horizon.

The Romanov Legacy: Free on Kindle

This is a public service announcement.

All this week, my four-star thriller, The Romanov Legacy, is free for Kindle. Yes, you read that right. Absolutely free.

Included features:

• Espionage
• Betrayal
• Murder
• Treasure
• History
• Romance
• Car chases
• Shootouts
• Secret codes
• Hidden letters
• Death squads
• Breaking & entering
• Hoaxes
• Conspiracy theories

But wait, there's more! Buy now, and you'll also get: 

• A schizophrenic heroine
• A dog
• A spy
• A traitor 
• A mom
• A son
• A boy
• A spymaster
• A prime minister
• Two grand duchesses

To take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime offer, click here. 

We now rejoin the previously scheduled program, already in progress.

Demons, Funnels, and an Empty Checking Account: Why I Decided to Sell Short Fiction

In 2010, I had an idea for a short story about the lost colony of Roanoke. My first love is historical fiction and I've always been tormented by the idea of unsolved mysteries, so it seemed like a natural fit for me. Still, my writer's brain wanted more. It wanted to put a supernatural twist on the story. What better way to explain the strange disappearance of the colonists than by introducing something creepy and otherworldly? Namely, a demon named Croatoa. I know, I know...there are actual scientific theories about what happened to the colonists. But that's not nearly as much fun as a long-fingered black-haired demon.  

But I digress. It was a cold December and I was about to finish my first semester of grad school. It was time to write the final story for my first graduate-level creative writing class. I'd already turned in one historical fiction story, and one story about a talking dog who was really the devil. To reveal my amazing depth and breadth as a writer, logic dictated that I avoid (a) history and (b) the supernatural.

But since when have I done anything the way I'm supposed to?

I wrote the Roanoke story anyway.  Whether it risked my grade or not, it was the story I wanted to write. That's how I roll. 

I wrote it from the point of view of Eleanor Dare, the mother of the first English baby born in the New World. I wrote about the last days of the colony, when hunger and cold and starvation and drought and attacks by Native Americans had taken their toll. I wrote about a demon named Croatoa, who offered Eleanor Dare a terrifying bargain. I wrote about Manteo, the Croatoan man who had already been to England twice by the time the last, doomed Roanoke colonization party arrived. And I turned it in for my final: 20 pages of brutal, bloody, tragic prose.  I don't know what my grade on that particular story ended up being, since the professor said he would read our finals over a fire and burn them before assigning our final grades. But my grade in the class was an A, so I'm guessing it didn't suck too hard.

This is pretty much how I write
 most of my non-literary short stories.

Being in grad school led to a burst of creativity for the next 16 months that resulted in me having quite a few short stories, mostly written for creative writing classes. I submitted almost all of them to journals and anthologies. Quite a few of them actually made it in and have been published. As is the case with most journals and anthologies, they requested only first North American rights, which meant that once the story had been published, all rights reverted to me.

Until recently, I thought of my short stories as a means to an end: a way to get better at writing. A way to rack up a few publishing credits for this here "Awards & Publications" page. A way to earn backlinks for this blog. But I never thought of them as anything else.

Then I read a blog post on Anne R. Allen's blog.  Writers, if you're not reading her blog, you're missing out. I only discovered it recently, but every post is chock-full of helpful and interesting information. The post I read was called, "Why You Should be Writing Short Fiction." In it, Anne writes, "What--short stories? Aren't they just for writing classes?" She had my attention right away, since that's what I'd always thought. She said she knew of a bestselling writer who put a bunch of her older short stories up for sale on Amazon (under non-famous name, of course) and ended up making $500 a month. People found them, bought them, and liked them. 

Hmm, I thought. I have folders of short stories, all just sitting there.

But I still didn't do anything about it. I was working on marketing my books and getting my website up and running, and I didn't want to think about it yet.

Then, Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant released Write, Publish, Repeat. Their advice is to create a marketing funnel, with short stories, novellas, and books in tiered pricing layers that draw browsers in and convert casual readers into repeat buyers and (hopefully) fans.

Hmm, I thought. I don't have shit for a funnel.

That's when I started thinking of ways to use my short stories as part of my marketing funnel. The book I want to write next is historical fiction (both of them, actually). I have several historical fiction short stories, including Croatoa. Why not put out some of the short stories and try to use them to generate interest in my historical fiction? 

So here's what I did:

1. Dug out my old manuscript.
2. Polished it up. Added some stuff. Took a few awkward lines away.
3. Made a cover. (Deepest apologies to my fantastic cover artist, but with a dead laptop and an empty propane tank, money is allergic to me right now.)
4. Popped the completed manuscript into my eBook template.
5. Added two bonus features to the end of the story: a historical note on Manteo, and a detailed timeline of the Roanoke Colony. I wanted to make sure the reader had a bit more than just the story, so I used the idea of a DVD's special features and came up with the timeline/historical note idea.
6. Added a brief excerpt from my vampire book at the very end, with the cover art and a buy link. The idea here is that someone interested in a historical fiction story with a hint of the supernatural might also really like my vampire book, which also hits both of these genre's high notes. 
7. Priced it at .99c. My books are all $2.99, and since this story is much shorter, the price needs to reflect that. Maybe when I have more items up for sale, I can make one of my funnel items permafree, but for now, I chose the entry-level price point of .99c.
8. Published through Amazon KDP and Smashwords. Since I don't plan on doing a ton of promotion for the story, I didn't make it exclusive to KDP. I want the max amount of exposure for the minimum amount of effort, which means more venues = more eyeballs. 

So this is now the beginning of a grand experiment in which I see if I can replicate other authors' success selling short fiction. I haven't publicized the release much, since I had an interview that went live at the same time and I can only stand so much of myself. In general, my books make very little money and this story likely will, too. As of now, it's sold one copy through Smashwords and made me .73c. But that's .73c I didn't have yesterday, so that's cool with me.

I don't think I'll be one of the lucky few making $500 a month off of it, but I also know I have a dozen more than can follow. It's the production time that's going to slow me down. I am writing two books right now, and don't have much time left over to market the older books plus edit, format, produce, and publish a buttload of short stories. But I'm going to try because, well, Protestant work ethic bequeathed to me by my Swedish and Scottish ancestors just will not quit. Why watch TV at night when you could work on 800 projects all at once?

That's one thing about being a one-woman indie author show. You have to love it in order to live it. So here I am, loving it and living it, and wanting to help you do the same. I'll post updates here as needed to let you know how my short story experiment goes.

If you want to check out Croatoa, you can get it from Amazon or Smashwords.

To learn more about how I researched and wrote the story itself, check out this post on my website:

Croatoa: How I Turned the Lost Colony of Roanoke into a Short Story

8 Things I Never Knew about the Donner Party

I spent this weekend doing nothing but reading Ordeal by Hunger, by George R. Stewart. It sat on my shelf for 10 years after a chance purchase in a Truckee bookstore. Now, I live about 70 miles from Donner Lake and can see that forbidding ridge of the Sierras from my living room. Then, a couple weeks ago, we had snow. This is not supposed to happen--we're only at 1,500 feet. But it did happen, and our pipes froze and our driveway iced, which is why I think I finally plucked this one off the shelf.

Going in, I knew what most people know: they were pioneers en route to California, got snowed in at Donner Lake, and died. I think at some point I must have known there was cannibalism involved. I was under no illusion that this was going to have a happy ending, but holy mother of God, I had no idea it was this bad. There's a lot I didn't know or didn't remember.

There's a lot no one tells you.

This is by no means an exhaustive summary. It's more a jumbled recollection of the moments that pierced the cold, cold veil of my shriveled heart.

1. They were pretty much beaten before they ever reached the Sierra. Just getting to California had exhausted them in every way. To get their wagons over the Wasatch mountains, they had to stand in front of the wagons with axes in their hands, making the damn road yard by yard. They had to cross the desert beneath the Great Salt Lake, a more fucked up route than other travelers because the Donner party took an ill-advised southern cutoff that wasted a shit-ton of time. Suffice to say, when someone tells you the next water is three days away but really it's seven, you're going to have a bad time. Blame that douche-bag Hastings, who told them, "No sweat. My cut-off is a piece of cake," and then ditched them, leaving behind notes that lied to them about how far away the next water was.

2.  They didn't like each other very much. It would have been a shit trip under any circumstances. But in addition to the navigation issues, they also lost a bunch of cattle to the Paiutes, both through thievery and general marauding. No blame, just a statement of fact. All told, by the time they got to the eastern slope of the Sierra, they were tired, hungry, in need of supplies, and lacking tolerance for each other. If you and your sibling got on each other's nerves in the car as kids, imagine going on a six-month car ride where you had to build the road for the car by working in harmony with said sibling.  I'm pretty sure Mother Teresa would have needed at least one time out.

3.  They weren't all stuck in one cabin, tent, or even general area. There were three distinct cabins, with the two Donner families a whopping five miles behind them. When they got to Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake), it was about Halloween...and it started snowing like a mother-you-know-what. It didn't stop. They tried twice to get those big-ass wagons up and over the pass, but it just didn't happen. So they dropped back down on November 4 and realized they had to make camp on the eastern side of the pass until spring.

They set up some primitive cabins along the lake, with the Jacob and George Donner family groups about five miles back.  The party had always been segregated by family groups (the Breens, the Donners, the Reeds, the Murphys, the Kesebergs, etc.), but now those segregations etched themselves in stone. Contact between family groups was generally limited to requests for help, which were usually ignored or fulfilled only grudgingly. There were 60 people: 19 men, 12 women, and 29 children, including toddlers. The men bore the brunt of the work--gathering firewood, attempting to hunt, etc. Suffice to say, it fucking sucked.

At first, they had some food: a bear, a few remaining cattle, mice, and hides they boiled and used for soup. But when that runs out, what happens? Can you sit around a dank, dismal cabin full of sick and malnourished people, including your own children, and tell them they're going to die because there's nothing to eat? The first person to die was Baylis Williams. It was December 15, a month after making camp.

4. One group escaped on foot. On December 16, a group of 15 snow-shoed out, trying to cross the pass on foot. They were headed for Sutter's Fort in what would become Sacramento to beg for help and organize relief. But there was hardly any food left for those staying behind, let alone extra to send along with the people fleeing.

On the first day, they went four miles...all still on the eastern side of the pass, and still able to see the smoke from their families' cabins.  The snow was so damn high and so damn soft that it took a long time to cross, even with the snowshoes.

They had each taken six days' rations. Every person had a strip of jerky as long as two fingers, three times a day. That's it. Now go walk miles in a ferocious snowstorm and climb the parts of the mountain that snow won't stick to and don't forget to gather firewood and take turns maintaining it at night and generally try to give a shit so much that your mind wills your body not to die. I'm not sure I could have done it. When Eddy, one of the men, found a half pound of bear meat in his pack that his wife had hoarded and packed in secret with a love note, I almost cried.

Four days out, they were exhausted, malnourished, snow-blind, and subject to hallucinations. One man lasted six days. On the sixth, he sat down, smoked his pipe, told the others he was coming soon, and waited to die.

The seventh day, they shared the bear meat.

The eighth day, they had nothing.

The ninth day, they had nothing. And it started to snow again. They were all skeletal, malnourished, weak, and frozen. What were the options? Finally, they broached the subject: draw lots to see who dies and who lives? Fight to the death, so at least whoever went down went down swinging? They decided it was too horrible, and they had to wait. It wasn't a long wait. That night, a man named Antonio died. A few hours later, Billy Graves died.  A third man, Patrick Dolan, died a day later while they paused for Christmas Day. They waited another day. On the eleventh day, they did what they had to do. Two Indian guides and Eddy at first refused to eat. They trudged down the mountain, up and down canyons, through storms and conditions that make a Hieronymus Bosch painting look like Club Med. More dead than alive, they stumbled into a ranch on January 17. They'd started with 15 people, five women and ten men. Only two men made it out. All five women survived. (Yay, ladies.)


5. There was gallows humor. Back in the lake camp, things went from bad to worse. Terrible weather, vermin, sickness, malnutrition, starvation...you name it, it happened. George Donner had sliced his hand with a chisel. The wound festered and he didn't have the strength to fight the infection off. He also didn't have the strength to die. Old Mrs. Murphy went blind. A bunch of kids died. To keep the remaining ones alive, some of the corpses were dug up. Jacob Donner's wife, Elizabeth, said to her sister, "Guess what I cooked this morning? Shoemaker's arm."

6. Rescue came in waves, organized and orchestrated poorly and often by people with little or no snow/mountaineering experience. The snowshoers managed to send back several waves of rescuers, some more willing and able than others. The first wave of rescuers crossed the pass and realized what a terrible state everyone was in. They brought out everyone who was able to walk and not needed to care for the ones left behind--23 people, with 17 staying behind. The walkers included three children three years old. Tommy Reed was one of them. He made it two miles before it became painfully obvious that he couldn't keep stepping through the enormous drifts.  His sister, Patty, was also doing poorly. They were holding up the rest of the group. The rescue coordinator Glover, told the childrens' mother the two little ones had to go back to camp. No one had enough strength to carry the two children (the rescuers had run into storm and supply troubles of their own). Their mother sent them back to the camp and continued on with the rescue party. "Well, mother," Patty said, "if you never see me again, do the best you can." Oh holy Jesus, tear my heart out, why don't you...

A second rescue party included two men who had already escaped with the snowshoe party, Reed and McCutchen. They both had kids still starving at the camp and had to go back. Their party rescued the Breen family, the Graves family, a couple of the Donner kids, and Reed's two kids who had been sent back. As they struggled down the mountain on the other side of the pass, the Breens and the Graves could go no further. The rest pressed on. I've seen the word "abandoned" used to describe the Breens and Graves after the others marched on. I don't think you can use this word in that context. It seems too cruel. It was what it was. No one can pass judgment who didn't go through it.

A third rescue party, including Eddy and Foster (both escapees via snowshoe), went back into hell to try and save their children, both too young to have made it out with the other parties. But by the time they got there on March 13, Eddy's wife and child were already dead. A man named Keseberg seems to have eaten them. Elizabeth Donner was dead. Her husband, Jacob Donner, was dead...and partially eaten. George Donner was ill but clinging to life. His wife, Tamsen, refused to leave him. Rescuers told her they weren't sure if and when a third rescue party would make it. She stayed.

7. One of the survivors was accused of murdering Tamsen Donner. This is weird, you guys. So Keseberg was one of the last left in the camp. When the third rescue party arrived, they found him alone with a pot of what might have been human entrails and/or blood. They asked where everyone was, but Keseberg said they were all dead. They checked the Donner tents five miles away and found George Donner dead and wrapped in a sheet--obviously Tamsen had outlived him. They found no sign of her body, though. They went back and asked Keseberg where she was. He said Tamsen appeared at his cabin one night, drenched to the bone from a fall in the creek. She said George had died and she now wanted to cross the pass on foot to get to her children. He bundled her up for the night, but she was dead by morning. This didn't jive with the rescuers, who had seen Tamsen on rescue waves one and two. The healthiest of all the settlers, she didn't seem likely to die after one cold night. But they couldn't find a body anywhere. Keseberg said he'd eaten her--that she was the best-tasting of them all because she still had a little fat. However, if this was true, where were the remains? The head, for example? Jacob Donner's split skull had been recovered, even after the brains were eaten. Where was Tamsen? Was Keseberg lying? If so, why?

It struck some of the rescuers that Keseberg might have killed her. The Donners were wealthy, and maybe he thought he could scrounge their belongings to find cash or valuables. They got him out of that horrible death camp and tried him when they'd made it to safety. He was acquitted, but made to pay all the costs of the trial. Keseberg seems to have changed his story later in life, saying he did not participate in cannibalism. No one will ever know.

8. Some of the survivors ended up near where I grew up. It's not all doom and gloom, which is why I saved this point for last. The entire Breen family survived, 7 kids and 2 parents. They settled in San Juan Bautista, in an adobe near the mission I've seen a dozen times. I never knew. The entire Reed family survived, 3 kids and 2 parents. They settled in San Jose. I never knew. There are still Donner descendants in the state. Even Keseberg has at least one descendant in the state.

This is one of those stories that hits you in the nuts and the guts. I read this book faster than any fiction I've read in the past two years. I couldn't do anything else afterward but keep looking for more information on this event and these people. I just sat back, breathless, in awe of what these people went through. I could not have done it. Their will to live was so much stronger than anything I've felt in my entire life. That is both my shame and their honor.

Merry Christmas

When I was little, my mom made me write thank-you notes for any birthday, Christmas, or graduation gifts I received. I hated it at the time, but now I understand that it's one of those niceties that makes the world go around.

This post is a thank-you to everyone who has read the blog this year. To everyone who has commented, thank you. To everyone who lurks, thank you.

I hope you have a chance to reconnect with friends and family over the next few days. (Writers: even if they drive you bonkers, this is valuable material. Keep a notebook handy.)  I've got some cool things planned for 2014 that will help all of us become better writers, better readers, and hopefully, better people. I'd love to have you along for the journey.

If, like my husband, you're about to be dragged through a family circus that isn't what you really want to be doing, remember: your attendance and your smile is a gift to the person who brought you. As Bill and Ted said, "Be excellent to each other."

May your eggnog be spiked...with love or whiskey, whichever you prefer.  

Book Review: Inferno by Dan Brown

Inferno by Dan Brown.
It's ablaze, all right, but with what?
That's up for debate.

Note: This post is being sponsored by Grammarly. I used Grammarly's plagiarism detector because I wanted to watch it have a conniption fit over Inferno's purple prose.
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I'm not normally at a loss for words when it comes to talking about books. But Dan Brown's Inferno might have gotten the best of me.

I just can't think of anything to say.

It's a book.

It's not good.

Can we just call it a night?

No?

Damn it. I should have known you'd expect more of me, dear readers. Inferno is not a good book. It's also not hate-worthy in the manner of some of the other books I've blogged about here. It doesn't inspire vitriol. It doesn't inspire anything at all. Perhaps that's the whole problem.

Confession Bear says, "Don't be a book snob."

Great Expectations
Let me start by saying I loved The DaVinci Code. Yes, the insults hurled at the book by book snobs are probably mostly true. But applying literary fiction's criteria to Dan Brown is like cursing at an apple because it isn't round and orange and you can't remove the peel in one of those nifty spirals. If you didn't know that going in, you're either blind or humorless or both.

Being a page-turner is an accomplishment. Books that make you stay up late at night to find out what happens next are, by definition, good books. You have another option--going to sleep at a normal hour, like a sane person--but you choose the book. If you have another option but you choose the book, the book is doing something right. For me, The DaVinci Code was crack...or whichever potato chips have the slogan, "Bet you can't eat just one."  I couldn't read just one page. I couldn't turn out the light.

TL;DR: It's a good fucking book.

Dante's Pique
Inferno is not a good fucking book. It's even worse than a bad book. It's a boring book.

It's like when you're in college and your professor is talking, and you try to listen, but he's off on a tangent about some facet of his grad school research that matters only to him. It's 2:15 in the afternoon and his voice drones on like that guy who says, "Bueller?" You listen for an hour, but your watch says it's only 2:18. You start fidgeting to try and not fall asleep. But that gets boring, too. And then you get a little angry. You're paying for this class, after all. By the time 3:00 actually rolls around, you're not glad to be alive. You're pissed at the professor (for wasting everyone's time) and the university (for throwing away the student evaluations that say how boring he is). You would rather have been in the library doing research for your Victorian Lit paper. At least you'd have checked something off your to-do list that way.

That's Inferno in a nutshell. This Twitter account would have been a better use of your time:

10 Things I Hate about You +1, for a Grand Total of 11...Because I'm Feeling Bitchy that Way
When I started reading, I took notes on things I thought I'd blog about...but I stopped caring about 150 pages in. Then I started counting the number of times I fell asleep while reading it and got close to double digits. In order not to waste the time I spent making the list, here's a few of the things that ticked me off before page 150:

• Adverbs
• "Langdon battled the sedatives and awkwardly hoisted himself upright in his bed."
• Because when I've been shot in the head and wake up groggy with amnesia, it really needs to be specified that my first movement is an awkward one. 
• Exclamation point
• "A ray of hope cut through Langdon's grogginess.  'That's good news! Maybe this person knows what happened to me!'" 
• Because when I've been shot in the head and wake up groggy with amnesia, the first thing I do is make nothing but excited declarative statements. 
• Statements of things that make no sense
• "Who are you!? he called out in silence." 
• If only someone had invented a word that meant having words go through your head without speaking them. Someone get the call-out-in-silence tank on the phone and ask them about it. 
• Repetition for no point whatsoever
• "...every operative on board sensed there was some kind of high-stakes operation going on. The stakes are inconceivably high, and Vayentha had better get it right this time." 
• I don't know about you, but I never believe the stakes are high unless I'm told twice in rapid succession using a variety of typefaces. 
• Way too many uses of "?!"     
• "I beg your pardon!?" 
• Using this redundant form of punctuation makes it look like Brown doesn't know the difference between a statement and a question. I'm at a loss here, folks. I have never seen so many uses of "?!" in my life. I'm convinced Dan Brown has a "thou shalt not edit me" clause in his contract. This had me tearing out my hair, and with a 500 page book, that's a lot of hair. I'm bald now, actually. Thanks, Dan Brown. Thanks a lot.
• Moments where the characters say really dumb things
• "Langdon teetered on the brink of consciousness. Someone is trying to kill me?"
• No shit, Sherlock. That's probably a reasonable conclusion when someone comes into your hospital wing, shoots your doctor right in front of you, and then takes aim. This is a character with a PhD who has been through this drill in three prior books. Is it really such a big surprise when it happens again? 
• Moments where the characters do really dumb things
• In the book, while on the run from people trying to kill him, Langdon checks his Harvard email. I literally screamed at the book: "You stupid fuck! You've been on three adventures where people are hunting you the way fat kids hunt cake, where your survival hinges on hiding your location. You STILL haven't learned what an IP address is?"

• A disturbing lack of useful history and symbology
• They play so much less of a role in this book than in The DaVinci Code. There's one moderately intriguing art world mystery raised (cerca trova), but it's not solved or referred to again after it points the characters toward the villain's plot. Never mind the rest of us who find the historical mystery more intriguing.   
• Dante seems integral to the story, but he's not
• He's a set piece. At its heart, nothing about the main conflict has a damn thing to do with Dante. The main conflict could have happened in any country, with any author who ever wrote a poem about death. It could have easily been T.S. Eliot, with The Waste Land standing in for the Inferno. Dante's just a red herring, a fancy set piece. Malthus is doing the heavy lifting here, but no one gives a crap about Malthus, so they needed Dante to bring sexy back.  
• The main conflict isn't even resolved, despite nearly 500 pages
• The book ends with a huge problem looming. We, the reader, knew what the problem was from the very beginning. We just had to wait for the characters to catch up. And then they do. And then nothing else happens. Seeing that the crisis looming is a big one, this seems either like a sequel setup (please, no) or a writer who's too bored with his own story to wrap it up. SPOILER ALERT: the looming problem is that humanity will be destroyed within a couple generations by a secret virus. What are the good people of the world doing about it? We don't know. The book's over. Have a nice day.
• Everything is boring
• The chase scenes are so long-winded you forget who and what the characters are running from. There's no historical mystery that you'd bite your own fingers off to solve. It's all about some stupid modern-day plague. The suspense is supposed to be in whether Langdon can stop it. But didn't they already do this in Mission Impossible 2? With better actors? I'll take Tom Cruise over Tom Hanks any day.

If I tried, I could probably come up with a few more things to say. But what's the point?

Go read a good book instead.