Terror Tree

One of four different covers done for the book cover course I'm on. I'm now awaiting feedback.

I've been learning InDesign, which I need for my book cover design course, and cursing it profusely because or despite having watched several tutorials.  Its all a bit overwhelming.

And I say that as someone who likes learning new things.  And ironically, as someone who used to do magazine design back in the day with QuarkXpress and Adobe Pagemaker.  Gosh that probably ages me.

These last few weeks have been spent compiling a list of things I have to do to get my book out.  Beside the cover design, there's also the interior layout, which I'm using Vellum to do.  Then there's learning about copyright, another book to read.  In addition, to all that there's the marketing plan, which is just about the most uncomfortable thing I'm having to get to grips with.

All of this has gotten in the way of doing much of anything else.  Hence the lack of updates.  Still, if you want to read the piece I wrote about Gerry Anderson's Fireball XL5 you can go here.

Her Brother's Keeper

Over the last few weeks I've read Larry Correia's Monster Hunter Siege, which I bought in hardback in a fit of enthusiasm, not realizing my contract would be coming to end soon.  But that's life.  Great read, and I then went back and re-read Monster Hunter Alpha, because I wanted to check out how Larry had handled his third person POV.

I then re-read Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D Simak, which was a favourite of mine from my teenage years.  And gosh that was a long time ago, but I really enjoyed the book, despite its limitations of being serialized in 1939; the story had more ideas per page than most modern novels have period.  Stephen King describes Cosmic Engineers as a terrific read, and who am I to argue with Stephen King?

After finishing those, I read Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, which was also a whole heap of fun too.  A great series that I'm glad I found, because it's outside what I would normally choose to read, but it has been real fun to get into.

So, the point of this preamble to my review of Mike Kupari's Her Brother's Keeper is that it still made a big impression on me despite me having just read a bunch of excellent books by really good authors.

What made it was when I got page 380, where he describes the unknown extraterrestrial antecedent species that has been found during an archaeological dig *cough looting of a historical repository cough*, which the brother in the title of the book is involved with.  This was so well played that I had to send Mike a message, through FaceBook, because I was so excited.

Loved this book, and can't wait for the sequel.  And I'm trying to coax Mike into doing a piece for me to tell us more about the universe this story is set in, and the upcoming sequel.

Bad Dog Finished Art

Here is the completed artwork by Elartwyne Estole.  Wow, it's exciting to see this finished.  Obviously I'm biased, but the art is stunning.

So now I've enrolled on a cover design workshop run by Dean Wesley Smith, and my first assignment was to show them what little I know about cover design.