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Name: Peggy Ann Craig

Fiction or nonfiction? Fiction

What genres do you write? Historical romance, westerns

Are you published? Yes, self-published.

Do you do anything in addition to writing?

Farm.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am the fifth child in a family of six. I have 3 beautiful children.  I love photography and spend a lot of time behind my camera.  I have a serious pygmy goat addiction.  I love the great outdoors, the country, hiking in the woods, the Rocky Mountains, my dogs, and Dr. Pepper.  I hate the city and avoid it at all cost.  I'm a recluse but have no qualms with that.

What are you reading right now?

I've got lots of books on the go but the two I'm trying to plow through at the moment (not that they are hard reads because they are very good, just long) is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and Mountain Wild by Judith Bronte.

Which authors influenced you the most?

I can't really say any one author influenced me.  Stories are what influences me.  Especially a well written one.  A lot of heart and emotion in a story goes a long way for me.

Where can people connect with you?

My Blogs

http://peggyanncraig.blogspot.ca/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/peggyanncraig

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/peggyanncraig

Goodreads 

https://www.goodreads.com/peggyanncraig

Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/shutterpeg/

Website 

http://peggyanncraig.com/

Do you have a newsletter?

No. But sure would love to figure out how to set one up.
(Updated:  I now have a newsletter!)

Is there anything else you’d like us to know?

I've been absent from the writing community for almost ten years now and the one I have returned to has changed so much that I feel lost but am trying to catch up.   

Book Covers

I'm horribly neglectful of this blog.  I don't mean to but I sincerely don't have anything to blog about.  However, I do now!  And it's all about book covers!

I finally comissioned a new cover for On the Mountain.  This was the old cover, and even though it is nice, it reminded me too much of a brochure.

And no fear, I can criticize the above cover all I want as I am the artist--or photographer.  Both images (photoshoppped) are mine.  But I wanted something flashy, eye-catching.  However, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted.  I know what I DIDN'T want and that was a shirtless cowboy, or a couple in a romantic embrace.  Mainly a shirtless cowboy did not represent the feel of the story and a couple embracing would have been difficult as my heroine is disguised as a teenage boy for most of the book so didn't want it to represent the wrong theme.  I found a great website that had some really artistic looking covers and commissioned them to do one for On the Mountain.  I sincerely was expecting something to come back with a cowboy only on the cover but was so shocked that they had managed to put the heroine on it instead.  Here it is:

I admit I wasn't sure what to think of it at first.  It was so anti-western.  But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that's what I loved about it.  It didn't box my story into one genre.  It was universal and modern.  Though the story is very much a western, I felt at least it will get those who aren't generally western fans to click on the book and read the blurb.  I would at least get them past the cover.  Hopefully, I may even be able to snag a few new readers.

On Thursday, September 18, 2014, my second book, The Color of Ivy, is being released.  I did not have the book cover commissioned for this ebook.  It is again, one of my own work, and it particularly catches the theme of the story brilliantly, not to mention the heroine.  So, for now, it is staying.  (Be sure to pick up a promotional free copy of The Color of Ivy on Sept. 18 & 19 thru Amazon by clicking here.)

With the release of The Color of Ivy, I wanted to make sure that my follow-up book, Princess and the Ox, would be available for pre-order for any readers wanting to buy any more of my books.  I am in the process of editing but went ahead and commissioned a cover.  This time around, I chose a more traditional cover.  Unlike the other two books, there isn't a dark theme or mystery involved.  It is a more light-hearted romance of two people falling in love.  So I chose the usual romantic clinch and am very pleased with it.  It depicts the theme of the story perfectly and look an awful lot like the characters I imagined.  

It will be interesting to watch which bookcover will govern the most interest or sales.