Chris Baty's Blog, page 69

30 Covers 30 Days: Day 8

Every November, during National Novel Writing Month, thirty professional designers volunteer to create book cover art inspired by novels being written by aspiring authors from around the globe. Why? To encourage new, diverse voices, and help build a more creative world.  

30 Covers, 30 Days is presented in partnership with designer and author Debbie Millman.

Day 8 has arrived. Week 1 Squad did a great job, and now it’s time for Week 2 Squad to carry the torch:

Mallum

Cover designed by Samantha Barnes, based on a novel by NaNoWriMo Participant Corrina Campbell:

The year is 1939 when Rose and her parents stumble upon the strange island of Mallum, where the people are happy and the technology is like nothing they’ve ever seen before.

But wonder soon turns to terror as Rose discovers this island is hiding a dark secret. She must summon up all her courage and cunning to find a way to escape.

Cover Design by Samantha Barnes

Samantha Barnes is an adjunct professor at Tulane University, digital designer, and front-end web developer in New Orleans. Follow her Instagram for illustration process work and education, engage with her on Twitter, connect with her in LinkedIn, or visit her website for more information.

Check out our daily forums thread and join the discussion!

How to Distract the Kids in Your House So You Can Write

If you’re a parent, or live in a household with children you’re responsible for, you know it can be extremely difficult to find the time to write. Today, author R.C. Barnes is here with some tips to help you carve out some writing time even when your kids are around: 

Writing 1667 words a day is a significant endeavor – especially if this is a new habit you are undertaking. When I first tried the NaNo challenge, I was determined to finish. With my previous novel attempts, I had never been able to write more than a hundred pages. One hundred pages seemed to be the ceiling I couldn’t smash through. NaNo helped me breakthrough that barrier. But one of the biggest things the challenge helped me with was establishing writing habits, and with three children in the house (no spouse), this was the most significant gauntlet.

Now, if you have babies or kids under the age of four, this advice is not for you. Naps and Disney movies were created for parents who are writers, and that’s when you should sit your butt in the chair. The following tips are for parents who have mobile children who need to be reasoned with; in other words, kids who can be bribed.

These are my top four suggestions:

1. Have your children join you in the challenge. 

This can take on many forms. If your child is creative, they can illustrate your story as you are writing (as long as your scenes are age-appropriate) or they can write their own adventure during the writing time. Or they can musically compose a soundtrack to your novel. (Don’t laugh. Somebody’s kid did this.) 

I emphasized to my children this was important to me in the same way their soccer practices and dance classes were essential to them. I had to practice and work at writing, and I was asking them to help me achieve my goal. 

I also told them that we’d have a BIG dinner at (insert their favorite restaurant) if (and only if) I succeeded at my goal. This motivated them a lot. My kids are super supportive when food is on the line. There were even times they would scold me saying, “Hey, shouldn’t you be writing?”

2. Visually designate writing times and times.

…And when you can ask Mom where the peanut butter is. Clocks and calendars are your children’s friends, and it’s time they learned how to read them. Households with children are known for utilizing large calendars mapping out the family’s schedules. Make sure your writing time is clearly indicated (in red!) just like science project due dates. 

Another visual trick is to wear something big and bold to let them know you are working. If you’re like me, you get up from the desk to fix a drink or use the bathroom, but you are still writing in your head. There’s nothing worse than composing a great sequence, and having a voice break your thought patterns with a question involving multiplication. I have a bright red hat that I wear when I’m writing. When the kids see it on my head, they give me my space. Seriously, it’s like watching Moses part the Red Sea.

3. Make it special for them. 

Staying hydrated is crucial while you are doing intense noveling. I stocked my refrigerator with a variety of new and different drinks as treats for myself and got my kids in the act. They could choose wild and unique beverages for November and only November. In fact, my son’s humorous reaction after sipping fireball soda made it into a scene in my manuscript. 

4. Put them to work. 

I have a conscientious oldest child, and she was delighted when I asked her to plan the dinners for November. Prepping family meals takes up a lot of mental time as the “what’s for dinner?” chorus takes up space in your brain. My daughter figured out the foods, and all I needed to do was buy the ingredients at the grocery store. We had a lot of tacos, pizza, and macaroni and cheese that month, but everyone was fed.

I plowed through my first NaNoWriMo experience and wrote a bad novel that is tucked safely away in the closet behind a box of old cell phones. The following November, I jumped in again, and my kids were ready. They were excited about choosing their special drinks, planning the meals for November, and even choosing the celebratory restaurant when 50,000 was reached. 

Good luck and go hit your 1667 for the day!

A jack-of-all-trades in the entertainment business, RC (also known as Robin Claire) has been a studio movie executive, actress, screenwriter, foley artist, and puppeteer. On a perfect day, you can find her curled up with a mystery, listening to the rain outside, and sipping tea or wine (depending on the hour). She lives in Berkeley and is the mother of three very nice people. Her YA novel Ink For The Beloved debuts in November. You can visit her at PracticinginPublic.com or find her on Twitter as @RCBarneswriter.

Top photo by Wayne Lee-Sing on Unsplash.

Every November, during National Novel Writing Month, thirty professional designers volunteer to...

Every November, during National Novel Writing Month, thirty professional designers volunteer to create book cover art inspired by novels being written by aspiring authors from around the globe. Why? To encourage new, diverse voices, and help build a more creative world.  

30 Covers, 30 Days is presented in partnership with designer and author Debbie Millman.

It’s Day 7! Here’s the final cover of our first week:

Disposable Income

Cover designed by Patrick King, based on a novel by NaNoWriMo Participant Tish Heath:

A city takes drastic measures for the environment by cutting out cars, jobs and products that pollute.   

Cover Design by Patrick King

Patrick King is a designer and painter living in Brooklyn, NY. He is also the founder of TypographyShop.com, through which his typographic apparel and posters have sold to designers in 45 countries. He is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for his paintings and his work hangs in numerous public and private collections. King has taught copywriting at Temple University and graphic design at Philadelphia University. He studied design at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and painting at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
King’s design work can be seen here, his paintings here and you can visit TypographyShop here.

As always, there’s a thread on the forums! Join it! Discuss the cover! Get in heated arguments! (No, don’t do that last one).

How to Create an Outline for Your Novel in Scrivener

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Scrivener, a NaNoWriMo 2019 sponsor, is an award-winning word processor and project management program. Today, writer Rebeca Schiller shares some advice about creating an outline for your novel using their software:

I’m in a quandary. The issue is: do I pants my way through November, or do I outline? 

Pantsing is fast, but you’ll discover lapses in story logic when you’re revising your manuscript. In my WIP, I’ve had to go back to the beginning several times and make changes because I realized a character’s action made no sense. Set-up, foreshadowing, and motivation had to be added in many early scenes. 

This year I’ve decided to outline a new story just in time for NaNoWriMo. The key is to include enough detail so I can write it in one fell swoop, and when it’s time to revise the manuscript I can focus on prettying up the language. 

To accomplish this goal, I’ll use Scrivener’s built-in outliner that, in theory, will help me spot my missing plot holes. Below are illustrated steps on how to create an outline using Scrivener: 

Step 1: If you like the flexibility of creating your own structure, choose the blank template for your project. I like one that’s based on Alexandra Sokoloff’s Screenwriting Tips for Authors, which I wrote about on the Literature and Latte blog.

Step 2: After creating the structure, add documents in the first folder by clicking on the + icon found in the Binder’s footer. Next write a synopsis for each scene. The synopsis feature is found in the Inspector under the tab that looks like a notebook. Type in two or three sentences summarizing the scene in the synopsis pane. A small thing to notice: when you type in a synopsis, the blank document icon in the binder turns into an index card.

Step 3. In the binder select each scene, and then go to View->Outline where the editor pane will change, displaying a number of columns including Title and Synopsis, word count, section, target, etc. Personally, the only column that interests me for now is Title and Synopsis.  New columns for POV label,  Setting, Goal, Motivation, Conflict (the character’s), Setting, and Characters in Scene will need to be created.

Step 4. To create a POV using the label feature, go to the Inspector’s footer. Click on Label, a menu will open select Edit. A window will open providing the option to add a custom title, type in POV.  Next to one of the tinted dots, double click, and type in the character’s name.  Next to create custom columns in the Outliner,  click on the arrow located on the far right; a drop down menu will appear, uncheck the columns you won’t use. At the very bottom, click on Custom Columns.

Step 5: A window will open. On the left select Custom Metadata. Clicking on the + icon on the right, type in a column heading. I’ve typed in Setting, Goal, Conflict, Motivation, Characters in Scene. Below that  make sure “Text” is selected in the Type field; select left alignment and check word wrap. Hit OK when you’re done.

Step 6: Go back to where the columns are listed in the drop down menu, uncheck the ones you don’t want and check the ones you created. To fill in the fields, double click in the outliner and write your brief description.

Lastly,  don’t let elementary school rules on how to outline get in the way of how you write your novel. For years, I followed what I learned in the third grade: I kept my main points brief, used  keywords, but after I read through the material, I had no idea of what I was trying to articulate. This is your roadmap be as detailed as you need to be. Remember, its purpose is to help you write your story.

30 Covers 30 Days: Day 6

Every November, during National Novel Writing Month, thirty professional designers volunteer to create book cover art inspired by novels being written by aspiring authors from around the globe. Why? To encourage new, diverse voices, and help build a more creative world.  

30 Covers, 30 Days is presented in partnership with designer and author Debbie Millman.

It’s Day 6, which is another wild day, and with it comes another great cover!

Self-Titled

Cover designed by Kelley Malone, based on a novel by Young Writers Program Participant Corey Ault.

A nineteen year old girl named Ashley is admitted into a mental hospital against her will after her friends misread a short mental breakdown she had after a breakup as something requiring genuine concern. The hospital is one in a bad neighborhood with one star reviews, and while staying the their, Ashley realizes how much power the doctors have over her.

Despite her insistence that she’s not actually in need of hospitalization, the doctors still keep her there for weeks against her wishes, injecting her with medication she doesn’t need, calling her crazy and looking at her with annoyance when she asks for basic necessities like food and water. She meets a man named John who was also admitted against his will by his crazy ex girlfriend who lied about him being suicidal, knowing he’d be detained against his wishes.

The novel will follow Ashley and John’s struggle to escape the mental facility, and all of the smaller conflicts they face along the way on their fight for freedom.

Cover Design by Kelley Malone

Kelley Malone is a Creative Director specializing in branding and packaging design. She has been working in the retail industry for most of her 15+ year career. Currently, she leads the talented team creating private brands for Kohl’s Department Stores. Some of the brands she’s led creative for include Nine West, Elizabeth and James, Simply Vera Vera Wang, LC Lauren Conrad, Maxfli, and Food Network.

Find more of her work on her website!

As always, there’s a forum thread, and as always, it would be a great idea if you dropped in and participated!

Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: The Care and Feeding of You and Your Novel

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, our NaNo Coaches are here to help guide you through November! Today, author Alexis Daria is here to share her advice on how to take care of yourself while you’re writing:

Welcome to Week 1 of NaNoWriMo! You’ve done it—you’ve declared your novel, maybe you’ve done some NaNoPrep, or some laundry to help you write by the seat of your pants all month, made some writing buddies, and now you’ve started getting words down. 

Congratulations! You are now one step further than most people who say they want to write a novel. The reality is, most people say they want to write but never do. Starting is the hardest part—the activation energy required can be tremendous—so whether this is your first attempt or your 20th (Happy anniversary, NaNoWriMo!), I salute you. 

Week 1 is marked by enthusiasm and excitement. Your mind whirls with inspiration. Your outline seems impervious to plot holes. You are on your way!

So let’s talk about how you maintain this momentum throughout the month. Writing advice seems to fall into two main categories: writing craft and writing life. However, I would argue that we can’t approach craft without also looking at how we take care of ourselves as creatives. 

Before we discuss maintaining our own momentum, let’s talk about how to keep moving forward with your novel. If you find yourself feeling stuck, here are a few story tips you could try:

1. Raise the stakes. 

What happens if your character fails at reaching their goal? If the answer is “nothing,” you want to raise the stakes. Why is success important to them? Not every story needs to be life or death—it could just be the emotional stakes that are high.

2. Increase the sense of urgency. 

How? Give your characters a deadline of some sort. It doesn’t even have to be an overall story-level deadline. Whatever their current scene goal is, see if you can add a ticking clock. Maybe they’re going to the bank—but they have to get there before it closes! Will they make it in time? Now we have tension.

3. Ask WHY. 

Focus on your character’s why. Why are they doing what they’re doing? Why do they want what they want? Dig into their past, their psyche. They lived a whole life before they showed up on your first page—use their past experiences to drive them through the story you’re telling now.

However, when we hit snags in our own lives, the writing stalls out, too. So let’s take a look at some ways we can maintain our own inner momentum:

1. Don’t ignore the basics. 

Eat, sleep, drink water. It can be very tempting to let these fall by the wayside as you try to carve out time for writing, but I promise, if you maintain your basic needs, the writing will come easier. 

2. No writer is an island. 

Yes, much of the act of writing happens in solitude. But in between those long stretches of isolation, reach out to your writing buddies for motivation, especially if you feel stuck. Ask if you can talk out a story problem with them—and then return the favor. Attend an in-person write-in or join @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter, which runs all month long. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is the community—make the most of it!

3. Keep a writing journal. 

Every day, I write a short entry in my Scrivener doc about how the writing went. Some days I whine about the struggle, other days I’m pleasantly surprised by the creative flow. I find it helpful to be able to go back and see not just how many words I wrote per day, but how I was feeling and what else was going on in my life.

4. Keep what works and scrap the rest. 

There’s a ton of writing advice out there (like this blog post), but I always recommend you take what works for you and discard the rest. For example, “write every day” is a common adage, but you might have a day job that doesn’t leave much time for creativity during the week. Don’t despair! Many writers are Weekend Warriors. Carve out a block of writing time on the weekends and do what you have to do to keep other obligations from interfering. 

Don’t like write-ins? You don’t have to go. Don’t like word sprints? You don’t have to do them. Don’t overwhelm yourself by feeling like you need to do everything this month. Certainly be open to trying new things to see if you do like them, but don’t feel like you have to. There are no “rules,” and you’re not receiving a grade on this. Do what’s best for you. The real goal of NaNoWriMo is to support and foster your creativity and growth. If you spend any time at all exploring your creativity this month, I count that as a win!

One last note: 50,000-words might be the “goal,” but you haven’t “lost” or “failed” if you don’t reach that marker in one month. The number might seem scary or unattainable, but don’t let it stop you from trying to write something. Just write. Use the momentum and structure of NaNo to your benefit. Go easy on yourself and stay flexible in your process. And then see what you end up with on December 1st. I bet you’ll surprise yourself. 

Alexis Daria is an award-winning contemporary romance author, former artist, and native New Yorker. Her debut, TAKE THE LEAD, was a 2018 RITA® Award winner for “Best First Book” and was named one of the Best Romance Novels of 2017 by The Washington Post and Entertainment Weekly. She loves social media, and you can find her live-tweeting her favorite TV shows at @alexisdaria.

5 Tips for a Riveting Novel: How to Add Suspense and Tension to Your Story

Ever get that feeling that your writing Today, author and designer Derek Murphy shares his advice on how to turn a messy work-in-progress into a polished draft in November:

For several years I’ve helped authors with plotting, including a previous post on 9 steps to build a strong plot and a more recent 24 step chapter outline template. But it’s not enough! Having the right turning points will help keep the momentum in your story tight, but may not hold readers’ attention.

Why do readers get bored or stop reading?

There are several reasons, but the easiest to fix are conflict and tension.

In this article I’m going to suggest some clear and easy guidelines that will help you increase the tension and conflict in your novel.

First, a quick and useful definition of the terms:

Conflict = what DOES happen.

Tension = what COULD happen.

Readers won’t care what happens in your story unless you have sympathy and conflict (readers have to like your characters, and your characters must be oppressed, and the stakes must be real). Conflict is about the challenges, difficulties and problems your characters will face on their quest or goal or adventure.

As a general rule, I like to have three types of conflict in every scene.

External Conflict – nature, the antagonist’s forces, rules and regulations, world limits, etc. These are active or passive forces that prevent the protagonist from easily taking action. Every time you figure out what your character needs to do next, throw some roadblocks in the way.

Internal Conflict – your character’s fears, doubts or insecurities; or their difficult choices. Give them beliefs, opinions or desires that are thwarted and challenged. They shouldn’t dwell on their doubts all the time, but slow scenes especially can be spiced up by poking at the source of conflict and having them feel the weight of their challenges.

“Friendly Fire” – your other main characters that are friends or allies should also be sources of conflict; figure out a way to make them upset. Maybe their opinions or beliefs contrast your protagonist’s. Maybe they get their feelings hurt or your protagonist is forced to betray them, or vice versa. Even if the “good guys” are all in a room discussing plans, it shouldn’t be amicable.

It’s not all fight scenes and bad guys; the slow, moody chapters where your characters reveal vulnerabilities matter also. They can’t be the whole thing — something real must change in every chapter that allows the plot to move forward — but adding in different kinds of conflict to every scene will make your book much more satisfying and keep readers hooked. 

Two more useful rules for narrative suspense: 

1. All conflict is unplanned. 

Something happens. Who, what, where, why, how? The protagonist doesn’t have answers at first, which leads to fear, uncertainty, doubt. She makes a plan to figure / answer/ discover some of these grey areas. She forms a goal, but is nervous and reflects on story questions. How will I do this, what if this happens, what’s the worst that could happen (and it should be bad). 

Then show her worst fears being realized.

Show it HAPPENING. 

Don’t let her just do the thing easily, and don’t let the thing happen “off-stage” and be reported back. Let the worst thing happen, make it visceral.

Smart protagonists rarely plan real conflict. They plan to avoid conflict. Conflict resists their best efforts. The plan goes wrong because something or someone opposes the plan, and resists her inquiry, which creates conflict. 

As soon as she figures out one thing, something else happens, and it’s a surprise.

Don’t have your characters ask leading question or guess the surprise you’re going to reveal much later. It won’t be a twist or surprise unless it’s unexpected: not something the character has already wondered about. It has to never cross their mind. You can plant enough subtle clues to make it plausible, but don’t make it expected.

2. Dialogue is the enemy of tension.

Tension is created by the resistance of confrontation. As soon as two players get in a room together and discuss their thoughts and feelings with an honest conversation, all the tension (mystery) is gone. You need characters to constantly get interrupted, misunderstood, or make snap judgements and storm out of the room (conflict) and leave your main character to wonder about what’s really going on (tension).

So never let a conversation finish. Never give out the full truth or circumstances, at least until much later in the book. By the midpoint they may know the enemy, or at least guess enough to take action. But there should still be a twist or two revealed during or after the final battle, and twists are caused by incomplete information and the shock of a sudden reveal.

You need to string the bow, and keep pulling it tighter and tighter, without releasing it. The longer you’ve built up the tension, the more impact it will have when you release it. Don’t go too long without your characters musing on the main story questions. The stakes should be pressing enough that the characters can’t simply forget about them for several chapters or be distracted by trivial things. But also don’t give them much time to sit around thinking; for the first half of the book they should be reacting to conflict, for the second half they should be taking action based on incomplete information that puts them into greater conflict (so they can feel guilty about it).

“What happens” is the story, but “why it matters” is the beating heart of your novel that will keep readers turning pages until they get to the satisfying conclusion.

If these tips are useful, make sure to download my 24-chapter novel outline, or my checklist of crucial things you need in every scene, so you hit your NaNoWriMo word counts without getting stuck.

Derek Murphy travels full-time writing fiction and nonfiction, and dreams of castles, cabins, cats and coffee. He hopes to someday build a wilderness commune of creative geniuses in the Pacific Northwest, and in the meantime occasionally blogs at www.creativindie.com.

Top photo by João Silas on Unsplash.

30 Covers 30 Days: Day 5

Every November, during National Novel Writing Month, thirty professional designers volunteer to create book cover art inspired by novels being written by aspiring authors from around the globe. Why? To encourage new, diverse voices, and help build a more creative world.  

30 Covers, 30 Days is presented in partnership with designer and author Debbie Millman.

Today is Day 5, which is a nice round number and feels significant:

Photographed

Cover designed by Cookie Redding, based on a novel by NaNoWriMo participant Alanna Lioness:

Photography and video are miraculous inventions with many merits, both for posterity and personal use. However, the recording of any living creature on film or by other means should be used sparingly and with the utmost care as upon that being’s death, their image will eventually disappear from the picture.”
When Emily’s sister Claire died in a horrific car accident, her family did what anyone would do. They removed every photograph they had of her and disposed of them before her likeness could disappear. Then they alerted all their relatives and friends that they should do the same. The world agrees, after all, that there’s nothing more haunting than discovering an empty photo of a dead person.

This is why Emily is so surprised when she finds an old Polaroid with a clear image of her sister on it in Claire’s room three years after the accident. Morgan, the high school’s resident conspiracy theorist, is convinced Claire must have been mixed up with something that would give her access to government level technology before her death. Emily, however, is not so sure. Is the Polaroid proof that her sister is actually still alive?

Cover Design by Cookie Redding

Cookie Redding is an artist and designer living in south central Pennsylvania.  She works with a variety of materials and likes to incorporate them all into her work.  She currently is also a professor of art and design and loves when students have their “ah-ha!” moment with their work. 

As always, I’ve made a forum thread, so head on over and join the discussion!

Works of Justice: How to Write a Novel in a Month (While in Prison)

This year, we’re excited to partner with the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program to bring our creative writing resources to people who are incarcerated. Works of Justice—an online series that features content connected to the program—reflects on the relationship between writing and incarceration, and presents challenging conversations about criminal justice in the United States. We’ve shared this excerpt from PEN America to let you know how you can get involved! You can read their full blog post, follow the series, and participate here. 

This November, our Prison Writing Mentor Program is proud to partner with NaNoWriMo to pilot a new project that moves the act of mentorship out of its one-directional engagement (outside mentors, incarcerated mentees) to exist in multiple environments and forms.

Using the NaNoWriMo organization’s time-tested structure and thorough workbook materials, we have invited five of our most skillful PEN America Prison Writing Award-winning writers to mentor a small group of self-identified writers in the prison where they live.

As part of our efforts to connect the writing community through the walls, we’re inviting you to share support and feedback with our incarcerated NaNoWriMo writers. Even better if you’re also undertaking the challenge!

Here’s how you can engage:Meet our NaNoWriMo facilitators, and read about the projects they are taking up in November, here.

We have forthcoming pep talks from accomplished writers that are written expressly for our writers on the inside, but—as you’ll see—will likely speak to you, too. They underscore that writing behind the walls is not so different from writing in the outside world. Read the first pep talk in our series from fiction novelist Ryan Gattis!

We’ll be sharing excerpts of works in progress and status updates from our inside writing groups on this blog over the course of November. To be updated when a new blog is posted, please sign up here.

Many writers participating in the challenge in the free world talk and connect via social media. As there is no Internet in prison, we have to get a bit creative. We invite you, and all your writing friends, to share messages of encouragement, camaraderie, excerpts of works-in-progress, and other notes that help link the NaNoWriMo outside the walls to the NaNoWriMo on the inside. Please use the “Send a Note to NaNoWriMo Participants” form on the original post. 

30 Covers, 30 Days: Day 4

Every November, during National Novel Writing Month, thirty professional designers volunteer to create book cover art inspired by novels being written by aspiring authors from around the globe. Why? To encourage new, diverse voices, and help build a more creative world.  

30 Covers, 30 Days is presented in partnership with designer and author Debbie Millman.

Day 4 has arrived, and with it another cover:

Bruja

Cover designed by Cora Woodward, based on a novel by NaNoWriMo Participant R. Morgan:

Six young girls are sent to a house in the middle of the woods after committing violent crimes.  None of them should be there. At least they don’t think so. They must live their teenage years isolated from the world with only themselves, their teachers,  and the magic hidden through the house.

Cover Designed by Cora Woodward

She had this to say about the design:

I went with a concept that reveals a house shape through the woods. The girls and their shadows make a door, and the moon makes a window. As the reader progresses through the book they will see the connection of the house.

Cora is a designer driven by craft and clarity. She uses conceptual thinking as her foundation and designs striking visuals that range from illustrative to concise. She has experience in brand design, digital design, illustration, packaging, and print collateral —with typography and color being her biggest passions.

She graduated from Texas A&M Commerce after studying Visual Communications with recognition in Graphis New Talent Awards and the Adobe Achievement Awards.

When she isn’t breathing life into her work, she is most likely attempting to master a new recipe, drawing under the supervision of her cat, or tending to her many cacti.

If you want to discuss the cover, head on over to the forums thread!