Tag: novel

So, I Was Messing Around With Book Cover Ideas. . .

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Hello there, everyone. I’m back with a quasi-update about how things are going with my debut novel, y’know, editing and all that. Last year, I wrote about the trials of editing, and this year, I’ll have even more editing to talk (complain) about. In fact, I just posted something about how I was exited to jump into the next draft and how it (hopefully) won’t take as long. (Seriously, I hope it won’t take as long. But who am I kidding, really?)

Filled with the giddy excitement that this thing might actually be done soon, I was brainstorming about the cover. They tell people not to judge a book by its cover, but people TOTALLY DO. I mean, I do it. We all do it. There’s nothing wrong with that, either. In the past, I never really thought about my posters or covers for albums and stuff, but recently noticed that the projects with better covers went more places than those projects whose covers sucked. So really, your cover, which is really like a poster for your book/cd, etc, is HELLA IMPORTANT.

As with anything, I first try to think about what I like. So, what covers do I like of fantasy books? I don’t know why, but I’m more into the retro/adventure type covers. It might be because this is the first epic fantasy book I ever read, but the original cover for the The Elfstones of Shannara is awesome. And so is the one for The Sword of Shannara. Just three people on the front during some cool scene of the book. They even did this for the original cover of The Crystal Shard. Take a look:

covers_theee_people standing
I like that old-school text, too.

They also did this for some of Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis’ Dragonlance: Chronicles books, but for these, instead of looking heroic, the people were just STANDING THERE. They’re not even adventuring. They’re literally just posing for a picture. That’s great (and kinda hilarious).

covers_Dragonlance_retro
Fine Christmas card photos.

Modern covers are all right, although the trend right now seems to be just like one person in the center, with a weapon, or a hood, turned away from us or toward us. Modern covers of Dragonlance are more or less the same, except now urr’body’s GOT THEIR KNEES BENT:

covers_Dragonlance_KNEESjpg
See? Even the horse is doing it.

Why is that? Something about having your knee up that evokes power or strength? Or do they just really love Captain Morgan? I’m going with the latter theory.

Going back to retro designs, take a look at these old Redwall covers, which are BADASS. In all honesty, has there ever been a bad Redwall cover? They are all so cool. Of course, I could spend an entire blog post just going over the Redwall covers, so I’ll restrain myself. But really:

Redwall_covers
Look at how cool these are!

So, all right, we’ve gone over what I like, but what does this mean for the cover of my book? I’ve said in previous posts that I was going to self-publish this thing, and in doing so, would need a badass cover to break out of the trend of self-pub books having ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE covers. But before I think too hard about a cover for a self-pub, I’m also thinking of trying to get a small press to pick this up. In that case, I don’t really have much choice (I think), but we’ll see. (I’m back and forth on this, I’ll probably write something on this in the future).

So what should the cover of my book be? To give you a little taste of what the book is, it’s heroic fantasy that is both whimsical and adult. Think The Princess Bride or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with a bit more curse words. It’s intended to be read like a fairy tale, with silly, magical creatures and high points of adventure! It’ll have those flowery block letters to start off chapters and etc, etc, etc. So what kind of cover would this book need?

It would no doubt be fun to do something that calls back to those old times, but, unfortunately, I need a cover that will both POP AND SELL. No one’s going to appreciate your homage-cover if the only person getting the joke is you, y’know? Since my book is adventure comedy, I might be able to lampoon any style I want, modern or old. But will a girl in a t-shirt with a goofy wizard and either a knight or archer standing there be enough to get people to check it out? Or should they be staring at something off-screen, with bent knees and swords at the ready? Or should they be like Drizzt do’Urden and be fighting on the cover?

Covers_drizztfighting
Seriously, this guy fights a lot.

I’ve thought about it this a bunch, and while I go back and forth about it, this hasn’t stopped me from doodling out concepts. There’s just so many ways to go, and in my never-ending pursuit to be a masochist and TRY EVERY AVENUE EVER, I GIMP’ed this little proof of concept picture, which is a hack-job from at least six different sources:

ADH_COVER_Messing_JPEG

The sky, ground, and rock are random Google searches. The city back there is made from a picture of Oia, Greece and a clock tower from some other city. The girl in front is from a Hildebrandt Brothers’ painting of Eowyn and the Witch-king. The bald part of the wizard’s head is Bruce Willis’ head, and so on.

And sure, this does look interesting, and DOES kind of look like a fantasy cover. And since I apparently had nothing to do the other today, I spent a bunch of hours drawing over it and creating this. Another proof-of-concept test, trying to turn it into something a little more comedic/funny:

ADH_COVER_DOOLE_with_outline
The rock looks pretty great. . .

Of course, the scary creature looks absolutely not scary and some of the drawing is off. That’s all right, this was just a test. I have a dude who I’ve contacted about the art who is way better than me and might be able to make something like this really stand out.

But be honest book fans, would this cover be interesting to you? If it were drawn a little more cartoony and better?

I understand that book covers should do a couple things. Explain your whole novel in one image. In essence, it’s about a group of heroes trying to get to a city, but they’re being stopped by deadly shit on the way. (But does the cover convey they’re trying to GET to the city? Maybe a road leading to it would help?) Does it say anything about the characters? Hmm…their facial expressions could probably say more. Does the city in the back at peak interest? I noticed that almost every cover of “The Wizard of Oz” has the Emerald City in the background, because it’s so damn important. Not to say that my book is like “The Wizard of Oz”, but. . .holy shit, guys, it might be just a little bit. O___O

So what do you think? Please once again note that this is a ROUGH DRAFT and not the final thing, but is this design interesting? What would you like to see in a book cover for a story like this? What do you like on book covers in general?

If all else fails, I’ll just have them all bend their knees.

Stay tuned for more updates!

-Casey

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OTHER GREAT LINKS TO THIS TOPIC:

Debut Novel Editing Update: January 25, 2014 (01.25.2014)
“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update: September 26, 2013 (09.26.2013)
“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update: July 20, 2013 (07.21.2013)
“A Distant Horn” Update: May 9, 2013 (03.09.2013)

Debut Novel Editing Update – January 25, 2014

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*written very late, posted later during regular human hours*

Hey there everyone, how are you all doing? I was just laying in bed, yawning my ass off and flipping through a draft of my debut novel when the genius idea to write a novel editing update came to me. Inspiration sure does have a way of calling upon you whenever it likes, even if you’re comfortably snuggled under some heavy blankets and feeling just fine. Anyway, I’ll make this quick so I can get back to said bed and finally get some shut-eye.

So, updates, all right. I have to say I’m a little embarrassed to be coming here, especially since I announced so grandly that I would release this book November 1 of last year. And, well, that didn’t happen. So I guess I’m here to tell you that there is a new release date, but I have no idea when that will be. I’m guessing sometime before 2099. Perhaps I will, I don’t know, FINISH IT COMPLETELY before I go off spouting when it will come out, because, with leading such a busy life full of projects, I cannot properly forecast any releases.

What I DO know, however, is that I am just about ready to go in for the third pass. I wrote this beast way back in 2010, and then last year, I read it, then probably read it again, the WENT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING and changed a bunch, read it again, and then again, and, seriously, AGAIN. After so much reading and editing, I was quite honestly knackered and couldn’t come back to it. I’ve explained before that how unanticipated the amount of work was, sending me through the editorial wringer. Editing this book is probably more epic of an undertaking than my characters’ crazy adventure. I’d take a quest through dangerous territory any day. At least then I’d be outside, instead of holed up in the corner, fearing for life from the huge stacks of papers around me.

Update_pic_1
I knew I shoulda gone paperless!

So as I said, I’ve had my space and am ready to come back (seriously, book, you were smothering me!), and this time, which a BUNCH of notes. In my mess of files, there is one that has EIGHTEEN notes about what needs to be changed or altered. Some things need to be reiterated a little bit. One minor character has to have her personality completely changed (which will, of course, alter fucking EVERYTHING). Another little scene has to be added that will serve multiple purposes. (I’ll tell you now that all those new scenes I wrote for the second draft I’m going to cut out again, which is fucking GREAT). One scene will be glossed over, and so on. It’s going to be a lot of work, but maybe not as much to freaking kill me like last time.

What’s good is that I finally, FINALLY, found out a way to rid of the tonal problems in the middle. (Remember the tonal graph I made?) So yay for that! Just took a year of hard thinking. Funny thing is, the solution to the problem came about when I was spacing out at my old market job. But really, once those tonal issues are fixed, this thing’ll be tonally consistent, which means that I will finally have the confidence to hand it off to some beta readers and see what they think!

Update_pic_2
Confirmed to be one of my betas.

Anyway, it’s very exciting to have everything kind of falling into place. Sometimes I feel stories are like gears, or, like, multiple thingies that have those gear-like teeth (this is the sleep deprivation talking). And for whatever reason, the teeth won’t fit together and they don’t lock. But then, after a while, they DO lock, and perhaps you didn’t know what you were exactly looking for but when you see it you recognize it. And I always had reservations about that middle part. In every single draft, even when my friends who’d read it already said it wasn’t a big deal, that middle part had always bugged me. It just didn’t MESH with the rest of it, y’know? BUT NOW IT DOES, BAY-BEE, and once that’s done, then I can give it off and then get it one step closer to getting it to ALL OF YOU GALS AND GUYS, which is, really, the most exciting part. (And the scariest, too).

Of course, there’s the whole “self-publish” or “small press” discussion in my mind, too, but that is really a whole blog post in itself. So more on that later maybe.

I guess all I wanted to say is that I am getting closer and closer to making this thing as best as it can be. Making it its purest self that it can be. And that I’m excited to get it all out to you sometime. If not later this year, then the next year, but hopefully no longer than that (seriously, the book ITSELF seems excited to get out there!)

But for now, sleepy time. Maybe I’ll work on it tomorrow. Or just nap. Yeah, a nap sounds better. Better books are written when you’re sleeping, right?

Until next time,

-Casey

Update_pic_3

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OTHER GREAT LINKS RELATED TO THIS TOPIC:

“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update: September 26, 2013 (09.26.2013)
“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update: July 20, 2013 (07.21.2013)
“A Distant Horn” Update: May 9, 2013 (03.09.2013)

“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update – September 26, 2013

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Hey everybody, what’s happening? I’m in that weird stage between not wanting to work on stuff, not wanting to watch anything, not really wanting to chat with anyone, and trying to stay up even though I am yawning like crazy. Seems to be the perfect time to write a NOVEL EDITING UPDATE!

So, where are we? A month and a half ago, I had just finished my first pass at cleaning up the vomit-draft of my debut novel, “A Distant Horn”. I spoke about how I was gonna print that sucker out by the end of July and read it line for line and mark it up with a red pen. Well, I can tell you now that I have indeed done that! So yay, brownie points for that!

Even though I’d JUST read through the whole thing, I still didn’t feel like I was done yet (ahhhh hell nah), so, like, at 4 in the morning one day, I made a self-published proof copy on Createspace (including a terrible, generic cover), and ordered it before I realized it was probably a bad idea. To help me see the story as fresh, I decided to “search and replace” all character and location names with completely new ones. If I was reading about different people, I might be able to see things a little differently. (The only name I couldn’t change was the town of “Led”, which, upon first attempts, changed EVERY “led” to whatever the hell name I had cooked up, leading to words like “stumbled” and “grumbled” to be “stumbGondor” or “grumbGondor.” My 11-pm self might have caught that, but my 4 AM self? Not a chance.)

Do I care enough to fix them?

Anyway, the proof came a couple days later (early!) and I started reading it right away. I felt like I NEEDED to have the story in my hands, in a BOOK form, in the font it’s going to be in (Garamond, please!). You can look at stuff on screens all you want, but you won’t know what it looks like until you have that shit right in front of you. And this time, while reading it, I would not do so much of a “prose” pass, but more of an overall tone/enjoyment pass. How was the flow? Was I having a good time? Was I not having a good time in some parts? Does it ever get boring? Is it polished enough to be presentable?

When studios test television shows, they’ll have people watch them with these little dials. The dials, which people move either up (for happy) or down (for not happy) throughout the episode, represent people’s enjoyment. This way, producers and studios can see exactly in real time where the audience is having a good time and where the show might be lacking. Does the quality dip here? And if it dips, then why? Well, since I seem to be a crazy freaking perfectionist (and have a lot of time), I DID THIS MYSELF by chapter. Let’s take a look!

As you can see, both the “quality of writing” and the “enjoyment” lines (I forgot which ones are which) dip around the middle before going back up to being fun again. Even though none of my friends cared about this when they’d read it, I think I might have the middle a littttttle too dark than is probably acceptable in the current story. The change in tone kind of felt like watching the goofy Batman and Robin, then switching to The Dark Knight for a second, then back to Batman and Robin. Tonally, it kind of messes things up. So I’ll be looking forward to CHANGING THAT TOO, when I go through this thing for a third time. (Note: My book is hopefully better than Batman and Robin.) But seriously, the story got a little nasty in the middle there. Maybe I put out all my editing frustrations into it, I dunno. Either way, I traveled that narrative and tonal path and know it wasn’t right, so yeah, at least I know it’s wrong.

Well this is getting pretty long, so I guess I should totally wrap it up. I could keep going on forever and ever, but you probably have your own novels to get writing (so get typing!). So yeah, I’m sort of avoiding the big cave-troll in the room here, but I think, there were, on a couple occasions, places where I said this book would be released November 1, 2013. Hmm. . .

When I saw Timothy Zahn speak about “Star Wars: Scoundrels” last year, he said the publishing houses take about nine months after a manuscript is delivered to find all the typos and do all the cleaning and get the artwork, etc, and publish the thing. I thought to myself Hey, nine months, that sounds doable! I mean, think about it, it’s a whole NINE months! But then, as I started editing, I realized that writers’ primary jobs is WRITING. And, in addition to that, they have editors and all that junk that do the crappy, typo-hunting stuff for them (at least that’s how it works, right?) So, nine months for me isn’t really enough time to finish everything because, y’know, I have a full-time day job that isn’t writing about fun goofy adventure stuff. (At least not yet :P)

As seen here, Timothy Zahn’s day job is actually “astronaut”

I realized, that over the course of nine months, I will have spent basically 1710 hours either at work or driving to and from. That equals basically TWO MONTHS AND ELEVEN DAYS taken out of my editing schedule. I mean, sure, I didn’t really start editing until May (instead of February. . .) but I’MNOTTALKINGABOUTTHATRIGHTNOW. I guess what I’m trying to say is I won’t finish this thing in whatever 30-some-odd days are left. The way I see it, you guys are all my friends I’ve invited to a dinner party, and my novel represents the homemade burgers (or chicken or noodles) I am cooking. My responsibility, as a cook and friend, is to make sure the chicken and burgers are cooked thoroughly, lest you get all sick and hate me forever and never come over for more dinner parties. As much as a cook can’t serve you semi-pink burgers, nor can I, as an author, deliver to you a semi-cooked novel. Gotta make this sure this book “al dente”, y’know what I’m saying?

Anyway, onto pass number three (million!) Thanks for being interested and patient. The adventure will come, I promise! Let’s shoot for 2014!

-Casey

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“A Distant Horn” Novel Editing Update – July 20, 2013

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**note: The featured image is not the official cover. I Googled some fantasy stuff and made it in like 5 minutes. Looks kinda cool, though. . .***

Hello there, everyone! It has come to my attention that I have, as of this year’s past six and a half months, written only FIVE articles to post on here. I do mean to write more, but a certain DEBUT NOVEL seems to be taking up all my time. (Like, seriously, all my time!) To not disappear completely, I’ll write something here and tell you how the whole editing process is going.

Editing! . . .yay . . .

Over the past couple weeks (or months…or years?), I have made massive headway on my revisions to the original text, which was written for National Novel Writing Month 2010. That’s right, I wrote 50,000 words in twenty-something days, which means that pretty much all the original text is unusable. What’s that quote? “Marry in haste, repent at leisure”? The writing equivalent would not doubt be “Write in haste, re-write the whole fucking thing at leisure”. In addition to writing a like Cheetah on catnip, I really had no idea what the in-world setting was. I was just flying by the seat of my pants. The world mostly wouldn’t be established until the second book which (which I wrote the next year),which meant that I had to go back and FIX everything. You’d never guess, but if you’re backstory changes, so does a lot of your current story. (Like, everything. . .)

As of two nights ago, I finished my first pass of the entire novel. Well, what I mean to say is that I reached the end of the original text. I still have to go back and add in some SEVEN new little scenes which are either new or are complete re-writes. But that shan’t take long. I’ve contractually obligated myself to have a final, printed, double-spaced, and bound copy of the draft by the end of this month. If I fail to do so, I owe my roommate twenty bucks. (8 bottles of Charles Shaw wine…) After that, it’ll be onto the second pass, where I’ll read the whole damn thing AGAIN, but this time off the printed page.

Hopefully with less edits.

After fixing the second pass, then it’s off to a couple pre-determined beta readers, which’ll be very exciting, for instead of just rambling about the book to friends, they’ll actually get to read it and see how it is. It’ll be good to finally have some objective eyes looking at it, too.

If there’s one thing I have learned about editing/revising a previous work, it’s that it’s an IMMENSE amount of work. Sometimes even more work than actually doing the initial writing itself. I feel like I went into this process with the domestic-care-metaphor assumptions of straightening up a room. Just a little messy. Straighten this up, straighten this out, right? Well, as I started cleaning, I soon realized I was gonna have to build a whole fucking addition to the house. And then I realized that my house wasn’t just a simple one, but three separate ones, and I need to plan and build bridges between them that were structurally sound and wouldn’t crumble under their own weight. The amount of work, to be completely honest, kind of blindsided me.

In order to help me with the crazy task of planning the set-ups, pay-offs, and callbacks of an estimated 180,000-word trilogy, I wrote a long, detailed summary of all three books. The super-summary itself turned out to be some 6,000 words. And that’s not including the some 70-year chronology I included, that detailed the backstory of the entire thing and all the characters since birth and. . .hey, what are you doing with that straight jacket?

J.R.R. Tolkien is known for saying that The Lord of Rings, the massive sequel to the shorter The Hobbit, “grew in the telling”. While I’ve always let my stories and music/all creative stuff take a somewhat organic route to forming (because I am a creative hippie), I had no idea that the novel I started writing for fun in November 2010 would EXPLODE to be a full-fledged trilogy with a long backstory. But the most interesting thing about that fact is that the story CAN’T be anything else. If it wanted to be a short, simple story, then it would be. The story’s really calling the shots here, I’m just writing it all down. I feel like the story itself knows what is best for it, and all I can do is obey its commands.

“Write a new introduction for the company’s arrival to Falkenbir, or else!”

This practice of obeying the creative work reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, this one from Rammstein’s lead guitarist Richard Kruspe. Here he’s talking about music, but I think it works for any type of creative work: “You are part of a machinery, and the music lets you know where it wants to go, which direction it wants to take. . .It is the case that when you have a song, it lets you know if the song should be stately, aggressive or rhythmic – whatever. It always tells you, and when you recognize that, when you are sensitized to this and recognize this, you can’t do anything wrong. We [Rammstein] got this wrong in the beginning. We thought we should try to press into a certain direction. You can’t do that. You can only follow.”

And follow, indeed! Even if it means re-routing your entire story and writing thousands of words of new material (which also means throwing away thousands of words of old material), you gotta listen to your story so it can be the best it can be. I probably should have been writing in “A Distant Horn” while writing this, but oh well, this was a nice, and most welcome, break.

Oh yeah, and the book is about a perilous quest to find a great warrior that can defeat a ancient, super-evil Lich. Didn’t think I had mentioned that yet.

Stay tuned for more updates!

-Casey

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“A Distant Horn” Update: May 9, 2013

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Hello everyone, just checking in here with some news about my upcoming self-published debut novel, “A Distant Horn”. Don’t worry, I am still planning to release it on November 1st, although my progress with the editing is going a lot slower (repeat: A LOT SLOWER) than I earlier anticipated. That’s all right, though. I was pretty good in college about spending entire days in the library or the editing bay to meet fast-approaching deadlines. So far with this project, I haven’t had to do anything like that, but have been showing it a bit more attention lately (instead of giving it to those pesky music projects).

As of now, I am some 29,000 words into my first pass of the edit, which is pretty much half way. If I want to do ANOTHER PASS (which my perfectionist self DOES want to do, ugh), then I am 25 percent done with just doing passes before handing it off to my trusty editor friend, who’ll hopefully point out all the typos and none of the plot holes. 25 percent, yikes.

I bet you probably guessed this already, but let me tell you, editing a book is no easy task. Each of my James Bond Countdown articles averages around 2,500-3,000 words, despite my best efforts to cut them down (just love those movies, I guess). Those roughly take me half a day to edit, clean up, and come up with pictures. While I won’t have to find pictures for “A Distant Horn,” it’s around 57,000 words, which means it’s like TWENTY James Bond articles, which is a HUGE amount of work. For some reason I thought editing a book was going to be easy. Just fix a thing here, fix a sentence there. Oh, but wait, I forgot, I CHANGED THE ENTIRE BACKSTORY. Oops!

The work is fine in itself, but a lot of times when I have free time now, I want to do absolutely nothing at all. After your day job, you don’t really want to come home to that unfinished riff or that unedited chapter, that has been waiting there all day with an expectant look because you didn’t work on it YESTERDAY, either. Sometimes you just wanna cook your sweet potato and watch “Frasier” all night, you know what I’m saying? And despite my temporary disinterest in doing this work, I know that I HAVE TO if I want the end result to be as good as it can. It’s like being your own boss, but the only worker is you, and lazy, and doesn’t wanna do anything.

I’ll start editing after this episo. . .season, I swear.

So the clock is ticking for “A Distant Horn”. I have 175 days until my projected release of the book (thank goodness I didn’t make any more promises this year). Will I be able to make it? All I have to do is finish the first pass, do the second pass, draw up the map nicely, give it off to an editor, go over it again, make sure everything is perfect, then hand it off to my graphic designer friend, get a cover from the artist (is he still in the USA?), make the pdf, order a couple proofs to see if its good and then publish it. TOO EASY!

Thank goodness I at least have the first draft of the map, which I decided to draw up at work over the course of a couple days. Marion, the crazy, fantastic world in which “A Distant Horn” and it’s two sequels (DON’T EVEN WANNA THINK ABOUT THOSE ATM!) was finally being realized. It’ll have to be re-drawn on the computer, of course (hire someone to do that?), but I think it’s a pretty nice first draft. Check it out and stay tuned!

Click me to enlarge!

Oh, and please, wish me luck. I’ll need it!

Sincerely,

Casey Poma