Was able to get in 1728 words during my son's nap. Going to try to squeeze in a few more later tonight. Nice to know that I've at least reached the minimum on day one of my first NaNo.

Thanks, Yeah, I think something more in line with what you did would definitely bring out the subtitle and artwork

I’m glad you found this useful. Again, the fonts are just basic and used to test out readability. The point of this is that if you like this direction, instead of explaining it to your cover artist/layout person and crossing your fingers, you can just say “Here. Play around with this sort of layout. I want the text to be legible when scaled down and I don’t want the center artwork covered up.”

Font notwithstanding, I do like these changes. I wish I knew how to do what you've done. I'd like to play with the text and the size of my author name on my cover.

I highly suggest that when you work with a cover artist/layout designer you request the production file. They’ll probably be working in Photoshop, Illustrator, and/or InDesign. You do this so that you have something in which you can play around with, with all elements (text and art) on their own separate layer. That way, you can move and scale your text easily without worrying about the artwork. To do that you’d just need to learn how to use the text tool and move/transform tools. Adobe actually released Photoshop CS2 for free and it’s still very usable. If you want an up-to-date version, Adobe has the Creative Cloud subscription service where you play a low fee of $19/month for one App or $49/month for the complete suite. So just pay for one month, make your changes and cancel afterwards if you want.

What I did with Mark’s isn’t something you’d do for your finished cover. I literally just went in and painted out the text, and copied some sections around to cover things up. At such a small scale it looks okay, but full-res it’ll look like crap.

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone

Mel - just go for it! At least brainstorm ideas and list scenarios. If you have something you think would be cool, before spending too much time on it, just write down some thoughts on the story in a bulleted list. If you find yourself continually, and easily, adding to that story's list -- if this happens, then that, which leads to this, Oh, that's cool, and then this can happen, etc -- you'll get even more psyched up about it and you'll have some stuff to start playing around with. Most important part is to have fun!

• Brainstorming
• Outline my first novel
• Psyching myself up for NaNoWriMo