Cover Art

When I visited fellow blogger Andrew Leon over at StrangePegs yesterday, I had absolutely no idea that I was going to be treated to some fantastic art.  To clarify, he has an amazing looking cover for a manuscript he intends to publish that is not done by a professional artist (an artist who is known in the business for doing such things and charges who knows how much for it).  The author/artist who did Andrew's cover is Rusty Webb of The Blutonian Death Egg blog.

Just as a disclaimer, I want to say that I'm thinking Rusty's rates are pretty darn affordable and I suspect it has something to do with him being an ultra-nice guy.

Anyway...this got me to thinking about cover art and how important it is to have stuff on your cover that grabs the eye.   Let's take a look at a bunch of covers here:

First up is the cover for Andrew's work that is coming out.  

Okay...my gut reaction... Holy crap... I can't believe that this is a cover not put out by a Publishing House.

Here are the things that make my eyes spin:

1) The letters on the title are incredible. They are scary and draw my eye so effectively in that yellowish paint that I have to know what this story is about.

2) The ominous dark clouds behind the letters.  First it sets off the title beautifully. Second it scares the bejeezus out of me which I think is the reaction that one wants with this type of book.

3) The house looks lonely, forlorn, rundown, and well haunted.  And that makes it look terrifying. I'm thinking that this scene captures the exact essence of Halloween night. Wow.

Okay... Now I'm going to look at the cover for Rusty's own novella and comment about what I think of it.

First off...I've never been a fan of yellow but I think it works here.  I'm kind of in Michael Whelan's camp when it comes to the color yellow (he doesn't like it as a dominant color and neither do I).  However, yellow is loud...it screams... and that's exactly what I think is needed here and Rusty honed in upon it exactly.  Did I notice Rusty's brilliance when he debuted this cover? I thought it was pretty darn good, but not stunning like the one he did for Andrew.  So yeah, Andrew's cover is better in my opinion and is what prompted me to do this post.

Okay, next I'm going to look at a cover Patrick Dilloway designed on his blog for one of his self-published books.  Patrick is a hugely talented writer.  I read Where You Belong and gave it five stars.  But is he an artist? Hell no.  Take a looksee for yourself.

Patrick designed this cover for an upcoming project and it was one of two that we could kind of help him choose between on his blog.  Honestly though, a choice between this and the other is kind of like a choice between stale bread and a week-old biscuit. 

This is one of the reasons why I wanted a publisher. I had/have no talent to design a cover were I to self-publish.  Additionally, I don't really have a budget for it and I'm just going to say that this cover is kind of ugly.  I mean it's just a woman with a mask on looking down at her boobs and then the title sandwiched between her cleavage.  My thoughts when I saw this were, "If I self-publish, my cover will look like this and that just sucks."

Based exclusively off of this cover, I wouldn't buy this book. I know they say, "Don't judge a book by its cover," and I try not to, but yeah...it's hard to do.  I hope that Patrick goes with another cover or get's Rusty to do one (I strongly urge him to speak with Rusty).

Here's the cover for Where You Belong.  Same thing is going on here.  The book has so many awesome characters, so many cool scenes, locations from Arizona to New York, to Las Vegas to the frickin' Grand Canyon.  And the two men and one woman that are spoken of prominently in this book are absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.  So what kind of cover do we get?  Boring.

Yes, that's a coat hanger and a window and some sunlight and some faded curtains.  O.o

I don't really know what I'm supposed to feel when I look at this cover.  Maybe that Where You Belong deserves a better cover treatment than this.  Again, I urge Mutt to speak with Rusty Webb about this...like today.

Maybe he could qualify for a blog buddy discount or something.

Next up is Cindy Borgne the sci-fi authoress that brought us Vallar.  I loved Vallar...it's a damned good read (she's winning awards for it so I'm not the only one that thinks so) and her cover art is way better than Patrick's but not as good as Rusty's. 

I like this, but as I study it, the look is really computer generated.  I guess that's the way people do things these days.  However, this is way better than her first cover art. I don't want to offend her original cover artist but the original was just some red mountains, a stealth bomber, and a boy's ghostly face.  None of the elements really worked for me but I quickly moved past that and just read the book.  This at left...very eye catching and I like it.  But again...not as good as one done by Rusty Webb.

I love cover art. I possess two books by Michael Whelan that feature his incredible cover art and I've read the pages over and over to listen to his wisdom.  He, in my opinion, is the greatest cover artist to have ever lived and he's been lauded with Hugos galore, etc.  His paintings are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and when he passes, which unfortunately could happen any day, the originals will be worth millions of dollars and I will probably weep.

Michael Whelan has many things to say about cover art...he doesn't like the digital age, but most importantly, he stresses the need for the cover art to reflect the soul of the writer and he uses symbolism in all of his paintings.  I'm going to put some covers here so you can see what I'm talking about.

At left is the artist himself painting a picture of his daughter.  He does everything with paints...from watercolor, to acrylics, to oils.  Mostly though, he works in acrylic.  What a master of his craft.  Sigh.

I had a dream once when I was much younger that I wanted to meet Mr. Whelan and have him do a cover for a book I wrote. I know that will never happen.

The shape of Arkady's legs is meant to echo the fallen towers of Isaac Asimov's book.

He went with the ruins of a flying city to go against the grain of the flying city being so common in science-fiction.

Two books, The Snow Queen, and the Summer Queen.  Each symbol in the hats relates to something that happens in the book.  There is nothing present in the pictures that is not essential or at least covered in some part in the novel.  Pretty cool huh?

Anyway, this ends my post on cover art.  I hope you enjoyed it.

A Chat With Cindy Borgne-The Author of VALLAR

I loved Cindy Borgne's debut novel entitled VALLAR. And you know what, there are some real perks that come with keeping a blog, and one of them is that you can actually ask the author questions (especially when they are as open to questions as Cindy is). And anyone that follows my blog knows that I question everything...so this really shouldn't be a surprise. First off is my review:

I finished this book today and I must say, I thought it was an outstanding debut. I gave it four stars instead of five because there are a few places in the book where a word is needed and not included or a term is misused. However, editing without the benefit of a publisher behind you can be an extremely daunting task. As it stands, VALLAR is quite an achievement.

Cindy's world is as authentic as they come. She knows Mars down to the names of the canyons and how little wind it would take to start a red dust storm on this mysterious fourth planet. Adding to the mystery, Cindy has created a future in which two corporate giants battle over the fate of a mine and the one that ends up doing the most monstrous inhuman acts is ironically the one that desires to return to earth the most. I find this fascinating because earth is at the heart of humanity (and by being a monster) this guy really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near it. Maybe this is a subtle statement on the author's part in that Beacon knows he's a monster and wants to reclaim his humanity.

The voice of Ian Connors is strong in this book. He's the sixteen year-old protagonist and I envisioned him as looking like the kid named Ryan in two Smallville episodes. In the episodes that I'm referring to, Ryan has been experimented upon by a Dr. Mengele-type person in a laboratory and had a tumor created inside his brain that gives him psychic ability. Superman kind of adopts him as a little brother and Ryan eventually dies from this while Clark is with him. I have to say...I cried at the end of this. I loved the Ryan character...here's a YouTube video so you can see Ryan:

I see a lot of parallels between Ryan and Cindy's Protagonist. Ian is a protagonist that we can cheer for as he breaks away from the singular military purpose to which he was created and shackled and uses all of his powers to help the woman with whom he is in love. His sacrifice becomes shocking as he loses his best friend and almost his own life for a person that he knows only from his dreams. Luckily, she seems to share his passion so, at the heart of Vallar is a love story.

This book easily stands by itself but also begs a sequel. I expect that Cindy will be letting us know more about Nate and his recovery (he had horrific things done to him) and also there are hints of a new evil bad guy that is rising amidst the ranks of Marscorp (the organization of all evilness). Perhaps we can have some more information about the planet Hinun as well for it intrigues me (and I'm sure it will have this effect on other readers).

The action in the book is pretty much non-stop. If this were going to be adapted into a movie, it would require a significant CGI team. But it doesn't get overwhelming. There are plenty of emotional breaks and even though the novel is told in first person, Ian's ability to project himself psychically and to see outside his own body through portals in the future, allow for many more stimuli that would normally not be available in the context of a book that adhered with a strict first-person point-of-view.

Now without further adieu...the Q & A:

1) Why did you choose Mars as your setting as opposed to some other planet in the solar system for your book?

Several things in my story grew from tiny seeds or from twisting things around. I’ve been working on this story for years and things just evolved. Next thing I knew, I was on Mars. Okay, not exactly.

Let me try and explain further. Before I had a plot, I only had the character of Ian Connors, the psychic. At first, I wrote stories about him on a future Earth. Then I did some experimenting with the story and wrote a few chapters with him on Mars. It wasn’t as easy because I had to deal with the limitation of Mars such as if anyone goes outside they must be in a spacesuit. However, I liked the challenge because it added more complications, dangers and going to Mars was a way of taking the reader to a strange place. Mars makes sense as a stepping stone if humans are going to further explore space, so I continued with the story there. Also there are certain things that happen in VALLAR that can only happen on Mars.

2) Why did you make Ian only sixteen years of age? Also any specific reason for making your protagonist male as opposed to female?

I’ve experimented with Ian being different ages, even up to age thirty. I ended up going with sixteen because it adds to his innocence and ties in with the father/son relationship that develops in the story. If he was older, his desire to have a father wouldn’t make as much sense.

These days there are so many books about female protagonists. I like to be original and wanted to do something different.

3) Why did you choose to write VALLAR in first person point-of-view as opposed to say, third person point-of-view?

I wrote some scenes with this story in third person, but I ended up going with first because I liked the voice better. It sounded more personal. First person helps me get inside the mind of the character. This led to the story being written in a way that lets the reader discover surprises and other things through Ian’s eyes.  

4) Scientists like Carl Sagan believe that there is a kind of dance that science-fiction does with science, i.e., one kind of circles around the other. Your novel is set 100 years into the future. Do you think that earthlings will be able to reach Mars given the way things are going now in that time period? (My note==> not sure where I got 100 years either hmmmm.)

I’m not sure how you got the idea it was 100 years in the future since I don’t have any dates in the book. My latest blurb says that Earth abandoned the colonies one hundred years after they had been there, but it doesn’t say when they arrived. I decided to let readers speculate as to the year and left it out on purpose. At one time I was going to make the year 2150. I think earthlings could be capable of reaching Mars in 100 years, however, I don’t think the effort will be there. It’s hard to justify the cost with our current economy and other problems in the world.  

5) Do you think you will keep your sequel to Vallar PG-13 or do you think we can expect some sexy scenes in the future?

This is a tough question because some of my readers consider VALLAR to be a young adult book. I can tell that you did not view it that way. It’s one of those books that’s on the edge of young adult. This sort of thing has always been a subject of controversy with young adult books too. How far does one go? Decisions, decisions…. personally I’d like to go for steamy, yet tastefully done. I’m not sure if it will turn R-rated yet. Most likely I will get reader opinions on this because I don’t want to disappoint.

6) You use sites on Mars (like the Noctis Labyrinthis) to stage incredibly dramatic scenes. However, I'm thinking that other locations might have been equally cool...say Olympus Mons which is the largest mountain in the solar system. Do you plan on using additional locations on Mars in the sequels and if so, can you give us a glimpse of a particular scene that you've played out in your head that may be super cool?

There will probably be one scene at the southern polar cap that will involve ice. It’s hard to say much more about this without giving something away. Olympus Mons could be another location. Who knows what might be inside that old volcano?  

Check out the super cool Mars Map that Cindy made for her book. It comes in really useful as a tool.

7) Now that I've read the book, the cover art is dead-on to an extremely important central area of the book. However, were there other scenes that you consulted with your cover artist or did you just let the artist pick any scene with a (surprise me and we'll see) kind of tagline?

I’m finding that people understand the cover art after they read the book. I’ve been wondering how it’s been coming across before they read it. I’m still not sure if I’m satisfied with it. The current cover art is from my first idea. I’m considering taking the ship off and expanding Ian’s face. Then with the sequel, I would have an image of Ian along with his love interest Kayla next to each other. With Indie publishing you can always try something else, and we are working on it. If you or anyone has some suggestions, please feel free to let me know.   

8) Who is your favorite character in the book and why?

Ian Connors, the main character. Sometimes people associate an ability like being psychic with a super hero, but I think Ian is far from that. His ability is useful, but it also causes him problems. He’s just a young guy trying to do the right thing and be normal, and I like this about him. I also like how his innocence gets him into trouble. On the other hand he can be stubborn against those trying to control him.  

Sonny is a close second. He represents the working man. The guy that works hard no matter how many injustices he’s suffered. He took on a life of his own and he changes a lot throughout the story. Some readers have mentioned to me that how much they like him. I might let Sonny be the main character in his own novel.

9) From your experience in writing Vallar, what advice would you give an aspiring science-fiction writer?

The best thing to do is participate in a critique group. You need about eight to ten beta readers. My favorite place is Critique Circle. You will be able to tell by the responses if you’re ready to publish or to query agents. However, there will always be someone who won’t like your story. It doesn’t mean your story is bad. It just might not be for them. It takes some experience to know the difference. Getting feedback is the main thing.

Research is important with science fiction, so you can be sure you have all your facts straight. It’s also important to be familiar with the science fiction market and what’s popular, although with the e-book boom all the book markets are changing fast. 

10) You use a villain to great effect in VALLAR. What do you think are important traits in establishing an effective antagonist?

The antagonist has to be the hardest character to get across as being realistic. One method I used was to slowly build up Admiral Beacon as the villain. In the beginning, he doesn’t seem so bad and that was done on purpose because in real life people always seem okay on the surface. 

We all have met antagonists in real life in one form or another. For Admiral Beacon, I drew on my own personal experiences with bosses. How many of us have had bosses that don’t really care about us? At one time, I worked at a place where I was a dedicated employee who had no problem going all out for them. Then for several months I had a condition that was causing me to be late for work. My uncaring boss who I thought was a friend threatened to fire me the entire time even though she was retiring in four months. She didn’t care about my pain. She only cared about herself. That’s what Beacon represents - the bosses of the world who care about their quotas more than people. So for your antagonist, build them from real life examples. 

THE AUTHOR

You can buy VALLAR at 

Amazon for the Kindle

At Cindy's own website

And of course on Cindy's blog