Book Trailer for When Maidens Mourn

I'm not convinced these things do any good sales-wise, but they're fun to make and they seem to cheer my publisher, so here's the new book video for When Maidens Mourn:



And here's the cover copy:

Tales of King Arthur and the Lady of Shalott provide inspiration for this latest gripping installment in the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series when, just four days wed, the aristocratic investigator and his fiercely independent bride, Hero Jarvis, find themselves caught up in a twisted intrigue of ancient legends and a deadly family curse.

Regency England, August 1812: Sebastian’s plans to escape the heat of London for a honeymoon are shattered when the murdered body of Hero’s good friend, Gabrielle Tennyson, is discovered drifting in a battered boat at the site of a long-vanished castle known as Camlet Moat. A beautiful young antiquarian, Miss Tennyson had recently provoked an uproar with her controversial identification of the island as the location of Camelot. Missing and presumed also dead are Gabrielle’s two young cousins, nine-year-old George and three-year-old Alfred.

Still struggling to define the nature of their new marriage, Sebastian and Hero find themselves occasionally working at cross-purposes as their investigation leads from London’s medieval Inns of Court to its seedy back alleys, and from grand country homes to rural enclaves where ancient Celtic beliefs still hold sway. As he probes deeper, Sebastian also discovers dark secrets at the heart of the Tennyson family, and an enigmatic young French lieutenant with a dangerous, mysterious secret of his own.

Racing to unmask a ruthless killer and unravel the puzzle of the missing children, Sebastian and Hero soon find both their lives and their growing love for each other at risk as their investigation leads to Hero’s father, who is also Sebastian’s long-time nemesis… and to a tall, dark stranger who may hold the key to Sebastian’s own parentage.

Book Trailers, Part II

The book video for The Babylonian Codex:



Some thoughts on the making of this trailer: This one was much easier to do than the two historical mystery trailers and turned out much more effective, I believe. The main reason it's more interesting and striking is because, since it's a contemporary, I could incorporate photographs. All of these shots are my own photos from a couple of recent trips (that's my daughter, in Fez, staring at the camera in that one shot; it has a strange, haunting quality, doesn't it?). The winged cherub is a picture I took in St. Louis cathedral last fall, never dreaming I would use it this way. The nice part about relying on my own photos is that I didn't need to worry about copyright violations.

But what really makes this trailer dramatic is the great score. Where did the music come from? Again, the need to respect copyright makes things difficult. But a composer and musician named Kevin MacLeod has a wonderful site up on the Web with all different sorts of music, all categorized, which is free to anyone who wants to use it. All he asks is a donation and credit, which I was more than happy to give him. He has some great stuff, and I would highly recommend him to anyone.

I did all three of these trailers in a day and a night. Many of those hours were spent relearning the program. I also devoted a lot of time to looking for music (even after I found MacLeod, I needed to listen to a lot of clips to find ones that were just right). And I tried out different photos and some variations in the text before I settled on what I liked best.

Will I make another one? Yes; it was fun. But for my next historical mystery trailer, I plan to take the time to search out photos that I can use to make it more like the Codex trailer.

Next up: the Shadows trailer, and some thoughts on just how effective are these things, anyway?