NOVEMBER 2016 – World continues to change and grow and us right along with it. My thoughts have remained focused on the goal of completing my current creative pursuits and publishing a second book. Encouraged by this sense of urgency as it has fueled hour upon hour of dedicated effort towards finishing this journey. If I had to plot on a line graph the hours of work (and amount of effort that goes with those hours) it would look like a gentle climb over time until it nears the end where the line shoots up through the ceiling! The level of effort needed to see something through can be tremendous, keep fighting those lazy days, and the voices saying “Oh, it’s good enough.” You’ll know when it is done.
If I had to pin the challenge of the month on one specific thing, I’d say it was designing the cover for the new book. Came up with design after design after design, haha. None of them were ‘right’ I discovered, after hours creating them and being like, eh, it’s okay, but not great. Need it to be great! Had an idea in mind originally, but was never able to fully realize it. Was another design that I was envisioning that could have been awesome too, but, that didn’t work out either, haha. Finally, I combined some elements that I really liked and sort of returned to the well a bit of visual styles that I’m a fan of and landed on a new vision for the cover.
Which turned out to be fantastic! I’m very happy with the cover art and keen to see what it looks like printed. Is going to be difficult to get the colors correct and the registration as I’ve envisioned it. As I have opened the design file on four different monitors up to this point, and it looks different on every one. From what the display settings are of course, but I am super curious then what the actual end result is going to look like, haha. My last book cover for ‘The Adventures of August Winter and the Blackstone Academy’ is darker than the original source file was intended. I’m still very happy with it, just a hint different from what I expected. Tried to counter this scenario for the new book, but I’m not sure if I made it bright enough.
Plan is to send out a proof version of the book in several days from now. I’ll know then about the printing registration and tonality. In my next news entry I will be revealing the title of the book, so check back for that! At this moment I’m fairly confident that the title will remain as it is now (as of time of writing), but you never know, an alternate inspiration could strike. Along with the proof printing run, goes the good news that the book is just about finished!
Fine-tuning is taking place right now, including a certain amount of page formatting. Have switched the page size itself and last night I dramatically changed the page count (lowered it by close to ten pages) by decreasing the footer margins. Looks sharper and is just as readable (in my opinion). And this will also help me offer the book at as low a price as possible, which is certainly a goal of mine too. So that it is within reach of anyone who would wish to read it and enjoy the story. As of today, I’m rather set as well on making this book available digitally. I didn’t do that for ‘The Adventures of August Winter’ as the formatting for the illustrations in the digital version never reached my standard of presentation. As they created orphan paragraphs and so forth through the adjustable formatting of e-readers.
Going to have to get over this (personally, haha) for the new book as apparently e-book readers (the people themselves, not their devices specifically!) are used to illustrations being a bit willy-nilly in digital versions for just that reason. Bringing the conversation back to what I said earlier, about wanting everything to be ‘right’, to me that also means the illustrations being of high quality. So I’ll do everything I can to make sure the end result is as good and true as I’m able to have it be.
More rambling next time, hope everyone is enjoying a fantastic finale to their year and I’ll be in touch again with some major news in the not-too-distant future!
– CS
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