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Tag: books
A Review of MiblArt
I have to say, I lucked out. Once I finished the manuscript of Rags and Muffin and finished the interior formatting, I faced the prospect of finding and hiring a cover artist. The artists who worked on Jake and the Dynamo had been recommended to me by others, and while their art is great for that particular series, Rags and Muffin demands something less cartoonish.
I went to the internet and found several obviously talented artists, most of whom cost more than I could reasonably put down up front. At some point in my searching, I came across MiblArt, and though they did good work for a reasonable price, I initially passed them by because their cover designs appeared to be shopped versions of stock photos, a style that does not appeal to me: I find that real people look fake when they appear on book covers, perhaps because they’re too obviously models wearing makeup. Also, any design for Rags and Muffin would call for children on the cover, and given the amount of violence and abuse depicted in the book, I would prefer if no real children were involved, however tangentially.
As I continued my search, I came across MiblArt a second time and looked at their offerings more thoroughly. Then I discovered that they not only did the photo-based covers but completely original compositions as well, albeit for a higher price.
I have been quite pleased with the entire process and its results. It began with a form that is analogous to an interview, asking a great deal of information about the book in question and what a writer wants on the cover. The staff at MiblArt contacted me repeatedly for elaborations and clarifications to make sure they understood what I wanted. I sent reference photos, including goofy pictures of Japanese models in gothic lolita and a screenshot from Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, both of which they incorporated creatively into the final design without complaint or comment.
They sent me initial and rough sketches, followed by a preliminary final draft, and allowed me to request changes on each. I sent back a few designs for revision and received no complaints when I did so.
The final design is quite striking and captures the concept of the book, and I got it for considerably less money than I might have spent elsewhere.
My interaction with the MiblArt staff has been professional, if impersonal. Certainly, the relationship has been less warm than what I had with the previous cover artists, whom I worked one-on-one with, but it has been entirely cordial. Their turn-around time has also been fast.
I would recommend MiblArt to other indie authors. Their portfolio displays consistent quality, and my own experience confirms that they can deliver.
(This post contains affiliate links.)
Rags and Muffin Go Hard
As I’ve previously mentioned, Amazon has recently added a hardcover option to Amazon KDP. This isn’t really a possibility (or, probably, a desireability) for Jake and the Dynamo, but I decided I wanted to make it an option for Rags and Muffin.
To that end, I updated my order with MiblArt and got a cover for a hardback edition. The image you see above is from Amazon’s previewer, which has okayed the cover art. Everything else in the sample seems to be good as well, so we’ll offer this alongside the eBook and paperback on the release date, which is still December 10th.
I’ve seen some other authors show off their Amazon hardcovers; they look good and have the cover art printed directly onto the hard surface, with no dust jacket.
(This post contains affiliate links.)
Rags Says Preorder Her Book or She’ll Sic Muffin on You
My latest novel, Rags and Muffin is now available for predorder! This is a rough, tough vision of the magical-girl concept that brings together a wide range of influences from the kumari veneration of Nepal to the film noir tradition of American cinema. Bone-crunching action blends with a brooding meditation on the concept of the child hero. Rags and Muffin is Fancy Nancy as written by Rudyard Kipling after binging on mecha anime while tripping on acid.
And I have to give a special shout-out to the team at MiblArt, which knocked it out of the park with the book’s cover art. This is an incredible interpretation of Rags and Muffin, compelling enough to change my own vision of the characters. I’ll likely review their services in the near future.
Since I just got the cover art near the end of October, I’ve decided to push the release date back to early December because I want to run some promotions that require a preorder window. But I recommend ordering now to lock in the low preorder price.
This post contains affiliate links.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
I recently dug out my boxed set of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which I purchased at a book fair sometime in my childhood. The books are in good shape, so they will pass to my daughter when I decide she’s old enough for them. An astute reader might notice that I refer to these books in Dead 2 Rites: When Van Halensing gives Jake a “traditional formula” for compelling a ghost, that formula comes from the story “The Haunted House.”
If you grew up in the Eighties or Nineties, you probably remember these three books, and they probably made you pee your pants. The stories are rewritten versions of folk tales that the author, Alvin Schwartz, an amateur folklorist, dug up from anthropological journals and fairy tale collections. For the adult reader, the most interesting sections of the Scary Stories books are the endnotes, in which Schwartz explains where he got his material as well as his rationale for altering or synthesizing it. A child will be more interested in the stories themselves, but the stories aren’t the main reason these books are both famous and infamous.
Praise for ‘Dead 2 Rites’
Someone recently left this review for Dead 2 Rites:
Horror with a sweet sense of humor
If you enjoy breezy adolescent adventure novels with cheap heroics and villains made of straw, give this series a big miss. Why don’t you grow up already, with this coming of age confection? That’s right, big kid, the child in you will delight to the glittering, grisly action that recalls the Power Rangers episodes you devoured instead of studying. The adult in you will appreciate the ironic perspective you gain from Jake, the boy hero protagonist who is slowly piecing together the rotten puzzle of his post-apocalyptic world, and the hellish bargain his friend, the Dynamo of the title, has made to save it from final destruction. Dead to Rites has it all: Sailor Moon superheroics, Cronenberguesque body horror, and moral conundrums that would make Oscar Wilde light another cigarette in the holder. Get it, and let it get you twisted.
Contains affiliate links.
On the Possibility of Hardcovers
Amazon has just added the ability to publish hardcovers through its print-on-demand service. I’ve seen other indie authors talking about this in hushed whispers, but the option just appeared on my KDP account today.
To amuse myself, I tried setting up a hardcover version of Jake and the Dynamo. The results were not unexpected. Although the interior dimensions of my manuscript are fine, the dimensions of the extant cover image are way off, as you can see from the image at the top of this post. Thanks to Amazon’s insistence that a custom cover be uploaded as a single file, this is no easy fix.
I’ve idly dreamed before of a hardcover of Jake and the Dynamo with full-color interior illustrations, but there are three things that make that difficult. The first, of course, is the need to redo the cover with a considerably larger image. I don’t know exactly what that would mean for the artists who made my cover, but I know it would mean a lot of money out of my pocket. The second thing, which is a much bigger nuisance, is that the software I’m using for the interior, Vellum, is unaware that Amazon offers full-color printing, so it automatically renders my interior illustrations in black and white. I will not be surprised if a future update fixes that problem, but that update hasn’t come yet.
The third problem, of course, is that the book would be ridiculously expensive. The paperback versions of both novels in this series already cost considerably more than I would like, probably because of the combination of length and illustrations. Judging from my sales, the novels are much more popular in Kindle and Kindle Unlimited versions than in print. I’m not sure what a full-color version would have to cost, but it would likely be upwards of twenty bucks.
However, since I now know this option is available, a hardcover version of Rags and Muffin may be a real possibility since it has no interior illustrations aside from the black-and-white chapter headings.
The ‘Dead 2 Rites’ Paperback
Here’s a look at the paperback version of Dead 2 Rites, the sequel to Jake and the Dynamo. As you can see in this picture, it is quite a thick book:
In fact, it comes to 514 pages. As should be clear from this comparison, it is considerably thicker than the first volume:
The text has the same luxurious formatting as book one, designed to be similar to a professional hardcover:
Like the first book, this one includes full-color illustrations from Roffles Lowell:
Unfortunately, even though we worked to make sure the illustrations would look better in this printing, some of them have come out too dark. I’m not sure of the reason for this.
(This post includes affiliate links.)
Initial Sketch for the ‘Rags and Muffin’ Cover!
Alas, I can’t display it this time, but I have received the initial sketch for the cover of Rags and Muffin. For this one, I’ve contracted a professional company, and I don’t want to give any details yet until I’ve been through the whole experience, as I don’t think it would be professional to do otherwise. But I received the initial sketch today and sent my feedback. I’m quite excited to see what the final version will look like.
I’m planning to spend this evening adding the new internal illustrations I’ve received to the chapter headers, and then the manuscript will be in its true, final form. If the company I’m working with continues at its present pace, I should be able to meet the October 1st release date.
Anyway, I’ve been out of commission for the last several days. The baby caught a cold, her second—which is pretty good, I think, since I have read that babies in their first year can get as many as ten. Only two in eight months isn’t bad. I didn’t get her first cold, so I figured that my grown-up immune system was too strong for whatever baby diseases she was coming down with. That’s why I didn’t stop her when, during her second cold, she decided to chew on my nose.
To make a long story short, that is the sickest I have been in years. It lasted almost two weeks for both me and the baby. For the baby, it turned into an ear infection and a mild case of pneumonia, so she went on antibiotics. It was threatening to turn into pneumonia with me, too.
Both of us are now recovering. I had a long weekend thanks to Labor Day, but I got nothing done. I spent it on the couch, coughing and complaining and reading until my wife, tired of my whining, finally cured me with a magical noodle soup.
While sick, I got through a number of books I should have read already but hadn’t for one reason or another, including 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and King Solomon’s Mines. I also read a disappointing and deservedly forgotten sequel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World called The Poison Belt.
I might discuss The Island of Doctor Moreau later, mostly because the 1996 movie adaptation is a scarce-to-be-believed legend in the history of film disasters.
‘Rags and Muffin’ Is Almost Complete
The manuscript for Rags and Muffin is done, with just a few finishing touches needed. I had commissioned Eduardo Moura Barbosa for a chapter-heading image, but I was so pleased with the results I asked for some more so I can switch them up from one chapter to the next. The header image for this post is an example: Each chapter header contains objects associated with one of the main characters.
I also crossed my fingers, took a deep breath, and commissioned a cover. I decided a cartoon cover was inappropriate for Rags and Muffin, so I commissioned a cover from a reasonably priced company that appears to do good work. I haven’t seen anything for my project yet, but they claim their turn-around time is good, their portfolio looks solid, and they’ve asked me a lot of probing questions to ensure that they’re actually producing what I want. I’ll name the company after I have the final product and can discuss the overall experience. But if they’re as fast as they claim, I might just make my hoped-for October 1st release date.
The downside is that the cover will cost a pretty penny—at least by my standards. I’m not a guy who can drop $1200 on a book cover, at least not yet. This isn’t costing me that much, but it’s definitely a bite out of the wallet.
Anyway, remember that, if you pick up Dead 2 Rites, kindly leave a review.