Jane Killick's Blog

New Video – Author Copies Arrive!

I’ve been preparing to put together some YouTube videos for a while – and, at last, here it is. I had great fun putting it together. I hope you enjoy it too and, like me, will be looking forward to more. Click through to view https://youtu.be/fowvvnqaWY8

 

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Terraforming Mars novel wins top award

I won the judges award at the UK Games Expo for my novel, In the Shadow of Deimos, as inspired by the Terraforming Mars game.

They decided not to put my name on the actual award though. I guess you can’t have everything.

Thanks for everyone who’s bought, read, reviewed, enjoyed the book. The follow up is due later this year.

 

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Signing at UK Games Expo

If you’re at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham this Friday, 3rd June 2022, why not come and say hi?

I”ll be signing copies of my Terraforming Mars novel at the Aconyte Books stall from 12-3pm.

I’ve bought myself a new set of pens for the occasion and everything!

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Terraforming Mars Interview

In this interview with Aconyte Books, I talk about the inspiration, the fun and the challenges of writing the first Terraforming Mars book. Click through for video.

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Heading to Mars!

It’s nearly here! My new novel!

This is a new venture with a new-to-me publisher, Aconyte Books, so I’m excited to be involved.

I’m hoping this will be a part of a series, but for now it’s a stand-alone novel, so no need to wait to join a cast of  characters hoping to change the Red Planet into somewhere humans can live – with all the difficulties and dangers that involves.

Ebook: Released 3rd August 2021 – available for pre-order

Amazon | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | Google Play | Thalia

Paperback: US released 21st September; UK released 14th October 2021 – available for pre-order

Amazon | B&N | Blackwells | Bookshop

Full Details

When rival corporations compete to transform Mars into a planet where humans can survive, a terraforming disaster sparks an investigation which reveals a deadly conspiracy.

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Freelancer Trilogy Now on Audio

This year, I made my first dive into audio and am pleased to announce that the whole Freelancer Trilogy is now available to listen to at Audible and iTunes. You can listen to some samples on the audiobooks page.

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The Birth of the Freelancer Series

I love space adventures. For as long as I can remember, I devoured books, TV shows and films set in space. Some of them were brilliant, some of them were awful, but all set my imagination racing at the amazing possibilities for stories where characters were tested to the limit like no other genre. It was only a matter of time before I wrote some novels set in space. Only, I didn't expect to do it now.

I was in a place where I had stopped writing after a very stressful house refurbishment (top tip: if you want to write novels, don't have major work done to your house!) when an old writing friend emailed me. She was putting together a group of authors to write some space adventures and wanted me to be involved, if I was interested.

The first Freelancer novel: Traitor's Code

Well, even though I had other books I had planned to write, the discipline of deadlines and being accountable to the group was attractive. I decided that if I could come up with a story I was excited about, I would accept. So I sat down with my pad and pen and, within a couple of hours, I had a plot that I really wanted to flesh out into a novel and two further story ideas to turn it into a trilogy. I said yes, and immersed myself into a compelling world of spaceships, interstellar murder and intrigue.

In creating the exciting story of Cassy, the sassy spaceship captain, I had several parameters to work from:

 

The galaxy is sealed off from the rest of the universe by an impenetrable barrier, but travelling vast distances within the galaxy (the “Obsidian Rim”) is possible using wormhole technology.
Life is harsh, with the centre of the galaxy destroyed by the Oblivion War and few Earth-like planets remaining.
No aliens.
Includes a love story.

Tucked away in my ideas box had been an idea of a space-faring news reporter who ends up going on the run with the prince of a planetary regime. It was just a germ of an idea, but I pulled it out and shaped it for this new project. The journalist character didn't really fit into this world and so I needed something for my space heroine to do. Other authors had taken pirates and scavengers, so I went for a spaceship captain for hire – a Freelancer.

The idea of the prince remained, as this added a touch of romance to the story, and suggested a semi-feudal society for their home planet of Fertilla where I devised an economy based on agriculture. Cassy, my spaceship captain, and Prince Stephen are from opposite ends of the planet's society and so, when circumstances throw them together, they clash. This leads to a will they/won't they? dance where they are pushed together and pulled apart throughout the series. I love this sort of sexual tension and spent a lot of my thinking time re-watching the excellent Farscape TV show. This was the feeling I was going for: exciting space adventure stories with a compelling relationship at the centre, as with Farscape's Crichton and Aaron.

As I expanded the idea, I spun a series of twists within the story. Each novel had a core problem to be solved (a murder, a spying mission, an assassination), while the secrets of my characters' past was revealed, along with one over-arching storyline which only comes to a head in the climax of the last book.

The second Freelancer novel: Prince's Mission

There was one thing about the background I had been given that I wanted to tackle head on. It was the impenetrable barrier at the edge of the galaxy. To me, this was an obvious plot point and I couldn't believe none of the other authors were addressing it. It's the Chekhov's Gun principle: if a loaded gun is seen on stage in the first act of a play, it must be fired before the final curtain. As far as I was concerned, the impenetrable barrier was a loaded gun and, if no one else was going to fire it, I was going to make sure that I did.

The third Freelancer novel: Assassin

My characters would tackle this seemingly impossible challenge in the third novel, Assassin. 

(When I came to delve into the science behind this barrier, I found there was rather a lot of handwavium involved, but it was embedded into the story and so I went with it).

I wrote the first book, Traitor's Code in a burst of creativity and long weekends. The other two took a little longer, but I completed the trilogy before the end of the year and was thrilled with what I had achieved.

By this time, however, the authors group was splintering. Several authors didn't finish the novels they promised and the whole thing collapsed. I still, however, had a trilogy of three great books with an overarching story I was proud of. Apart from the premise of a confined galaxy and a few names for things, planets and people which I had taken from the group, my books really had no connection to the other novels. The Freelancer Trilogy is a self-contained space adventure with a relationship at its heart and deserved to live on its own merit.

So, with the blessing of the group, I re-launched the books with striking new covers. The old covers were fine, but I didn't love them and they had the Obsidian Rim branding on them which, I think, was putting readers off. Now they stand on their own for everyone to enjoy in their own right.

If you're intrigued and want to know more: read more about these books on the Freelancer Trilogy page.

Above: images from the original covers with the Obsidian Rim branding removed

Below: the new covers

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Newsletter Page Returns

Following the re-design of my website, my newsletter page is now back! Go to janekillick.com/newsletter to sign up for monthly updates from me, including details of new releases, special offers and other cool stuff!

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If you're in the habit of popping by janekillick.com every so often, you may have realised the website has a new look.

Like many things in life, this was not the plan! This spring, I volunteered to help out the fan club for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by re-designing their website, zz9.org. It turned out to be a much larger job than I had envisioned (which is a whole ‘nother story), but along the way I found a bit more about websites. Keen to do more with what I learned, I came back to my own site and gave it a freshen up.

As I write this, I'm still tinkering, but I hope it's a real improvement on what was here before.

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The raw photo that became the cover for Mind Control







I knew that getting the right covers for the Perceivers series was going to be tough. The usual method is to find a picture from a stock photo site and manipulate to become part of a great cover. But not only doesn’t this give you an exclusive image (as in the many, many ‘woman with bird cage' covers), you may find it difficult to find the image you want.

Michael starts off his adventures with the perceivers aged 15 and, although he reaches 20 by the fourth book, Mind Power, I still wanted a younger person on the cover. But when I looked through the stock photo sites, there were very few young men to chose from. I did find one or two, but when I looked for more pictures of the same model, the other images weren't going to work — mostly, they were smiling which wasn't at all the mood I was after. I spoke to my cover designer and she agreed that images for this age group are very difficult to come by.











The finished cover for Mind Control











Getting my own photos



Then I read a blog post by someone who had had her own photos done for her book covers because she wanted someone of a certain ethnic background (I wish I could find this blog post, but I can’t. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I’ll post a link). This seemed to be my solution. I could get the sort of images I wanted and I could have the same models on all the covers so they looked like a series.

I put an advert on Models Mayhem, offered to pay a small fee to the models plus give them a photo from the shoot which they could use in their portfolio. I wasn’t too prescriptive as to the look of the models as I was never going to get someone who exactly matches the images I have of Michael and Pauline (introduced in Mind Control) in my head. I also decided to go for slightly older models. Firstly, because the rules around working with children present their own challenges, secondly because there are very few teenagers on these model sitess, and thirdly, because a lot of young adult movies (eg, The Hunger Games) actually have people in their twenties playing the parts.















This is the image Emily chose for her portfolio







Of the people who answered the advert, Nick was the best match for a Michael and was very keen. In fact, he had to travel down from Manchester for the shoot and I was sure the train fare was going to pretty much wipe out his whole fee. I asked if he was sure if he was happy to travel so far, and he said he was. The woman I initially chose was a bit nervous at the prospect of nudity, despite my assurances that I wanted her to keep her clothes on! When she stopped answering my emails, I decided I better look for someone else. Fortunately, due to a cock up on my part in not cancelling my ad on Models Mayhem, I had a late application from a dancer called Emily. She immediately agreed to do the shoot, and I had my ‘Michael’ and ‘Pauline’.











This is the image Nick chose for his portfolio











The photoshoot



My photographer was already lined up. I’d chosen someone with a great portfolio on her website, a list of prices upfront and a talent for working with people who were not necessarily experienced models. Charly Woodhouse has her own studio in Southampton (England) and is great.

On the day of the shoot, everyone else got there before me and the models were already in makeup. The first question that stumped me was what sort of makeup I wanted. Not being a makeup person, I just said to emphasise the eyes, as the books are all about telepathy. This involved my cover designer “photoshopping out” some of the eyeliner which the makeup artist put on Nick. Entirely my fault!

The other thing I hadn’t thought too much about was costume. What a character is wearing on a cover can really help evoke a feeling. I just said for them to bring tops and trousers which were plain without any branding and stuff on them. Apparently, such items of clothing are rare in the wardrobes of people in their early twenties.

What I had thought much more about is the sort of poses I wanted from the shoot. I had written down lots of ideas, some of which worked and some of which didn’t. One idea I had was for Nick to put his fingers to his temples like he was focussing his mind, but Charly thought it made it look like he had a headache. Then Nick said he had done some sort of medical photoshoot and had to look like he was in pain and used a similar pose. So that idea was out of the window.

The other unexpected thing was that Nick is a good foot taller than Emily. We got him to take off his shoes and Charly found some high heels for Emily to wear, but Nick still spent a lot of time bending his knees to make himself shorter. If I remember correctly, he’s bending his knees on the cover for Mind Control.



Venturing outside

One of my ideas which was near impossible to achieve in the studio was the pair of them leaning against a wall in an urban setting. This was when we ventured outside and got the shot which became the cover to Mind Power. I had asked Nick to bring a hoodie top to wear, but the item of clothing he'd packed turned out to be an unpleasant shade of salmon pink (sorry, Nick!), so he suggested he wear the coat which he’d worn on the journey down instead. Emily had travelled down in a leather jacket, so I got her to wear that too and we got a great shot.

(Going outside was an impromptu move and the lighting wasn't great, despite — or, possibly, because of — my lack of ability holding up a reflector to bounce light back into the faces of the models. You can see the original raw image is a bit on the dark side (entirely my fault!), but it was easily lightened up in photoshop).

 

I sent the results of the shoot to my cover designer and, between us, we picked the four shots for the covers. As Pauline doesn’t appear in the first book, Mind Secrets has just a shot of Nick on it. I always had an image in my head of Michael timidly crouching down as if on the run, so this was the shot we chose for Mind Secrets. It was a difficult look to achieve because I didn’t explain it that well and the photographer couldn’t really get high enough for the shot. She wasn’t too keen on it because she thought it lacked depth of field, but the designer did a great job and I think it works well.

Definitely worth it

In the end, because I went with older models, I probably didn’t need to go to the trouble of doing the photoshoot. But I’m glad I did. It made sure the people on the covers are the same for the whole series. If I’d gone the stock photo route, that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened. In the end, I got some brilliant covers and, like a crazy person, I’m doing another photoshoot for my next and upcoming series.

Links

Photographer: Charly Woodhouse

Cover Designer: Karri Klawiter

Male Model: Nicholas Harley Naismith

Female Model: Emily Colclough

The photo taken against a wall outside the photographer's studio











The raw photo transformed into the final cover

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