Storming the cover

Got thrown off my cover design track by an illustration job. Thought I'd bounce a few different ideas out there, just to see how they looked onscreen.

Still leaning toward one of my previous designs. But for those who like those stormy prairie scenes, they might see something to like here.

To me, already I hate the red type - feeling sort of like Louis Lamour here. I do like the sky and the sense of foreboding, though.

Now my favorite part of this design is the hint of the road, and the house/shack in the distance. This does have a feel I like - enough to bump the other design... hmm... not sure. For one thing the type needs some work, but something is emerging.

Onward.

Little Covers

While I am doing the final polish and copy edit of Correction Line, I have been getting lots of feedback on my cover designs.

The only thing that everyone can agree on, is that they all have different opinions (!)

Something to note (and to show where I am leaning in the design) is that these covers have to work at quite a small size. This is a different design challenge than a print book - although, those covers need impace at a distance as well.

But to look at some of the recent designs in the size they would appear in the online store:

The image still holds interest for me, as a shape and a mood, but many have thought it too subtle. For one thing, that type needs to be a lot bigger.

Now this could work - but I am fairly sure this design gets chopped (before the dessert round!) As a woofreakinhoo visitor commented, it does kind of look like a self-help book.

Here the mood is more striking, to me anyway - but there are still some typography issues. Readability suffers - and the blue is lost against the green.

So there are the little versions, and my thoughts. Stay tuned for more. And another excerpt, too.

Excerpt Two - Awake

As my e-publishing date for Correction Line gets closer, I thought I'd post another short excerpt. (I will be posting bits in sequence - read the first excerpt here.)

Thanks for all the advice I've been getting on the cover art - I think I am close, I'll post another version soon. Oh, and this chunk comes with a language/violence warning... I sort of think the whole book does.

 

When he first saw it, he wasn't sure if the figure with the backpack was real or something created by his over-caffeinated brain.

"Appreciate it." The hitcher wore a John Deere cap, dark hair sprouting out the sides and drifting into a thick beard the colour of topsoil. "Kevin, good to meet you." He thrust out a gloved hand with the fingers cut-off.

"Frank. You got a driver's license?"

"Up to date? Hell no, but if you're asking if I can—"

"Maybe later. Throw your bag in the back."

"Cool. Nice ponytail you're sporting there. Kind of gives an edge to that exec look you got going."

The hitcher wore a wide-striped plaid shirt and one of those puffy vests Frank had seen a lot of college kids wear. He talked a mile of minute, the usual head out the open road and find yourself bullshit that guys like him had been talking about since the sixties. Funny thing was they never seemed to own a car.

The chatter kept Frank awake, and he chimed in a question every once in while, not because he was interested, he wasn't, but it kept him going. Somehow the kid had drifted through politics, the female gender, past religion and right into the occult. Finally something Frank knew a bit about – though, he'd never use a word that suggested pointy-headed weirdos dancing around fires and biting the heads off chickens, not to mention the whole heavy metal thing. He'd seen things that would strip the leather pants right off those guys.

"It's like there's this force, and I don't mean that thing Lucas was talking about – shit, you know he ripped that off of Joseph Campbell and Kurosawa anyhow – you know those guys? You see Yojimbo? That Mifune was one bad mo-fo." Kevin stopped talking and watched a combine glide across a field. "What was I talking about?"

"The force."

Kevin went on into energy fields, auras, chakras, and things that glowed in the night, unexplainable-like… or maybe they went bump in the night. Frank was losing focus. He saw a farmyard that looked familiar, then a line of pine trees that stood out from the sporadic poplars. He was close now.

"I need to stop at a place." Frank slowed down and turned left onto a grid road.

"It's your wheels, man."

Frank thought that Kevin had seen Easy Rider one too many times. 

It had been years since he'd seen the house, but even from a mile away, he knew it instantly. It helped that he'd been dreaming about it for the last month. Uncomfortable dreams, strangled, hard to swallow, he awoke with burning fingers and a soaked forehead.

 "You know somebody who lives out here?"

Frank's chest went tight, a slash of heat went across his forehead and he touched his fingers to his skin, expecting to feel an open wound.

"Maybe you should get out. Walk back to the highway, it's not that far."

"Hey forget it. I'll hang with you, meet some of the people of the land."

"Your choice."

Frank parked the Dodge twenty yards from the house. He walked into the house without knocking. Kevin followed.

The room was spartan, a faded couch, a tall bookshelf, a turntable on a cabinet full of records and in the centre three chairs and a wooden slatted table – like something made out of an oak door. In one of the chairs sat a man with a sharp angled face, a Roman nose chiseled into it, and eyes that seem to swallow the light. In front of him stood a bottle and three squat glasses.

"Frank, what a surprise, you out here."

"Right. How long you've been waiting?" Frank slid out a chair for Kevin before sitting in the one next to their host. "Dave meet… what'd you say your name was?"

"Kevin." He gave a little two-finger salute. "You live pretty basic out here – keep it real you know?"

Dave ignored Kevin and stared at Frank. "The surprise is of course that you would come looking for me. You get lonely out there in wherever you escaped to?"

"I do fine." 

Dave poured a thick liquid into the glasses and slid two of them across to his guests. The sun slid out from behind a cloud, pierced the window and made each glass glow like a votive candle. Kevin scratched his beard, tipped his hat back, wriggled in his chair trying to get comfortable, and brought a glass to his nose.

"This some sort of homemade hooch?" Kevin asked.

Dave took a long swallow and placed the half-empty glass on the table. Frank smoothed his hair back, straightened his ponytail and drained his glass in one long pull.

"So what – is this a pissing contest?" Kevin sniffed again. "Whoa, this stuff smells like a fucking barn."

Dave leaped from his chair, a blur of movement, a flash of metal, and a violent thrust.

Kevin screamed as the long blade went through his shoulder pinning him to the chair. Frank said nothing.

Take two... or is it three

A different direction for the cover here - some more visual impact, but still that hazy foreboding I am looking for.

I took this photo on a road trip a few years ago - something always struck me about it, a haunting lonely feeling, the glow of the coke machine at a roadside motel.

And then one more - I like the atmosphere in this one... seems like a theme.

Let me know what you think.

Okay, well that didn't work

I have an image recollection in my mind of art directors, editors and other creative type staring at some contact sheets of book covers (or maybe, magazine covers). It's one of those images that I don't know if I actually saw, or I put it together in my head from a lot of images like that (both static and in film.)

The creative types are looking at the plethora of covers, trying to decided which one works. And I am going, c'mon, how hard can it be? Just pick one already.

Well, I was wrong. It is hard. Damn hard.

I had an image in my head for the cover of Correction Line. I was going for an atmospheric feel, hazy, dreamy and foreboding. A car on a road, entering a curve, headlights shooting off the road - and the car looking like it might not make the turn.

I drew it up, then completed the illustration in chalk pastel - a medium that would give me that hazy/dreamy/foreboding look.

I ended up liking the illustration - but not as a cover. It just doesn't work. It feels old, and well, just too damn hazy. What was I thinking there?

So I am back with those creative types studying the contact sheets, and searching for another direction.

Stay tuned.