Hi, everyone!

I was wondering if you could give me your opinions on a relatively new venture of mine. In the summer, I'm going to be busy designing a revamped (no pun intended! ) cover artwork for my YA novel My Tragic Silence , which will feature my wonderful friend Rhian . Even though I love doing art and writing stories, I'm not great at book covers – to be honest, the old cover for My Tragic Silence that can be found in my scraps is the only time I've ever managed to design something for a piece I've written myself.

However, after a year of being turned down by a lot of conventional publishers and agents, I'm now seriously considering self-publishing to e-book format, beginning with My Tragic Silence . Going indie means I'll have a lot more control over the final product, including what goes on the cover. I'm not in much of a position to commission artwork, and I've been told that my own art is good enough – what do you think? Please be honest – I won't mind if you don't think so, and I'll respect your opinion.

If I went ahead with it, they would probably be photomanipulations, since I'm not particularly adept at digital painting to the extent to colour one of my graphite drawings, and I can't use traditional paint to save my life . I have a pretty good idea of what will be going on the new My Tragic Silence cover, and its prequel will likely follow the same style – albeit with a few things to mark the 120-year gap . I'll just say that My Tragic Silence will be a vague illustration of a scene that occurs later in the book, and have (hopefully) a creepy, oppressive kind-of atmosphere. I want to try and get away from the forbidden fruit/gothic girl thing for a vampire book nowadays – as much as I like dark art like that generally, I think on a book cover it can send a romance message, whereas my story is more of a thriller.

Like I said, this is a new venture for me and I've never done anything like this before – I'd never even considered it until a few weeks ago . But even though My Tragic Silence would be the first one released if I went indie, my medieval fairy-tale would probably be coming up second. After that, there's my fantasy war trilogy, but I won't jump the gun with that just yet (again, no pun intended! ). All I'll say is that I have many more novels that I'd love to share: besides those ones, there's a high fantasy adventure series that will span at least five books, as well as several other stand-alone fantasies. Going indie is still a big "if", because I'm waiting on a few more agents before deciding properly about the next step, but if nothing else, being able to do the covers would be handy just so I have something to front the personal ringbinder versions that I keep locked away in my room . What kind of cover would encourage you to take a closer look at a YA fantasy/thriller – and do you think my art is good enough to manage my own covers in a commercial sense? Any and all opinions are highly appreciated, and thank you so much for your time!

On a side note... I also want to take this opportunity to extend my thanks once again to everybody who has read the sample chapters of my novels that I've been uploading; to everyone who had a look, favourited, and commented . My gratitude particularly goes out to and , who have left me honest feedback on every single chapter post. After I upload Chapter Two of my fairy tale, I won't be following it with any more from any of my novels, because I'd prefer the stories to be read in their full form as complete books, which are completely protected and copyrighted to me. Hopefully, that won't be too long, and I have no words for how much all of your support means to me; the confidence that you've given me in showing my writing to others has been immeasurable. Thank you all so very much! !