Portrait of a Girl Adrift: Cover Progress

I've been working on the cover for Portrait of a Girl Adrift … it's been quite a process. In case any of my readers have suspected, yes, I am the model for the 'girl' on the covers, not because I necessarily resemble Leila—I mean, I am fifty six, after all—but I publish my novels on a scant budget, and what can I say … I'm cheap and available! And it's not difficult to trim off twenty-five pounds and smooth wrinkles with graphics software.

Nevertheless, I had intended a different pose for this cover—Leila sitting cross legged, 'Indian style' as we used to say (but that's probably no longer politically correct—the term, not the position). At any rate, Todd set up the camera, adjusted the flood light and flipped on the fan for billowing the linen shirt. But when I tried to assume the position, well, there was simply no way! I don't know when it happened, when my body decided to be so inflexible, but I was going to have to reconsider the composition for the cover. The image proportions are a bit different from the covers for Girl Running and Protégé, but Adrift still has the same feel.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to post the progression of the painting (and no, I will not share the photo I worked from—don't need that circulating around the internet!).

... And here is the finished cover:

I'm happy with the result, and now I can post it where it needs to be, places like Amazon (it may take a few days for the image to show up) and Goodreads. I also want to remind any of my readers that the Kindle version of Portrait of a Girl Adrift is available for pre-order on Amazon—to be released on December 6th. And if anyone would like an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for a review on Amazon or Goodreads (preferably both), just let me know. Also, if you've read Portrait of a Girl Running or Portraitof a Protégé, consider leaving reviews for those—it helps their discoverability.

Meanwhile, it's back to editing…

Portrait of a Protégé, sequel to Portrait of a Girl Running, Now Available!

I hadn’t intended to publish Portrait of a Protégé so soon after its prequel, Portrait of a Girl Running, but I ended up working on the publication process for both books simultaneously. Now that Girl Running is available, it seems prudent to have its sequel published and ready to read while the first story is fresh in the reader’s mind. And yeah, I just want these stories done so I can finally focus on other things.

While Portrait of a Girl Running has a Young Adult feel, Portrait of a Protégé can be properly classified as New Adult, since the main character, Leila, is twenty-two and finding her way in the adult world. Here’s the description from the back cover:

Four years after the close of Portrait of a Girl Running, Leila is twenty-two and living on a pretty little lake in New Hampshire. A new set of circumstances throws her into a repeating cycle of grief that twists and morphs into unexpected and powerful emotions. Leila must finally confront her fears and learn to let go while navigating the field of cutting-edge psychology, protecting herself from the capricious winds of Southern hospitality, playing in the backyard of big-money art, and taming her unruly heart. Even her ‘guardian’ has a thing or two he must learn about love and letting go.

Portrait of a Protégé focuses a lot on the question of how we define love, and when it comes to romantic love, where do we set our boundaries? Yes, I push a few boundaries in this story. While I’m not opposed to stirring ambivalence, I just hope my readers find it entertaining and maybe a little thought provoking.

If anyone would like a review copy, just e-mail me (bridget at jbchicoine dot com) and let me know which format you prefer.

Here’s where Portrait of a Protégé is available so far: Amazon (trade paperback); Kindle; Smashwords (all other eReader devices)

Portrait of a Girl Running, Now Available

Well, I didn’t expect to get Portrait of a Girl Running up and out for another few days, but Amazon tells me it is now available … so, I may as well share that news! It has been a long time in coming—’tis probably my favorite, perhaps based solely on it being with me for so long. And yeah, the protagonist is a young artist, so naturally, there is a bit more of ‘me’ in this novel—the artist, not the ‘young,’ hehe.

It's sort of a Young Adult, coming-of-age story but fits just as well in the Adult Fiction category with some romance.  Just to whet your appetite, here’s what it’s about:

All Leila wants is to get through her senior year at her new high school without drawing undue attention. Not that she has any big secret to protect, but her unconventional upbringing has made her very private. At seventeen, she realizes just how odd it was that two men raised her—one black, one white—and no mother. Not to mention they were blues musicians, always on the move. When her father died, he left her with a fear of foster care and a plan that would help her fall between the cracks of the system. Three teachers make that impossible—the handsome track coach, her math teacher from hell, and a jealous gym instructor. Compromising situations, accusations of misconduct, and judicial hearings put Leila’s autonomy and even her dignity at risk, unless she learns to trust an unlikely ally.

If anyone would like a review copy , just e-mail me (bridget at jbchicoine dot com) and let me know which format you prefer.

So, here’s where it’s at so far: Amazon (trade paperback); Kindle; Smashwords (all other eReader devices)

As it becomes available on iTunes and other avenues, I will keep you posted.

Oh, and Portrait of a Protégé should be 'up and out' within a couple of weeks.

UNCHARTED: Story for a Shipwright—Second Edition!

This is a case of ‘I have good news, and I have bad news….’ The bad, well, rather sad news is that my publisher of Uncharted, Rhemalda Publishing, has closed its doors due to some unforeseen events in the lives of those who ran the operation. Sad indeed, as they were a fine publisher to work with, and I hate to see any small press shut down—especially one who spent so much time and energy on my debut novel. The good news—as I choose to view it—is that I have received the ‘reversioning’ rights to Uncharted. This means I will be publishing Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright as a second edition under my own self-publishing entity, Straw Hill Publishing. In fact, I have already done so!

One of the consistent pieces of feedback I have received on Uncharted is that the ending is too abrupt; consequently, I have extended the final page—a bit more of a dénouement. Additionally, I have added an epilogue, a small bit about ‘The Island,’ and a Reader’s Guide. And yeah, the cover is slightly different. I doubt anyone will notice unless I point it out, but the ship Marlena is gazing upon now sits in the Atlantic Ocean where the shipwrecks of the story take place, rather than in the middle of Asia. Okay, yeah, I’m a tad OCD. And I added the subtitle, Story for a Shipwright, to the cover.

The new and revised version of Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright is now available as a trade paperback from Amazon, for your Kindle, and in various eBook formats via Smashwords.

I am also doing a giveaway on Goodreads, so if you'd like to enter to win a copy, head on over!

So that’s my immediate news. Within a week, I should be releasing Portrait of a Girl Running, and soon thereafter, Portrait of a Protégé!

Spilled Coffee Launched!

I was going to wait and post this until after all the formats are available (specifically ePub), but since word is already out (yes, I 'spilled' the beans* on Facebook), I might as well officially launch Spilled Coffee, my latest work.

I love this story. It’s a little ‘darker’ than Uncharted, in as much as it deals with more adult issues, although they are tempered through the eyes of a nearly fourteen-year-old boy, Benjamin, back in 1969—a more innocent, dare I say naïve time for someone not old enough to comprehend all the complexities of the social revolution taking place around him. Like Uncharted, I wrote Spilled Coffee in the male, first person point of view. Here’s the description from the back cover:

Benjamin Hughes is on a mission. He has just bought back the New Hampshire lake cottage his family lost eighteen summers ago, in 1969, just before he turned fourteen—just before his life blew apart.

Still reeling from a broken engagement, Ben has committed himself to relive that momentous summer for the next twenty-four hours.

Every summer as a boy, Ben has gawked at the pretty redhead Amelia, granddaughter to the richest man on the lake, Doc Burns—owner of a Cessna floatplane and the Whispering Narrows estate. During the summer of ’69, Ben not only sneaks around with Amelia, but he learns how to fly with Doc, and meets an eclectic cast of characters that will change him forever. The best summer of Ben’s life turns out to be the worst as the Burns’ family dysfunction collides with his own family’s skeletons.

Here’s where you can purchase a copy, in either trade paperback, or for your Kindle. It will soon be available for your iPad through Smashwords, but remember, there’s a Kindle app for that! If anyone is interested in a Review Copy, in either eBook, PDF, or paperback version, please e-mail me via:  bridget at jbchicoine dot com. If you like it well enough to leave a review, that would be groovy. You can also find it on Goodreads.

*yes, that would be coffee beans!

Coming of Age

When I search for Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright on Google, this is the first result that shows up:

Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright: J. B. Chicoine: 978193685 www.amazon.com › ... › Genre Fiction › Coming of Age

I’m not entirely certain how the algorithms work or how Amazon categorizes novels, but “Coming of Age” really jumps out at me—I hadn’t ever thought of Uncharted as a 'coming of age story', but on second thought, yes, I suppose it is. Perhaps the term has more to do with how loosely it is applied.

Wikipedia says “Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood.” Aspects of Uncharted—specifically, Marlena’s personal accounts—deal directly with her coming of age. But in a broader sense, (if one goes by Merriam Webster—“to reach maturity”) then the definition also fits Samuel, for although he is thirty one years old, he is finally coming to terms with his childhood and now his adulthood—finally maturing as a person.

It seems to me (and this from a meager fifty-two years of experience) that the ‘thirties’ is as much a time of transition and coming of age as is adolescence. Yes, the changes of puberty and reaching physical adulthood are momentous and highly visible, yet I don’t think it’s until one’s thirties that a person begins to grasp who they are and how they came to be. I don’t mean to get overly psychological here, but if the decade or so following adolescence establishes patterns in our behavior and thoughts, congealing into ‘adulthood’, it seems that by our thirties we are confronted with what has either been working for us or inhibiting who we’d like to be. And how did we end up with this person we look at in the mirror? Are our traits genetic, or did we learn them? Can we change the things we don’t like in ourselves? Or are we doomed to struggle with seemingly inherent weaknesses for the rest of our lives? Can we reconcile any of it and find peace with it all? Perhaps it was just me, but my thirties launched me into a great deal of introspection.

It is this introspection that I write about in my novels. I’m fascinated with the concept of ‘Coming of Age.’ Yes, I wrote about it in Uncharted without necessarily analyzing is as such. Now that I’m deep into revising Spilled Coffee, I see that it is the central theme approached from both the adolescent perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy and from his thirty-one year old self as he reflects on his formative years.

Even as I write this piece for my blog, I wonder if midlife could also be classified as another ‘Coming of Age’ episode. By now I am an established adult in my own right, but there is nothing like being in close proximity with aging parents (yes, cohabitating with them) to force another full-blown self-analysis and growth spurt—but that’s a whole ‘nother topic!

Yeah, Shameless Self-Promotion

Well, I guess things are beginning to happen with Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright, even though its official release is still four weeks away. Although the e-Book versions won't be available until October 1st, the beautiful softcover edition is now up on several online retail sites, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (Even better, order it from your local small independent book store!) Uncharted retails for $14.99, but if you'd like a nice discount, head over to Rhemalda Publishing and order it there!

Uncharted is also up on Goodreads and Shelfari—ready for reviews. I have very ambivalent feelings about reviews. I guess most authors do. I've promised myself not to check and see when they come in, and especially not to read them! If they're good—and of course they'll be good, right?—they'll just make me all big-headed, and if they're not good...well, it doesn't take much imagination to know how I'll feel about that.

That said, I have received one review already! It's from the author who has written the blurb for my cover. It is the one review I have printed and will reread whenever I'm tempted to to peek at incoming online reviews! Many of you know how awkward I feel about shameless self-promotion—that necessary discomfort of publishing—but I can't resist sharing this:

“Uncharted tells a story within a story. Readers will be forced to skate along the edge of suspended belief, eagerly turning the pages, hoping it all turns out to be true. A great read that will appeal to armchair sailors, romantics, and real adventurers.”

~Carol Newman Cronin, author of Cape Cod Surprise

Carol continues:

"There aren’t too many books that combine shipwrights, shipwrecks, sailing, Maine, the tropics, Kansas, and peculiarly strong women into a page-turning love story. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever before read anything like Uncharted, J.B. (“call me Bridget”) Chicoine’s debut novel, which will be brought out by Rhemalda Publishing on October 1. Rhemalda’s tag line is “crossing the divide between imagination and reality,” and Uncharted certainly accomplishes that—without ever requiring the truly conscious suspension of belief that would distract from the story.

"I was lucky enough to read an advance copy, and as usual I started off with a slight tinge of dread. What if I had to slog my way through it, and then try to find something positive to say? In the end I was met with a completely different challenge: how to keep my writer’s jealousy at bay while I write the glowing review the book deserves."

To read the rest of Carol Newman Cronin's review (you really must! It's pretty great), head on over to her blog, Where Books Meet Boats.

Oh yeah, and one more thing—I don't really understand what Amazon algorithms are or how they work, but apparently if you tag my book or even at least 'like' it, that boosts Uncharted up alongside popular books and gives it more visibility. So, if you feel like doing it, that'd be great! Here's the Amazon link.