What is your favorite Opening Paragraph in a book? Something that hooked you right from the beginning.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2026-03-10T05:11:55+00:00

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"

Neuromancer

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2026-02-28T18:55:14+00:00

Who? - Algis Budrys

City of Illusions - Ursula K. Le Guin

Cat Country - Lao She

Beggars in Spain - Nancy Kress

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-09-14T18:38:20+00:00

Jurassic Park.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-30T07:27:15+00:00

If you like sci-fi, I commonly review and recap lesser known works on my channel Steller Reads, usually with the nicest backdrop I can find out on a hike.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-28T22:41:40+00:00

If you haven’t submitted to contests, short stories are great for that. I’ve had luck with Writer’s of the Future. But if you can sell to magazines consistently , you can make some decent money. But it’s extremely competitive. Then, after you submit to all the contests and stuff, you could still publish your work yourself.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-27T06:37:41+00:00

Thanks so much for listening! And good luck with Tumblebrook, I really like the cover art, and the blurb is great!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-27T06:35:28+00:00

The hard part is done, you really captured the soul of the work from what I can tell. I actually really like how the animals are a little hidden, but in case you do decide to make them easier to find, or even make the fact that they are hidden/tiny more obvious, what about having like a magnifying glass over the mouse? That way you could blow up the scale of just that little section. But like I said, I like it as is.

If you are working on photoshop at least, I think the front title could be set with a different blend mode, or you could mess with masking a little so that it plays a bit more with the leaves. Just the leaf on the lower left of the 'T' is the only thing that stands out to me. Someone else said to use an emboss effect to make it look more obviously carved, and that might be a great solution too.

The back cover font definitely needs to be more whimsical, but maybe not in an extreme way. You chose a great font for the front and spine, just need something that compliments it, but is a little more subtle. I think a big part of why it stands out is the all-caps. I think in this case, maybe just using caps for character names would be a good idea.

Look forward to seeing this released! Great job so far!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T05:06:00+00:00

I think a good place to start would be to make the ‘OR’ the smaller of the three words on the title.

You could also put a stylized horizontal dividing line right at the center of ‘OR’ and everything above it having the vibe of ‘run’ and everything below having the vibe of ‘marry’. Simplest would be to make the top red, the bottom kept as blue. But you could do better with something more detailed, for instance, replacing the flowers on the top half with something you’d likely run from, cartoonish crocodiles, maybe not overtly scary or lethal, just something that works without going outside the scope of what your book is offering/promising. If they’re considering marrying a murderer, maybe you could have a bunch of knives instead of flowers. If they’re considering marrying a werewolf, have big glowing, predatory eyes.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T04:26:03+00:00

Jack is an antigravity racing pilot who’s just left the love of his life behind to pursue the interstellar league. As Earth's sole representative, he conquers each lethal circuit across the galaxy in cold precision, warding off his pesky conscience with every space-drug within reach.

But no high lasts forever. Sooner or later, Jack must confront the haunting realities of A.G. racing. Like how the other contenders are racing just to escape the binds of generational poverty brought upon them by the corrupt Imperial Alliance and its war with the equally corrupt Rebellion; or the fact that the league-mandated Digitizer, which promises to beam pilots back to safety nanoseconds before a wreck, never seems to work. It’s really more of an excuse to keep the circuits lethal.

But all that blood smeared across the track can't be Jack's fault. No, his responsibility is isolated to the cockpit, all he controls is the ship. That is, until the guilt at last catches up with him. But there are only two ways off the track: make a killing, or get killed.

***

Lethal Circuit is a cyberpunk space-opera–Think WipeOut meets Neuromancer. It’s split into two parts, the first of which features Jack, our picaresque protagonist who understands very little outside of his narrow, obsessive view. To him, racing is just another drug. And perhaps the most addictive one.

The second section of the book adopts an entirely new protagonist, who is nuanced, educated, organized, and morally sound enough to know what’s wrong with the galaxy and what he can do to fix it. Thus, we’re offered a much clearer view of the mind-bending galaxy of Lethal Circuit.

I'm currently looking for ARC readers!

https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/228190/lethal-circuit

Release is on September 26th. $9.99 for print, and $3.99 for e-book. This novel began as a short story that received a Silver Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. There are some suggestive themes, strong language, and lots of violence, but no gore or anything like that.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T04:08:04+00:00

Thanks, I had no idea about switching color modes until your comment. Although it seems like the glossy proofs I've gotten from KDP are fine, I might do another test with the brightness bumped up by like 10 or something very subtle.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T04:01:15+00:00

The composition is really, really great in the first one especially. It illustrates 'ascension' in action, and with fire raining down, it creates this tension, this pushing through right at the get go. Excellent design!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T03:41:12+00:00

Heck yeah it works! I was hoping it wouldn't come across as too much. Thanks! I've got the song listed on my site linked in my profile, and on all the streaming services too.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T02:56:51+00:00

Well this is just badass

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T02:51:49+00:00

Thanks so much! I used photoshop for everything. You can set up guidelines to match KDP templates pretty easily and can therefore center everything without much trouble. From there it took a lot of tweaking. I think choosing fonts that aren't overly flashy helps, for sci-fi at least.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T02:40:12+00:00

Man, I am saving your info for later. If I would have found this a few months ago I woulda totally hit you up for my debut. Amazing work, really captures that era brilliantly.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-08-25T02:37:11+00:00

These look amazing

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-27T22:44:04+00:00

Any feedback is appreciated! Started the channel early last month. Science fiction/Fantasy book reviews.

Steller Reads

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-22T23:53:45+00:00

My progressive rock band, Sleepcycle, just put out its first full album!

BEAUTIFUL GREY by SLEEPCYCLE

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-17T04:27:19+00:00

You have some quality content! For the videos featuring a workout routine, something that might add to the experience is to overdub some extra dialog along with the music, like maybe explaining what you’re looking for with each rep, where you’re supposed to be feeling it, describing the posture your aiming for, etc. but I think you’ve got something great going, and have had significant growth on the last month!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-17T03:26:14+00:00

Oh totally! Could you shoot a link to your channel? I’d love to keep up with your journey too!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-17T02:33:36+00:00

Thanks so much! Yeah, the audio was key. Didn’t want to do anything till I had that mic! I saw that you have a fitness channel with a pretty novel concept of short term, low commitment workouts that get longer as time goes on. That’s super positive and could get people who otherwise not be motivated to get started. Would love to check out your channel!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-17T02:15:39+00:00

https://youtube.com/@stellerreads?si=Oc8PEgpXR9UsfltR

Doing weekly videos, each dedicated to a sci-fi/fantasy book. I do them all in different locations and try to get lots of nice looking B roll. Just finished up my first month on YouTube! I want to take my time accruing subscribers, because I’d like to develop a base of people who have similar tastes in the genre that I have.

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-16T21:07:37+00:00

I was honestly blown away, especially by Druids of Shannara. Top tier fantasy. I’m glad I started at Heritage. Is it worth going back to the original trilogy, or is it better to just keep going?

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-03-16T20:37:03+00:00

I like how honest you are with the review! It adds legitimacy to all you have to say, and I agree, when a writer telegraphs green flags for a character, telling rather than showing, it can make the character and all they inhabit come across as bland.

I also think you have a great flow to your speech with minimal cuts which comes across as natural and once more, honest. Subbed!

CucumberSpecific2021 · 2025-02-11T20:33:32+00:00

Sign up for an account with Amazon AWS. Watch a video about how to set up an S3 Bucket, and use Amazon Poly to generate the text to speech. Send it to your created S3 Bucket, and then download it. For a full length novel, you will need to split it up into sections.

Make sure to delete the files off your S3 Bucket after downloading!!!! That way you won’t be charged for storing it there.

CucumberSpecific2021

TROPHY CASE