YA Indie Carnival!

Welcome to Amy Jones Young Adult Fantasy Fiction and the twenty - second post in the YA Indie Carnival. The carnival is designed for authors, readers and reviewers of YA Indie books. Each Friday this team of YA Indies will post on a common theme.

This week’s post theme is Cover Love! You can't always judge a book by it's cover... or can you?

Some of my favorite book covers frame the novels of my favorite author. Is this a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not...

Cassandra Clare's writing emerses you in a magical world that feels very realistic. The voices of her characters sound like people you know or might run into in everyday life yet the circumstances they find themselves in are far from reality. I especially love how the Shadowhunters (human bloodlines mixed with Angel's blood), in both the Mortal Instrument and Infernal Devices series, are able to 'see' things that the mundanes (ordinary humans) can not.

So, why all of the detail regarding Ms. Clare's writing in a post designated for the appreciation of book covers, you wonder?  The 'feel' you get when you look at Ms. Clare's covers begin to tell the story before you read the first page. An effective cover can do this. This is what we all attempt to achieve as authors. Some of us are more successful than others. Some of us have a larger budget and can afford a designer or artist to create something spectacular. Writers of the big six definately have this advantage over indies, but I must say that I have been very impressed with some of our indies covers too. 

First, I simply love Courtney Cole's artwork for the Bloodstone Saga! The cover art immediately takes you to another land and time and introduces you to a character that is both beautiful and dramatic in appearance. I'm in the middle of reading the first book in this series and I can tell you that I am not disappointed. Ms. Cole chose an especially effective cover to promote her writing adventure.

Another indie cover I admire is Mortal Obligation by Nichole Chase. I have yet to read Ms. Chase's work but it is on my TBR list.  I love the cover scheme selected. Her main character appears strong and alert yet somehow still vulnerable at the same time.  I also like the way the darkness of the silouhetted graveyard shadows the border of the cover. It gives the feeling the darkness is lurking close by and I am sure that is exactly the predicament this MC finds herself in. I also liked the contrast of the MC's eye color. The blue of her eyes really pops out against the bronzy background. It's just beautiful!

Last, but not least, I really love Fisher Amelie's cover, Callum and Harper. It gives you the same surreal feeling as the cover art for the Mortal Instruments series.  Ms. Amelie has slated this YA novel as a thriller and this cover implies thrills galore! 

Well, that's my two cents. Make sure you make rounds to the rest of the carni stops in the carnival!

1.	Laura A. H. Elliott author of Winnemucca & 13 on Halloween, Book 1 in the Teen Halloween Series	2.	Bryna Butler, author Midnight Guardian series
3.	Heather Self	4.	T. R. Graves, Author of The Warrior Series
5.	Suzy Turner, author of The Raven Saga	6.	Darby Karchut, author of GRIFFIN RISING
7.	Lexus Luke	8.	PJ Hoover, Author of SOLSTICE, Blogging at ROOTS IN MYTH
9.	Cheri Schmidt, author of the Fateful Trilogy	10.	Rachel Coles, author of Into The Ruins, geek mom blog
11.	K. C. Blake, author of Vampires Rule and Crushed	12.	Patti Larsen, The Hunted series and The Hayle Coven series
13.	Courtney Cole, author of The Bloodstone Saga	14.	Amy Maurer Jones, Author of The Soul Quest Trilogy
15.	Dani Snell's Refracted Light Reviews	16.	Fisher Amelie, author of The Understorey
17.	M. Leighton, Blood Like Poison Series, Madly, The Reaping	18.	Abbi Glines, author of Breathe and The Vincent Boys
19.	Kimberly Kinrade, Bits of You & Pieces of Me, Forbidden Mind	20.	Madeline Smoot, Missing, Summer Shorts, and The Girls
21.	Cidney Swanson, author of Rippler	22.	Nicole Williams, author of Eternal Eden, Falling Eden
23.	Gwenn Wright, author of Filter	24.	TG Ayer
25.	Melissa Pearl, author of Golden Blood

Coming December 16! You let us know why you've been naughty or nice and enter to win books at each carni's booth all week, from 12/16 to 12/23. On Dec. 23, find out what books you've won!

'Tis the Season of the Squeee!

In honor of our Cover Love theme, Bryna Butler unveils the cover art for Midnight Child, book 3 in my Midnight Guardian series which releases in Feb!

In preparation for December’s release of Guardians of the Cross, author T. R. Graves is sending out a coupon which will allow the most-recent edition Warriors of the Cross Click here to downloaded for FREE. Enter coupon LY87N good through 12/20/11. Guardians of the Cross will be released 12/24!

Callum & Harper by Fisher Amelie Releases December 24th! Join her blog tour NOW!

Friend of the Carnival Tiffany King's Blog tour for book 3 in The Saving Angels series on NOW!

Check out the new trailer for The Midnight Guardian series by Bryna Butler!

Melissa Pearl, YA author of Golden Blood has just started a new blog called YAlicious. It's a blog to celebrate YA fiction and aimed at teens and readers of YA. Swing on by and check it out!

Books I and II in The Raven Saga (Raven & December Moon) by Suzy Turner, are now available in paperback! Get your copy from Amazon now.


The Valkyrie Novels, a series of 3 novels- Dead Radiance, Dead Embers and Dead Chaos, by T.G. Ayer will be published in 2012 by the amazing team at Evolved Publishing. See T.G. Ayer's announcement here!