Game Over: Birth of a Cover

So. I had a novel ready to go. Now came time for the part of the process that I am completely and totally unable to even fake: the cover.

Fortunately, I know Christopher Gugliotti and, far more important, he knows I have information on him which certain foreign governments would be very interested to learn about. Which means he's "happy" to make me some pretty covers. (For a fee, of course.)

I knew the rough elements I wanted on the cover, but there were so many, that I wasn't sure it'd work without being too busy—and the prevailing design trend in YA these days seems to lean more towards the minimalist side of things. What's more, to be effective, a cover really needs to be recognizable at thumbnail size, since that's how big (or, I suppose, how small) most people will first see it on Amazon.

So, with some trepidation, I start. I ask a photographer I know to snap a photo of a school crossing sign.

photo by Melissa Wiley

(Why are these adults going to a grade school? Why aren't kids shown on the sign? For saftey reasons? They're just silhouettes, for pete's sake. Are kids more difficult to properly silhouette than adults? And who are these adults? Are they teachers? Can we see some I.D.? Also, is the man carrying a purse? I make no judgments, I'm just asking.) 

Thusly armed, I proceed to use my advanced knowledge of composition to sketch out a rough design for Chris.

be awed. be very awed.

I sent both things to him and about five minutes later he replies, along with a note saying "something like this?"

Yes. Something very much like that.

Okay. So now let's add the text.

Hm. I love the yellow filter Chris put over the entire thing, but the title and name placement aren't really working. Let's nuke my original design and swap the text elements. And let's go with a font for the title that says "computer."

Way better. Not loving the plainness of the font for my name, though, even though I've noticed most YA books this year are using a sans serif font for their cover elements. Let's try the same font Chris used on my Uncivil War books.

Oh, I like that so much better. The drop shadow on the title makes a big difference. I think my name's still a tad large, though, and I don't feel like we need the Uncivil War bit—note my bold attempt at going minimalist—so let's take one more pass.

And we've got us a cover.

Game Over — a new YA novel

So I've got a new YA novel out.

As you might be able to guess from looking at the cover, it's called Game Over.

It's set in the middle of America in the middle of the previous decade. A group of friends, tired of being picked on, decide to fight back and, as will tend to happen, things get a little out of hand.

How out of hand? Well, here's how the novel opens:

The tanks rolled in just before dawn. 

People felt the rumbling from halfway across town—Ben said later that he fell out of bed, his room was shaking so much. Of course, Ben was known to exaggerate. 

Still, there was no need to exaggerate about this one—it was even more screwed up anything any of us could have imagined, and we had some great imaginations. Our little town, right in the middle of America, under siege. By our own army, sent in by our own government. Roads ripped up by tank treads, neighborhoods sealed off, electricity cut, phones tapped, bank accounts frozen, Green Berets sweeping through our backyards in the dark and a complete news blackout. 

All because of us: a bunch of computer geeks.  

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should back up and start at the beginning. The beginning of the story, way back in 2004. And the beginning of school. High school, that is. 

So...pretty much that out of hand. Which is to say, really very much so.

Why is it set in 2004? Well, because that's when I wrote it. It was the first novel I'd ever written. At that point, I'd been writing comic books professionally for about six years, and wanted to try prose. I'd written some short children's books during that time, and a series of vignettes the previous decade, and it made me curious to see if I had it in me to stretch out and tell a longer story. And when the idea to Game Over first occurred to me, it was clear it wasn't really a natural fit for the medium of comic books.

So one day I just started writing. And unlike (superhero) comics, which tend to have very definite pages counts you have to know ahead of time, before you've written the first word, with a novel you can pretty much let the story dictate how long it's going to be. So I just wrote and then I wrote and then I wrote some more. And about four months later I was surprised to realize I was on the second to last chapter and then I was done. And then what?

Well, then other projects came up, and I worked on them...and then I found myself going back to a full-time job as a staff editor and that was that for the next several years.

Until a year ago when I thought about Game Over again. I re-read it for the first time in a decade and decided that, yeah, I still liked it. So, knowing an outstanding cover artist, I got a cover for it, and had it proofread and sent it out into the world.

And here 'tis.

Tell your friends. Tell all your friends.

***

(PS: to those who understandably keep writing, asking about the next Uncivil War installment, this isn't it. But, yes, I do have the next volume in the works. I'll let you know the pub date as soon as possible.) 

Happy Gore Bunny Snuggling

Sometimes it pays to work with the right people.

Genius artist Chris Gugliotti and I are discussing a possible new project and, as it will in such circumstances, the phrase "happy gore bunny snuggling" comes up. Naturally, I mention that that's the name of my forthcoming album.

At which point Chris creates the album art.

Those lovely nails may or may not actually be mine. (They're not.)

Pushing Dinosuchus

I found this the other day—a drawing of my head with an alligator's (crocodile's?) body. Chris Gugliotti did it as part of a Pushing Daisies comic I was editing and he was drawing. I have no memory as to why he did it, but I was sure glad to see it again.

The Other Scott Peterson

Just received this portrait, out of the blue and for no good reason whatsoever, from the indefatigable and apodictic Chris Gugliotti.

The only way I could possibly love this more would be if it brought me a caramel macchiato and a winning lottery ticket. And possibly not even then.

Uncivil War: Another Birth of a Cover

So the cover process for the first Uncivil War volume was a bit arduous. Not for me, of course: I just sat back and giggled madly whenever my brilliant cover artist, Christopher Gugliotti, sent something in. I'm not sure he had the same reaction whenever he'd get a return email from me saying, "Awesome! Perfect! Good to go as is! Or...or, hey...maybe we should try..." Still, he never complained, maybe 'cuz he's just about the greatest guy in the history of ever or maybe because I gave him some of his first ever professional comic book work or maybe because I was holding his beloved dachshund, Nibbles the jedi timelord, hostage. Who can say, really? Artists are so mysterious.

Still, this time 'round, for After the Fall, it was quite a bit easier, in part because we already had the logos more or less settled, and in part because Chris had already done more than a half dozen variations on the original theme. So I pretty much just had to tell him which variation and give him the subtitle and we were good to go.

Well...almost.

Here was the original variation we decided to work from.

But we'd changed the logo (and, I think, the dimensions) since then, so we had to update those, and add the correct subtitle. And since After the Fall is a short story collection, and the stories take place in five different (former) states, we also tweaked the number of stars in the union (the blue part of the flag). I spent a few minutes thinking about what the best arrangement for the reduced number of stars would be, before realizing that Chris was going to be a much better judge of that so why was I even bothering? I was right. Chris also took it upon himself to leave one of the stars sorta kinda ghosted which I loved oh so much.

Done!

Or...hmm...maybe...hey, Googs, how would you feel about flames? You know, turning the red stripes into flames towards the bottom? What's that? You hate doing flames? Oh. Okay.

And then he did it anyway.

Oh my.

I love that guy. I'm not giving him his dog back, but I surely do love him.

Uncivil War: Birth of a Cover

So. I'd written somewhere around 30,000 words of Uncivil War and I was ready to publish the first volume. Which meant I needed a cover. Given that I have the drawing skills of a drunken sloth and no graphics program to help me out, this could present a small problem. Fortunately, I knew just the guy.

Chris Gugliotti is what ancient tribes used to call "one of the unknowable whims of the gods." I usually just call him "a studmuffin." Six of one, half dozen the other.

I'd already come up with a concept that would unify all the covers and make it immediately obvious as being part of the same series while giving us tremendous latitude to play with variations. The idea was simple: we'd use the American flag. It was perfect for the story—the best choice, thematically—and it's obviously immediately familiar and eye-catching, even at thumbnail size, and any slight alterations to it are instantly noticeable, even at thumbnail size. But where to start? What do we do with the first one?

"How do you feel about skulls?" I asked Chris.

"Are you kidding?" he replied. "I love drawing skulls!"

He wasn't exaggerarting. I got the first version a few minutes later.

I loved the skull. But we thought maybe darkening the flag would be a better way to go. While he was at it, Chris aged it up just a bit.

Obviously, we needed to flop the flag, so the blue part of the flag (the union, that is) would be in the correct position. We did that and added the titles and my name to the brighter version.

I liked the stark simplicity of this, but was afraid the text wouldn't read well enough, especially at thumbnail size, which is how most people would be seeing it for the first time. So we tried fading the stripes out. And while we were at it, we pumped up the subtitle and went with a stencil treatment.

Then I thought, duh, of course—instead of just fading the stripes out, let's having them turning into drips of blood.

Yeah, that worked. Man, does that work. Hm. Should we age it again?

I love that...but it's not right for this story. (But I'm planning on using something like it for a future volume.)

But now I was afraid the title wasn't going to be readable when it's only 1" x 1.6" on Amazon. We tried stacking it, which would enable us to make each letter larger.

Yep yep yep. So close! Brian Stelfreeze suggested having the blood stop sooner, as the red behind the black could it make hard to read the title. And while we were at it, we decided to pump the subtitle back up.

Kevin Nowlan suggested tweaking the kerning to close up the gaps between letters. We changed the color of the subtitle a few times...

...and we're done.

And there 'tis. The first volume of Uncivil War.

I'm very happy with the novel but you know how it is: even when it's part of the job and my income depends upon it, like many creators, I still have a hard time being objective about my own work...and an even harder time praising it. No such worries with the cover, however: my boy Googs hit a home run and that I'll shout from the rooftops.

Into the Thicklebit

So I've got a new webcomic.

My faithful webpixie and I have been talking about doing a webcomic for some time. The idea appealed greatly but there was the small problem of neither of us being able to draw. Well, that's not entirely true: my lovely and talented webpixie can draw a giraffe like no one's business, and her alligator ain't too shabby neither. But given that we were hoping our strip would focus on family life, those two characters didn't seem as though they were likely to quite be enough to entirely fulfill our artistic needs.

Enter the Googs.

The first time I saw one Christopher Aloysius Rizwan Weeping Deer Gugliotti, he was being very gently manhandled into the back of a state trooper's Ford. As Googs, to use the Māori's preferred name for him, ranted serenely about aliens and the federal reserve I knew as sure as eggs is eggs that one day he would draw either an insanely ultraviolent Wolverine graphic novel my good lady wife would write or her epic fantasy series featuring Laverne & Shirley.

Neither of those has come to pass. (Yet.) But in the meantime, we've got Into the Thicklebit, cowritten by the aforementioned Melissa Wiley and myself and illustrated by the impossibly talented Chris Gugliotti.

So check it out. Four out of seven cardiologists—and this is true—recommend Into the Thicklebit, as it keeps pulmonary embolisms away. (Give or take four cardiologists.)

Snikt.