By
Claire Gem (Guest Blogger)
What
is a book trailer?
That’s
the question I’m asked when I tell people I’m working on the
trailer for my next book. Yes, we novelists borrowed the idea from
the movie industry. Like an aperitif before an elegant meal, a
trailer whets the appetite of our readers. It also gives the author
an opportunity to introduce our readers, visually, to the world in
which our book is set (for me it’s usually an old, haunted place)
and to our characters.
I
mean, I can see them in my head. I’d like for my readers to
have an idea what they look like as well. This isn’t always as easy
as it sounds.
My
book trailers are created on iMovie, which is a wonderful tool (if
you are a Mac user). I use photographs rather than video clips,
adding text either directly on the photos or on black screens in
between. The entire experience can’t be longer than a minute and a
half, or you lose your audience’s attention. Who would think that
putting together a 1.5-minute video could take dozens of hours?
Yet,
it does. First, I have to figure out how to condense my entire book
down into about 25 or 30 words. Yup, it’s even more difficult than
the dreaded back cover blurb, which should run about 175 words.
Photos help. Finding them is the greatest challenge.
I
will admit, I usually go searching for photos of my hero and heroine
before I even write the book. That makes them real in my head, and I
keep those pics on my desktop. They are constantly there, reminding
me to get to work on my manuscript.
We
have a story to tell, damn it! Get busy! You are our only voice.
Where
do I find them? I start on royalty-free sites like Pixabay, because
of course any photos I use for the trailer or cover have to be
royalty-free. If I can’t find them there, my next go-to site is
123rf.com because they have small, affordable packages. If my
characters aren’t there either, Depositphotos is next, but they are
markedly more expensive.
Once
I have my characters, and the book is written, it’s time to find
trailer pictures. I try to pick the highlights of the story—those
intense and conflicted moments that reflect the themes. On the paid
photo sites I can often find multiple shots of the same people—my
characters—in different situations, which helps. Sometimes I have
to settle for distant, blurred, or silhouette views which tie in with
the photos I have.
For
my latest release, ELECTRICITY, I actually took many of the
photographs of the old mental asylum myself. I work on a campus of
what used to be a state mental hospital, and although most of the
buildings have either been renovated or razed, one remains. Hulking,
ominous, and crumbling, it sits on the highest point of the grounds,
abandoned. I managed to persuade the facilities manager to take me
through the condemned building a few years ago, when I told him I
intended to write a book about it. The photos that appear in the book
trailer are very real, taken with my own camera.
Then,
the music—one of the most important parts of a book trailer—also
has to either be royalty-free, or you have to pay for the rights to
use the piece. For ELECTRICITY, I was lucky enough to have a friend,
Christopher Caouette, who
composes epic and fantasy music. I asked him if he had any pieces
that might be suitable for this trailer, and he suggested “From The
Peaks,” which is perfect. He sold me the rights to use it for this
trailer for a song. No pun intended.
So
now that you know how difficult and time-consuming it is to create a
book trailer, I invite you to enjoy the fruits of my labor –
ELECTRICITY: A Haunted Voices Novel.
Blurb
She’s
an electrician starting over with her son. New job. New town. New
life.
He’s
a coworker who’s interested in more than her ability to run
conduit.
The
building they’re rewiring was once an insane asylum. It seems some
of the patients never left.
Mercedes
Donohue pulled up roots in Atlanta when her marriage imploded. She’s
come back to New England, to the place where she was born. Mercy’s
focus is to stabilize her teenage son’s life—he took the breakup
pretty hard—and to establish her place, gain the respect of
Progressive Electrical’s team.
She
never expected so many sparks to fly so soon, both on the job and
after hours.
Daniel
Gallagher has been alone since his fiancé’s death. He’ll never
feel that way about any woman again, and certainly won’t try with
another independent, strong-willed one. Then Mercy short-circuits his
plans.
Although
the asylum closed its doors over thirty-five years ago, they discover
quickly that the place is haunted.
If
you like a heart-melting romance laced with healthy dose of
supernatural thrills and chills, you’ll love Electricity.
Excerpt
Excerpt
Mercy
reached around for her purse, tucked behind her seat, the one she
never carried to work. No phone.
Damn
it, she thought. I’ve left it at the job.
Not
that it was a big deal. The campus was only a mile away, and she knew
security was on duty all night. All she had to do was stop in at
their make-shift office in the little brown house, ask access
permission to the Gravely Hall and find her phone. No big deal at
all.
It
was almost dark by the time she pulled up to the Campus Police
building. The sleepy-looking young officer who accompanied her back
out into the parking lot seemed almost grateful for the distraction.
He tailed her car in his cruiser to Gravely Hall. Mercy followed him
up onto the mildewed steps as he used a key from a huge metal ring to
open the padlock.
“Do
you have a flashlight, Miss?” The young patrolman stepped aside as
the door opened, seeming reluctant to accompany Mercy into the old
building. The long shadows of evening had already stamped the
interior into dense gloom.
“Yeah,
no problem,” she grinned at the greenhorn cop. “I’ll be back in
just a minute.”
The
musty smell and odd air quality seemed amplified in the growing
darkness. Mercy strode confidently toward the broad staircase at the
end of the great hall and snapped on the flashlight she always kept
hooked to a loop on her overalls. She must have left her phone in the
small anteroom, she thought. She must have laid it down after Reagan
called her earlier that afternoon and failed to pick it up when she
was packing up her tools.
Access
to the lower level was at the far end of the great central room, and
some pale light still slithered in through the greenish glass panes
of the windows near the head of the stairs. As she descended the
creaking boards, a smothering calm increasingly muffled all sound.
Mercy felt an instinctive impulse to reach for a light switch, but of
course, there was none, at least none in working order.
In
the waning glow of daylight seeping in through the high basement
windows, she could make out the shapes of the porcelain tubs,
standing in a sentinel row. A damp shiver ran up and down her back.
Mercy straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat.
I’ll
just go directly into the anteroom where I’d been working, she
thought, and retrieve my phone. Then I’m outta here.
She’d
gotten to the open doorway of the small space when she heard the
sound. A water sound, almost like waves lapping at the edge of a
pool. Or on the sides of a bathtub: that soft sound of liquid kissing
its solid prison walls. The tubs along the back wall weren’t even
connected to a water source anymore. They’d been dry and littered
with small chunks of dusty debris when she and Daniel worked around
them earlier today. Some still wore their mildewed, leather
coverings.
Mercy
hurried directly toward the room she’d last worked in, her light
flashing wildly through the mostly empty space. She aimed the beam
into the gaping hole of the toilet, but it was as dry as it had been
earlier in the day. Struggling to ignore the increasingly loud
sloshing sound, reverberating now louder and louder all around her,
she located the black wedge of her cell phone. It was lying abandoned
on the concrete windowsill. She snatched it up, clutching it tight to
her chest. The hard-plastic case felt reassuring in her grasp.
As
she crossed the central room, the water sound echoed in the space
around her, seeming to get louder with every step. Her heart hammered
in her chest, and she quickened her pace. Almost there.
Mercy.
Resonating
above the sloshing sounds, she could swear she’d heard her name.
Mercy jolted to a stop and spun around. The sound had come from
behind her, it seemed. Or had she imagined it?
It
must be the security officer. He must be calling from the head of the
stairs.
“Hello?”
Mercy called out. Her voice reverberated so loudly it startled her.
“I’ll be right up,” she called again, and flashed her light
beam in a path straight toward the stairs.
Mercy!
The
voice came again, louder now. Wheezing and feeble, it sounded like
that of a very old man, or a very sick one. Had one of the homeless
sought refuge here for the night? A jumble of thoughts tumbled
through Mercy’s mind, panic obliterating the logical portion.
How
would anyone even know her name?
A
veil of clammy perspiration blanketed every inch of her skin. Dank
basement air threatened to seep right through her. Clutching her
phone to her chest, she jabbed the flashlight beam wildly with her
other hand, back and forth across the wide expanse of the room. The
ray glanced off the white porcelain shapes, transforming them into
hulking ghosts standing in ominous formation.
“Who’s
there?” she shrieked. Her voice echoed and bounced back to her in
empty coldness.
Mercy…
This
third time the voice was faint, fading, melting into the mysterious
water sounds which ebbed like the receding of an ocean wave. Silence
ballooned around her, black and deafening, enveloping all sound
except for the wild pounding of her pulse in her ears. Mercy fought
the panic rising into her throat and broke into a full run toward the
steps. To the exit, where the officer was waiting for her. Toward
safety.
About
the Author
Claire
writes contemporary romance with supernatural elements—love stories
set in old, haunted places. She is the author of the Haunted Voices
series, which are standalone paranormal romances linked by genre
only. They can be read in any order. Her books have been recognized
by competitions such as the N.Y. Book Festival, the Holt Medallion
Awards, the RONE, and the National Fiction Awards. Her latest
release, ELECTRICITY,
takes place in an abandoned mental asylum.
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