Stories and Book Talk

Author: Elly in Nairobi

  • Book Cover Design with Denma Digital Consulting

    Book Cover Design with Denma Digital Consulting

    When authors complete their manuscript edit and are in the process of book formatting for print or eBook sales, they often start thinking about ‘The Book Cover’. Denma Digital Consulting is a creative agency that offers various services, including book cover design.

    Our creative process commences with detailed discussions with the author to grasp their vision, genre, and target readership.

    Denma Digital Consulting

    If you’re looking for a book cover designer, or wondering how to get started on your book cover, read on for insight on how to get your book cover designed.

    What is Denma Digital Consulting?

    Denma Digital Consulting is a full-service Video Editing, Web, and Graphic design agency based in Nairobi, Kenya. We provide a wide range of services including Video editing, Animation, website development, branding, corporate identity, and Creative logo design.

    Our experienced Video editors, designers, and developers work closely with our clients to create unique and effective solutions that help them stand out in their industry. We pride ourselves on understanding our client’s needs and delivering results that exceed their expectations. If you’re looking for a partner to help you create a stunning online presence and build your brand, look no further than Denma Digital Consulting. Contact us today for a free consultation!

    When authors complete their manuscript edit and are in the process of book formatting for print or for eBook sales, they often start thinking about ‘The Book Cover’. What would you tell an author who is looking for a book cover?

    Denma Digital: If you’re considering your book cover, that’s fantastic! Your book cover serves as the face of your book, the initial impression readers encounter. Therefore,

    • My suggestion is to carefully consider the atmosphere you wish to convey.
    • Is your book mysterious, romantic, or thrilling? Select a cover design that resonates with this ambiance and captivates the audience’s attention.
    • Additionally, collaborating with a skilled designer who comprehends your vision is crucial.

    Take your time with this step – a remarkable cover significantly boosts your book’s visibility!

    What do you need from an author to create a book cover?

    Denma Digital: To craft the ideal cover for your book, I’ll need the following details:

    • Provide a brief overview of your book! What’s the story about? This allows me to grasp its essence and tone.
    • Identify your target audience. Are you targeting teenagers, romance enthusiasts, or mystery aficionados? Understanding your readership aids in tailoring a cover that resonates with them.
    • If you have any concepts or visuals in mind for the cover, please share them! It’s beneficial to draw inspiration from your ideas.
    • Lastly, don’t overlook specifying the book title and your name as you wish them to appear on the cover.

    Armed with this information, I can create a visually stunning cover that encapsulates the essence of your book. Let’s collaborate to craft something extraordinary!

    Authors also need to have websites, or social media content and banners for their author brand. How can an author looking for a book cover creator, or a website designer reach you?

    Authors looking for a book cover creator or website designer can connect with us at Denma Digital Consulting through various avenues. They can visit our website, denmadigital.com, to explore our portfolio, learn about our services, and contact us directly via the provided contact form. Alternatively, authors can reach out to us via email at denmadigital.com or give us a call at +254 706085502. We eagerly anticipate inquiries and are excited to help authors bring their creative visions to fruition.

    What is Denma Digital’s Book Cover creative process?

    • Each of these book covers was carefully designed to capture the essence of the stories while also attracting the intended audience.
    • Our creative process commences with detailed discussions with the author to grasp their vision, genre, and target readership.
    • Subsequently, our skilled designers transform these understandings into visually captivating cover designs that aptly communicate the book’s tone and theme.
    • We endeavor to guarantee that each cover not only captures attention but also resonates with readers, ultimately aiding in the success of the author’s work.
  • A Sign of Affection

    A Sign of Affection

    A Sign of Affection

    by Suu Morishita, Translated by Christine Dashiell

    Yuki is a typical college student, whose world revolves around her friends, social media, and the latest sales. But when a chance encounter on a train leads to her meeting friend-of-a-friend and fellow student Itsuomi-san, her world starts to widen. But even though Itsuomi-kun can speak three languages, sign language isn’t one of them. Can the two learn to communicate the budding feelings between them?

    Thoughts

    This manga is quite special. The protagonist, Yuki, is deaf. She has her own world in a world full of sounds she doesn’t hear. So, when she meets someone she wants to know more, there is this gap they both have to bridge in order to better understand each other. The art is so clear cut and I love the progress through each panel. Yuki wants to get to know Itsuomi better, and their journey towards connecting is the cutest thing ever.
    Suu Morishita takes her time to explain the use of sign language, and the differences in sign language styles in Japan. This manga becomes quite special when you understand that Yuki’s language is sign language and it is how she communicates best. A Sign of Affection is engaging, cute, and full of warm feels.

  • The Dragon King’s Imperial Wrath

    The Dragon King’s Imperial Wrath

    The Dragon King’s Imperial Wrath

    Written by Aki Shikimi | Art by Akiko Kawano

    Thirteen clans rule the land, and the Rat Clan is the weakest. Ruiying, the princess of the Rat Clan, is summoned to the land of the dominating Dragon Clan along with princesses from the other clans. The Dragon King seeks a bride, and they are all candidates! Yet instead of vying for the Dragon King’s favor, Ruiying takes refuge in the palace’s enormous library–a place she can read to her heart’s content. It’s there that the Dragon King discovers her by chance, sparking an immediate connection that will change Ruiying’s life forever!

    Thoughts:

    The artwork is so beautifully done, I love it. I enjoyed the world-building in this volume. And Princess Ruiying is a great protagonist. This reads like a cute, fast romance story, that is not asking too much from the reader. The series is a fast read, I loved how easy going I felt reading it.

  • Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega

    Frizzy by Claribel A. Ortega

    Frizzy

    by Claribel A. Ortega

    A middle grade graphic novel about Marlene, a young girl who stops straightening her hair and embraces her natural curls.

    Marlene loves three things: books, her cool Tía Ruby and hanging out with her best friend Camila. But according to her mother, Paola, the only thing she needs to focus on is school and “growing up.” That means straightening her hair every weekend so she could have “presentable”, “good hair”.

    But Marlene hates being in the salon and doesn’t understand why her curls are not considered pretty by those around her. With a few hiccups, a dash of embarrassment, and the much-needed help of Camila and Tia Ruby—she slowly starts a journey to learn to appreciate and proudly wear her curly hair.

    Thoughts:

    Frizzy’s mother has a ritual. Every Sunday, she takes Frizzy to the hair salon where they spend almost all day, as the hair dresser straightens Marlene’s natural curly hair. Marlene does not like this ritual, and often wonders why her natural curls are not considered pretty by her mother.

    “Do you think she’s right? That I can’t be my best if my hair isn’t straight?” Marlene asks.

    Frizzy, Claribel A. Ortega

    Marlene embarks on finding the answer to her question. Wanting to find a different perspective than the one her family has given her, especially her Mom. She does this with the help of her friends Camila and Tia Ruby. Frizzy is a beautiful book about accepting ourselves the way we are.

    “We learn things from our parents, who learn things from their parents, who learned that from their parents. It doesn’t make those things okay to believe…”

    Frizzy, Claribel A. Ortega
  • Circe by Madeline Miller

    Circe by Madeline Miller

    Circe

    by Madeline Miller

    In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child–neither powerful like her father nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power: the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

    Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

    But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.

    Book Thoughts:

    Circe. I read this with expectation. Greek Mythology is so very fascinating, but Circe is not the book to discover more about Zeus. It is about Circe, a girl born to Helios, who grows up learning she is not his favorite child. Every moment as she grows up is excruciating lonely, and I hoped she would find moments of happiness with every turn of the page.

    That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.”

    This retelling of Circe focuses on a goddess’s internal world as she faces judgment from her parents, siblings, the titans and Olympians. She finds herself isolated and in the isolation, she finds her center and the will to fight the cage.

    You have always been the worst of my children,” he said. “Be sure not to dishonor me.” “I have a better idea. I will do as I please, and when you count your children, leave me out.”

  • Babel by R. F. Kuang

    Babel

    by R. F. Kuang

    Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

    1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

    For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

    Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

    Thoughts:

    “That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
    ― R.F. Kuang, Babel

    Robin Swift is a Chinese boy who finds himself at Oxford eager to explore translation, and study and read to his heart’s content. However, there are also a million nuances to his existence in this world, and they can all be captured in the following quote:

    “They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men. But the enormity of this knowledge was so devastating, such a vicious antithesis to the three golden days they’d blindly enjoyed, that neither of them could say it out loud.”
    ― R.F. Kuang, Babel

    To be different in a society can be challenging. Babel leans and explores heavily on the themes of language, translation, colonialism, identity (or lack there of), and finding a place of belonging in a society that may or may not want to understand a different individual, culture, language, mannerism. The adventures Robin Swift lives through in his tenure at Babel, with his fellow mates, all make you wonder and consider these themes at every turn.

    “Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
    ― R.F. Kuang, Babel

  • Daughter of the Moon Goddess

    Daughter of the Moon Goddess

    Daughter of the Moon Goddess

    Daughter of the Moon Goddess

    by Sue Lynn Tan

    Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the feared Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind.

    Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the emperor’s son, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the prince.

    To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies across the earth and skies. But when treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream—striking a dangerous bargain in which she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.

    Thoughts:

    Daughter of the Moon Goddess is a story inspired by the Legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess.  Xingyin is the daughter of the moon goddess. She lives a peaceful life at the start, but a moment of curiosity changes her life forever. She soon discovers her mother’s life is in dire straits, and her existence as the daughter of the Moon Goddess is even more dangerous. Her mother urges her to flee to save her life. Xingyin makes it to relative safety and discovers a new world in the Celestial Kingdom. She trains along a celestial kingdom prince and does her best to become stronger. Her goal is to save her mother.

    I love that this story is so plot driven, taking you from Xingyin’s cozy life with her mom when she knows no strife. Then, she flees and must struggle to survive, to fighting to grow her strength, and in the end, discovering a path she can follow to save her mother. It’s a rollercoaster fantasy quest and I was there for every minute of it.

  • That NaNoWriMo 2023 Project – How it’s Going

    That NaNoWriMo 2023 Project – How it’s Going

    NaNoWriMo month feels a lot like a writing marathon. It is creating a daily frenzy, every day making 1,667 words at the least to stay on target. That is, embracing those moments when you stare at the cursor and beg for creative inspiration and it feels like no hope is coming, but then you type two words, then three, and then…whoosh, three thousand come at you. Relief floods you, you can log a decent word count into the NaNoWriMo graph, and then you go to sleep. Guess what, you wake up the next day and the same process starts again.

    I’m on Day 24, and the good part of this process is that there is comfort to the writing routine. I have accumulated some 40,000 words so far. I would judge about 32,000 of them are decent enough to work with later. As I continue, I have a whole story that I did not have at the beginning of the month. So, that’s the good part, the big win!

    nanowrimo 2023 project

    The challenging part is getting past the daily life noise. I may have a daily writing goal but managing to keep up with it while faced with my life obligations is a feat and a half. You manage the job, chores in the house, family things, pets, procrastination, and the odd visits from unexpected crises…these are the few things that show up on the daily life map. Setting aside the time to get 1,667 words down can feel like a battle crisis. I need to work at getting the writing done, literary carve out time amid the unavoidable noise. Some days, it felt painful to find the writing time, but others have felt easy. I’m grateful for the easy days and proud of the painful ones when it felt like I might give up but kept at it anyway. Gotta celebrate these wins.

    I have shared the good and the challenging. Here’s the funny and extra cheesy enjoyment.

    Happy Nanowrimo Graph

    Despite the griping to get these words done, I find it exciting to see the graph rise daily. Every day, I’ll do my best to get the words in even though it is like 11:30 pm at night, just to see the graph grow or to win the word count badge. It is so oddly satisfying! I’ll smile like a silly goose, happy that I got in that count before midnight. And who doesn’t enjoy winning fun little colorful badges!

    Badges of honor

    So, that’s my NaNoWriMo progress so far. There are six days to go, and I have about 10,000 words to get done. I’ll let you know if I win that completed certificate!

    To read a snippet of this nanowrimo story find it here: The Hidden Queen. It is a draft and may change in the future. For now, it is what it is. Enjoy!

  • Litireso Africa Closes

    For any authors who have been publishing on Litireso, this morning you must have received a note about the platform’s closure. I’m very sad about this as it was nice to have another African platform out here sharing our books. I’m so sorry to see it close.

    Here’s a note from the platform’s management.

    Litireso's Closure and Transition
Dear Valued Litireso Community,

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to close the Litireso platform, effective October 30th, 2023. We extend our profound appreciation to all the authors, readers, and supporters who have been an integral part of the Litireso journey.

For Authors: We will reach out to you ensure the transfer of your outstanding royalties. Authors with physical print books, reach out to our support team for delivery.

For Readers: Your purchased books will be sent to your email address. Balances in your Litireso wallet will be transferred to your bank account.

Opportunity for Transition: Litireso is considering selling the company. If interested, contact us at hello@litireso.africa. Referrals are appreciated.

With immense gratitude and best wishes,

The Litireso Team

  • Tobiko, The Maasai Room, And Leader, The Dog That Would Not Leave

    Tobiko, The Maasai Room, And Leader, The Dog That Would Not Leave

    Tobiko, The Maasai Room, and Leader,
    The Dog That Would Not Leave.
    by Felicita Churie

    This is a story about Tobiko’s adventures at our home in the rural areas near a National Park.
    We called this home The Fort because at the time there were no other homes near it, only wild animals from the park.
    It is a story about Tobiko, his friends, and Leader the dog exploring the area, and fishing in the nearby river. There were many happy days with the Maasai Cattle Traders and their stories with lessons.

    Feature:

    When I’m not writing NaNoWriMo novels, I edit/format/make book covers. These past weeks, I’ve been caught up with a sweet, little book called Tobiko, The Maasai Room, and Leader, The Dog That Would Not Leave. It is written by Felicita Churie who I’ve worked with before on her book, I Once Had A Son.

    The essence of this story is an exploration of Tobiko’s adventures in a rural home where he has the space to run as a young boy. He plays with his dog, his siblings, and friends. They have camp-outs, watch the stars, go fishing, play football, and learn invaluable cultural lessons from The Maasai who visit their home. Their lives intertwine into a colorful tapestry of modern life, cultural lessons from The Maasai, herbivorous wild animals stopping by, and a lovely dog with an undying sense of loyalty.

    You can find a copy on Amazon. Here is the link.