{"id":987,"date":"2015-09-20T11:19:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T18:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/?p=987"},"modified":"2015-10-16T09:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T16:07:11","slug":"cover-reveal-for-white-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"Cover Reveal for White Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"White<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the\u00a0cover for White Sky<\/em>, the first volume of In the Shadow of the She-Wolf<\/em>.\u00a0The cover was\u00a0ready some time ago,\u00a0and it’s the final copy edits that have ended up taking more time than I’d anticipated.\u00a0I’m rather surprised at how many little things I’ve found that I want to tweak in a manuscript that has already been\u00a0pored\u00a0over countless times, over a span of many years.\u00a0(Maybe I shouldn’t<\/em> be surprised, considering how\u00a0much of a\u00a0perfectionist\u00a0I am!) \ud83d\ude2e<\/p>\n

One thing that’s made it\u00a0tricky is trying to\u00a0approach the edits as if the book were written by someone else, and putting on that last polish — clearing up\u00a0spots that\u00a0could be even smoother or clarifying small details — without trying to change the author’s\u00a0style.\u00a0Repeatedly trying to update the manuscript to match the\u00a0growth and evolution of my\u00a0style is what put me in danger of spending my entire life\u00a0writing and rewriting the same book in the first place(!), so there had to be a place to draw a line.\u00a0To\u00a0find that balance,\u00a0I’m certainly trying to\u00a0make the book the best it can be, but I’m also endeavoring to respect the younger version of myself who wrote it. As I once mentioned\u00a0here, I believe you have to look at it like an artist who can show off their paintings and remark that some were done in their\u00a0blue phase or\u00a0their abstract phase — which they’ve moved on from — and\u00a0still be proud of those paintings and the way they\u00a0reflect that stage of their journey as an artist.<\/p>\n

Having this book published by our own small press has of course given me full control over\u00a0the cover design, which is something I’d never imagined having, since most publishers don’t give authors any say in the matter.\u00a0 After years of visualizing this novel in print and\u00a0imagining\u00a0a\u00a0typical\u00a0SF\u00a0cover (such as an image of\u00a0Jem brandishing\u00a0a Zendi gun,\u00a0with or without some of\u00a0the\u00a0other characters\u00a0behind him),\u00a0I was fully\u00a0reconciled to the fact that it might end up with a cover that’s a bit cheesy (though\u00a0I’d\u00a0say some SF covers are cheesy in a\u00a0pretty cool way!)\u00a0 With the issue\u00a0in my own hands,\u00a0I chose\u00a0not to go with something that screams SF, but\u00a0to use a more elegant image\u00a0that\u00a0might be equally appropriate\u00a0for literary fiction,\u00a0since I\u00a0think that’s actually a better representation of the final incarnation of the book.<\/p>\n

If it were a cover for a literary novel,\u00a0however, I imagine\u00a0it\u00a0probably wouldn’t\u00a0include the wolf\u00a0face, only the photo.\u00a0The shadowy wolf mask represents the entire novel — like a\u00a0brand —\u00a0and it\u00a0appears on all three\u00a0covers (in different colors).\u00a0So although I’d originally envisioned more of a large shadow figure looming behind the main image on the cover, when I came up with that idea I realized it would\u00a0work well for a book in three volumes, helping to tie the cover images\u00a0together.\u00a0I’m quite happy with\u00a0the end result, and I believe it\u00a0does have the clean, elegant feel I was going for.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the\u00a0cover for White Sky, the first volume of In the Shadow of the She-Wolf.\u00a0The cover was\u00a0ready some time ago,\u00a0and it’s the final copy edits that have ended up taking more time than I’d anticipated.\u00a0I’m rather surprised at how many … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction-fantasy","category-thoughts-on-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1009,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/1009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}