When I decided to create a book trailer for The Starfish People, I realized that not only did I not have the know-how to do such a thing, I didn't have the artwork or music to use for the project, and although there is a wealth of images and music online, I sure didn't want to encroach on anyone's copyright. Not only that, it can be very expensive to "buy" the permission to use them.

But, as is my nature, I was determined to find a way.

I downloaded some free movie software--Photo Story 3 for Windows, and some free paint software (a little more sophisticated than my regular paint program) called Art Rage, and began by "painting" my own scenes from the first of the book, where Sera Muir has nightmares of drowning, with a sentence I had put together in mind-- a sentence that pretty much describes the main idea of the book and captures the mystery behind it. I only wanted a very few words--(people don't want to read a book through the book's trailer! I wanted it to remain very visual.)

So I had the rough visuals to the trailer but in order to fine tune the editing I was missing a very intregal part: music. Here, as with images, copyrights are especially tricky. After searching awhile, I was just beginning to wonder if I was going to have to purchase a keyboard and come up with something myself when I happened upon a really interesting site, Dan-O Songs.com. The site is filled with the musician's own music and a plethora of information on his great blogs. I listened to some of his music and not only was I impressed, I was thrilled to read there that he has put his music under creative commons licensing, and after I read everything thoroughly I realized that I would be able to use one of his songs, "Silk," for my trailer. Although I could have used the song for free, I chose to send a nice tip to him in appreciation of his fine music and out of respect for his generosity.

Now I had the components and was able to go ahead with the trailer, creating something very unique. I uploaded the trailer on You Tube, where I was able to get the code to insert on the bio page of my AuthorsDen site and also the home page of my personal site, The Book Mark, so that the trailer would be available to see in those places also. But it didn't stop there. I had sent Dan the link to the trailer so that he could see how his music was used, hoping he would approve. Not only did he approve, he wanted to interview me on his technological blog about The Starfish People. You can see it here:

http://www.danosongs.com/tech_blog/science-fiction-book-music/

I've also included a link to his blog on my own website below the book trailer. Check out Dan-O's awesome site while you're there.