Many authors are offering trailers of their books these days. It’s an entertaining way to introduce readers to your story in less than sixty seconds, using just a few key images, select quotations, and music. But how do you do it? There are a couple of ways to go about it. One, pay someone who knows what they’re doing. Two, take a risk and create your own. It’s actually not that difficult.
If you decide to make your own trailer, there’s a techie part and an artistic part. I read a couple of articles (here’s one) that explained how to create slides in Canva Pro, animate them, and add text. Creating the slides is the artistic part. Use your book blurb; you know that little piece you sweated over that went on the back cover? You have to search through tons of images to find the ones that grab you. I was stoked to find images that really portrayed my key characters. I honestly think the gods were with me that day.
Once I had the slides created, I dropped them into I-Movie. After that, all you need is a cinematic soundtrack and you’re off. Be sure to use royalty-free music and not just some song that you really like. Youtube has lots of royalty-free music that can be used commercially. This music is “Claim of Thrones.”
I penciled a storyboard and worked a few hours creating the slides. The hardest part was capturing the theme and key points that really described the story. After that the whole thing magically came together with the soundtrack. Here it is. What do you think?
It might seem unusual to be publishing a memoir in your mid-forties but when you’re an old soul with miles of experiential wisdom to impart, it works beautifully.
This is a genuinely inspirational story of perseverance and resilience. Chris MacDonald is a Toronto tattoo artist who’s come a long way from his rural beginnings in Alliston, Ontario, where he ran wild with his brothers. Along the way, his parents divorced and his mother disappeared from his life. He lived the life of an at-risk kid—cutting school, imbibing, starving, skateboarding, playing punk rock—learning his trade, and building relationships along the way.
“I miss my mom all the time. Maybe if I had closure, things would be different. Unfortunately, I don’t. I only have the things I came here with” (257).
Those things are a creative soul, a solid work ethic, and a talent for music and art. Chris’s writing is lyrical and impressive, flowing from his fingers like the tattoos he respectfully etches on his client’s skin.
“Tattooing is a hulking chimerical beast, startling and beautiful when spotted. It’s a shape-shifter: a cosmic, chrome scorpion; a crude, grey-scale beauty; a Zulueta tribal badge” (240).
This page-turner is divided into three parts: early life in the small town of Alliston, surviving Toronto on his own, and finally, becoming a tattoo artist and getting his own shop. Part One flows like poetry as his memories paint the page. Part Two is tougher as he crawls through the underbelly of the city. And Part Three reads like prose. By then, MacDonald is head-down into the business of becoming an entrepreneur so he can support his new family. His poetic soul never leaves, though; it’s just transferred to his art and music.
Through a series of descriptive vignettes, we wend our way through MacDonald’s life. He’s sensitive, caring, wounded, emotional, and most of all, honest. You’ll find yourself rooting for him and identifying with him. An eighties’ kid, his first crush was a “safari-guide figurine” and then he saw Olivia Newton-John.
If you know Toronto at all, you’ll paint yourself into the many places where MacDonald skates and crashes. Poor and starving, he does what he must to survive.
I can only applaud Chris for his perseverance, and for using the talents he came here with.
You can find Chris at Under My Thumb on the “western edge of Little Portugal” in Toronto. You can even book some time with him, enjoy the therapy being tattooed offers, and emerge wearing one of his creations. Go to Instagram and view his work. But first, read this, his first book.
PD TORONTO, ON – MARCH 11 – – Chris MacDonald, owner/operator of Under My Thumb Tattoos poses for pictures in his shop.__The drawing on the left is his. Vince Talotta/Toronto Star
I came across this article from the Historical Novel Society recently, and just loved it.
In it, Jane Stubbs, presents the case for long skirts, and it has less to do with modesty than it does with toilet habits. My favourite quote:
It is at this moment that a predominantly female audience, even a virtual one, will ask: Did they wear knickers? It is just not possible to give a definitive yes or no answer to the question. No diarist has obligingly written “I do not wear knickers.” Snippets of information come thick and fast. Someone has seen Queen Victoria’s huge drawers. Others wonder about the open crotch design or a panel at the back which unbuttons. Memories of rural privies abound.
Victorian drawers would be fastened with loops, bows, and buttons. If you were lucky, you might have a drawstring. The practicalities of fishing about among the many petticoats for the release button persuades many that knickers were an optional extra, not a daily essential. The realization that all they had to aim at was a chamber pot or a hole in the ground supports this theory. The obvious way for women to deal with their natural functions under such circumstances is to dispense with knickers. Then they can simply arrange their skirts so as to avoid splashes and preserve their modesty.
Fans and writers of historical fiction will love it. Go for it. Read on.
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