I LIED! THIS IS THE COVER OF MY UPCOMING NOVEL

 

The cover-reveal I posted the other day of my upcoming novel turned out to be a big fat—if unintended— lie. The above is the final cover for Bully 4 Love: A Rather Odd Love Story, which I plan to release on May 7th. Rather than this one, which I posted the other day.

Book covers are strange creatures. Although they are supposed to prove that the well-worn adage, You can’t tell a book by its cover, is itself a lie, often that is just not the case. If a single image could tell you about a book, you probably wouldn’t need to write the damn book. What a book cover is supposed to do is grab your attention and tease you, often, at times, with a bit of deception. Are the bare-chested hunks on the cover of romance novels really that hunky and devoid of chest hairs?

Are the sexy women on the covers of pulp novels and paperbacks truly that sexy and owners of capacious bras under the covers?

Those are extreme cases, but I think they make a point.

Genre fiction—you know, science fiction, mysteries, horror, supernatural, fantasy, westerns, and a chest-full of romances—is by its nature usually plot-driven. And covers for genre novels often feature illustrations that give a relatively accurate view of the contents of the book, despite the extremes mentioned above. There are often specific scenes and incidents for a book illustrator and designer to draw on for inspiration. That’s not always the case for recent covers of mainstream, realistic, literary novels. They tend to be abstract, relying more on creative typography in the rendition of the title than anything too specific to the story. 

As my upcoming novel is a mainstream novel and as realistic as fiction ever gets—being the art of creative lying—I felt it should have a cover that makes that point clear. There are no creatures or monsters in Bully 4 Love. Nor spaceships and aliens; time and dimension traveling; supernatural anythings, or even modern-day Knight Errants righting wrongs. All of which have populated some of my other fiction. Instead, like By the Sea,

my first novel in what I’m calling my Love, Sex, and Pursuit of Happiness Novels, Bully 4 Love is rooted in reality. It mostly takes place in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, specifically in Pasadena and South Pasadena. I was born in Pasadena. I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. No, Bully 4 Love is not autobiographical. And yet, might it have been?

In the world of indie digital publishing—the world I happily reside in—there have risen many book cover illustrators and designers to service our needs. But most of them, or at least the ones I’ve run across, seem to be most adept at covers for genre fiction. And why not? Most of their clientele, I would guess, write genre fiction. In any case that what Juan Padron, the designer of the cover of my last novel, Creature Feature, features as his forte on his website.

I went to Juan because I admired the work he did on the covers of Jean Rabe’s Piper Blackwell mystery novels.

I came up with the basic concept for Creature Feature's cover—as I do for all my books—and then let Juan take it from there. What he designed looks great, and definitely seems to grab people’s attention.

But for Bully 4 Love I felt I had to do more than come up with a concept, I needed to pre-visualize (as our friends in filmmaking might say) the cover. Using the software on AuthorLab I took a crack at designing what I wanted. After a couple of attempts, I came up with a cover I liked. In fact, I liked it so much, I thought, well, why not go with this?

Unfortunately, being an amateur designer steeped not in a breadth of experience, I discovered that there is more to designing a cover that just the surface image. When I came to completing the design by adding the back cover and the spine for the paperback edition, I found that AuthroLab had no software for that (although they say they soon will). So, I called upon Juan to rescue me. I found out that there were some technical specifications for digital book covers that my cover did not meet. So—back to being a pre-visualization.

Juan ran with my pre-visualization and made a visual treat. It’s not just that he took care of the technical specification, he brought his creative eye, his designer's talent to the task and made a silk purse out of a—well, you know.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I love a pro! Cheers, Juan! 

  

COVER OF MY LATEST -- SOON TO BE RELEASED

I just received the cover for my upcoming e-book release from Crossroad Press, MADE ON THE MOON. I think it's quite stunning. It was designed by Crossroads own,David Dodd, and I thank him and Crossroad's other David, David Wilson, for bringing this novella into the digital world. Here's the cover copy:

“I had wanted to go to the moon from the time I was an infant.” So declares Stanley Lewis to three mysterious interviewers known only as R and S and T as they sit in a bare, grey room in a grey facility in a grey, desolate landscape and pull out of Stanley the story of his life. It is a story that ranges from his birth in 1949 to somewhat past his 100th birthday, and which “travels” to landscapes real and imagined; encompassing the American space program, science fiction, brand spanking new Southern California suburbs, cartoons, small-town America, poetry, a little yellow bubble-domed space taxi, benevolent visitors from outer space, violence in America, super-hero comic books, pop culture, and football. During the telling Stanley is at times docile, at times uncooperative and pugnacious, at times disingenuous, at times completely honest, and always, always in control.

Is Stanley Lewis the ultimate “lunatic” or the ultimate Everyman?

UNVEILING THE COVER OF MY LATEST NOVEL

Is a book without a cover naked? Well, no, that’s just silly. Although any book that’s any good should tell you the naked truth about something. At least as understood by the author, who is quite aware the reader might disagree. But, be all that as it may, the text of a book, the thing itself, one might say, is certainly the body of the endeavor. And the cover is just, what? Skin dressed in clothes that both protect from the elements and if the author and publisher have any sense of style at all, makes a statement.

With the proliferation of ebooks—a phenomenon I, unlike some others, do not bemoan—there is no need for a digital book to have its own skin. Its body is, after all, just a gathering of zeros and ones arranged in a unique order and floating somewhere in the cloud or on a chip, free from degradable pulp and fading ink. Ethereal, even if with pretensions of the eternal.

But this does not end a book’s need for clothing, for something eye-catching to adorn it that makes a statement, speaks for it, reflects it, or teases potential readers about the wonders within. For although one may shop in a digital bookstore, such as Amazon, one still likes to browse, and the vanguard of browsing are, of course, the eyes. And eyes are not caught (a slightly gruesome idea, when you think about it) by the text of a book, but by whatever that text is clothed in, whether physically, as in a paper-based book, or digitally, almost then more like a poster than a cover.

Poster or cover the same task is at hand—to grab the attention and to intrigue. But, as the old saw goes: you can’t tell a book by its cover. Now why was that ever coined? Damnable truth, I would say. Only on rare occasions have I seen a book cover for a novel that truly—and fully—reflected the contents within. Most likely because single-shot graphics must be simple for effect, yet are trying to reflect something complex—a long, imaginative narrative of many parts. The task seems almost impossible. But still, a task worth doing with seriousness, creativity, a certain amount of faith, and, hopefully, some dumb luck.

Even understanding all the above, for a novelist to see for the first time the cover of his or her latest work is exciting. You desperately want it to be all dressed up with many places to go. And even if you fear no one will really be able to “see” what your novel is in its totality by just looking at the cover, you still hope that the cover has some accurate hint of the full revelation inside that is compelling enough for a deeper look leading to a purchase, leading to a read, leading to appreciation.

It is that same first impression thing you have to contend with when looking for a job, not to mention a mate.

All this rambling, of course, has spewed out of me by way of introducing the cover of my new novel, IMP: A Political Fantasia. So, Ta-da!

I came up with a concept for the cover, which David Dodd of Crossroad Press, the book’s publisher, executed, greatly enhancing and improving the idea into what you see below.

I hope you find it intriguing.

IMP, A Political Fantasia will debut as an ebook soon.

A NEW COVER FOR "BLOOD IS PRETTY"

On the tenth anniversary of my first published novel, Blood is Pretty—The First Fixxer Adventure, Crossroad Press is bringing it back into print with a great new cover.  

CEO/Publisher, author David Niall Wilson, started Crossroad press in 2009 at first to publish his own books as ebooks. But he soon realized he could help his fellow authors do the same thing, and has dedicatedly done so ever since, broadening out Crossroad into audiobooks and now trade paperback print editions. Crossroad published the ebook edition of Blood is Pretty in 2010. At that time we decided to just keep the book's original cover from its first print edition.

But for this new edition we decided to spiff things up a bit and put a new face on. I wanted to keep the original cover's concept of the title written in blood (when you read the book—and you will read the book, won't you?—you'll see the appropriateness of this graphic image) as the title is meant to be a slightly over-the-top indication of the slight homage nature of the book to thrillers and heroes from Bulldog Drummond through The Saint onto James Bond and the loves of my 60s TV life, I Spy and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  

But there is also some serious blood-letting in the book and—despite the humor—some serious considerations of life, death, morality, and how our brains—fragile and malleable presenters of reality—can be messed with for fun and profit. I always felt that the original cover just did not convey this.

So I threw the task to the talented animator & illustrator Todd Cronin, who did the covers for my novels Traveling in Space and Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army.
















Todd picked a new typeface for the blood and wonderfully added drips and a pool of the stuff.

This I liked!  Especially my name etched not in blood but on the blood. 

Then, Aaron Rosenberg, a very prolific author and master of graphic arts who designs covers for Crossroad Press, suggested adding the film strip boarder. Which made a lot of sense because the novel, besides being all I say it is above, it is also a satire on Hollywood. Taking that theme and Todd's work Aaron designed the whole package, front cover:

Back cover:

And the more-important-than-you-might-think, spine:

I'm really happy with the spine. Most book spines are pretty boring. This one is—as Dr. Who might say—cool!

Aaron, by the way, had also designed the interior of the book and has done a stunning job. 

So thanks to David and Crossroad Press for giving Blood is Pretty new printed life. To Todd for being, once again, a visualizer extraordinaire. And to Aaron for his bright and witty intelligence and graphic talents (I mean that in a nice way).

We'll be announcing the publication date of the new print edition of Blood is Pretty soon.