What lies beneath...

Cover concepts: Phaedor in a half-spin, black Merdanti blade slashing, green eyes alight... Ean standing with Bjorn looming behind him as the Temple of the Vestals crumbles... Trell gazing out over the Sand Sea where the drachwyr fly...

Any of these would be excellent covers for Cephrael's Hand. Unfortunately, I'm not quite important enough to garner a place on Michael Whelan's schedule (his rendition of Anne McCaffrey's The Rowan was the inspiration for Alyneri). I do however have some talented friends who have helped immeasurably in putting a cover concept together. In lieu of hiring a professional graphic artist (and paying professional fees), I'm pretty happy with the cover we came up with.

There's something terribly cruel about book covers. People empirically do judge your book by its cover, even though most covers have more to do with marketing than with the content of the book. It's almost as cruel a truth as the fact that it's easy to get an agent once you have a publisher interested in your book, yet most publishers only accept manuscripts from agented authors. This is a logic that, while circular, is yet incontrovertible.

Artists are always weighing the small adulterations of their work against the price of selling it. Is it more important to have a book cover that truly reflects the material within if, in so doing, the book doesn't sell as many copies? At what point in the process does artistic integrity break? At the other end of the spectrum, you can tweak and nudge and color correct and adjust until you're blue in the face and never actually be happy with the product. That's as true for the cover art as it is for the manuscript contained within. Eventually you have to say, "Enough!" and be happy with the result. Or at least be willing to quit tinkering with it. The rest is out of your hands (and into that expensive marketing team waiting to promote your work onto the NY Times bestseller's list, right?).

Best tea for judging a book by its cover: Egyptian Chamomile

I just have to say...

I like non-conformists. I like people "who refuse to limit themselves with labels" (I totally ripped this off from the Delphian School vision statement, but I'm a graduate of that school so I'm qualified to consider myself one of those people). So much about the Fantasy genre is subject to stereotype, but as is true for most stereotypes, too often people don't look past these oversimplified concepts to see what lies beneath.

Fantasy authors have been enthralling readers since long before Arabian Nights, and Science Fiction writers, with their genius in imagining the possible out of the impossible, have driven advances in civilization as much as Science itself.

And where SF drives us to imagine a different future, a different now, Fantasy investigates entirely new worlds where magic still reigns and honor, justice and good and evil are inextricably bound within the lives of each character.

Is it any wonder that some of the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood have been SF&F? These genres give hope for the goodness of man, hope that evil will not prevail, and keep our eyes on the stars.

I like not conforming to the "typical" fantasy reader stereotype as well as the "typical" fantasy writer one. Being part of this "weird" group of people who continue to postulate new realities is a label I wear proudly.

On another note, my map is now finished. We're coming down to the final stretch of pre-production.

Best tea for ranting: Harsha with a little bit of honey

All great ideas start with a cup of tea

It's true, some writers are inspired by scenery, others by music, art, a strange encounter on the street - any number of myriad experiences (just ask a SF author what inspires him and you'll get a whole host of bizarre connections between his toaster and alien mind control). I can't say I'm inspired by tea so much as my writing seems to improve when it's present.

Even so, this blog isn't really about tea (though there may yet be many references to it). I am keeping this blog in the hopes it will prove cathartic as I head into the self-publishing process on my novel, Cephrael's Hand (in bookstores soon!)

I've never been comfortable with shameless self-promotion, though I'm happy to shamelessly promote my yoga class to new students, but it's not quite the same thing as emailing all of your friends and asking them to buy your book even if they don't particularly like the Fantasy genre or even know enough of it to suspect that Cephrael's Hand is not an explicit novel about a young boy's personal struggle with puberty.

So look for more as I forage deeper into the forest of self-publishing armed with only an internet connection and a lovely cup of Harney and Son's Bangkok (green tea with coconut, lemongrass and ginger - an appropriate tea to begin any adventure).