Branding

I spent weeks brainstorming on my brand, and the process was so enlightening to me (no pun intended—you’ll see what I mean) that I figured I should probably explain a little bit!

It never really occurred to me before that an author should have her own logo… she is her own brand, right? But then the amazing Caitlin of Royal Social Media introduced me (virtually) to one of her other clients, Gretchen McNeil. She sent me to Gretchen’s website to see what she meant by branding. Gretchen writes YA horror, so her logo was a bloody pen, and her tagline is “Killing It With Words.”

Dang. That is good.

So I racked my brain, trying to come up with 1) what’s the common thread that links all my books? and 2) how do I represent that with a single logo, and tag line?

I kept coming back to the idea that all my books so far center around the theme that things aren’t always what they seem, that truth can be hard to distinguish but it’s critically important to identify it. After all, in “Piercing the Veil,” the penumbra kept all of humanity bound by lies, except for the few Seers… and in “The Liberty Box” trilogy, the government keeps most of the citizens of the Republic bound by lies through brainwave technology, except for those who either have trained their minds to see truth, or those who are off the grid and away from their influence.

There’s a reason why I write these kinds of stories: I believe most of us are lying to ourselves in one way or another, and those lies limit us. They set the unseen boundaries for our lives. But the walls are imaginary, and we can walk through them the minute we realize that.

So I kept trying to come up with a logo that represented writing, but also represented two things in one, something to suggest “things are not always what they seem.” Finally the idea popped into my head of a candle, casting the shadow of a pen. I *wanted* to also throw in a tagline somewhere, but that just seemed too busy, and maybe too blatant as well. Maybe I’d let people figure it out for themselves… or, maybe without the tagline it’s too subtle for anybody to make the connection. Ah, if it is… who cares, it’s pretty! 🙂