Kim Wells's Blog, page 13
July 16, 2014
Cover Tease 3: WOLF!!!!
My illustrator pointed out that I really wasn't showing you much with my little teases. It's been really hard to show you any of the major points of the gorgeous cover to my book because I want the "BIG REVEAL" on Friday to be really exciting.
I'm terrible at teasing. I really just want to show you the whole thing.
So today, I'm going to give you something significant. A wolf. This wolf is also a ghost. And maybe a little bit of a vampiric creature. This is one of the SERIOUSLY bad guys in my novel. I love the way Lawrence made it look ghosty but also wolfish.
How do wolves figure in? you may be asking.
MURDER. Ghosts. Wolves. Magic. Scary ghosts that make you want to hide under the covers. Love. Sweetness. The sights and sounds of San Antonio. A goddess and a special "trickster" figure.
A couple of my readers have said that maybe we could have a sequel to this book because of some of the elements at the end. I love a good ambiguous ending so we kind of have a little of that. And there were several characters whose back stories didn't quite fit the main story line. It may be that eventually we go with a collection of short stories that explain some of those. It would be fun to revisit a few of my ghosts, and maybe a few we didn't get to meet. San Antonio does have this creepy haunted insane asylum. . . .we might just have to go visit it one of these days.
I'm terrible at teasing. I really just want to show you the whole thing.
So today, I'm going to give you something significant. A wolf. This wolf is also a ghost. And maybe a little bit of a vampiric creature. This is one of the SERIOUSLY bad guys in my novel. I love the way Lawrence made it look ghosty but also wolfish.How do wolves figure in? you may be asking.
MURDER. Ghosts. Wolves. Magic. Scary ghosts that make you want to hide under the covers. Love. Sweetness. The sights and sounds of San Antonio. A goddess and a special "trickster" figure.
A couple of my readers have said that maybe we could have a sequel to this book because of some of the elements at the end. I love a good ambiguous ending so we kind of have a little of that. And there were several characters whose back stories didn't quite fit the main story line. It may be that eventually we go with a collection of short stories that explain some of those. It would be fun to revisit a few of my ghosts, and maybe a few we didn't get to meet. San Antonio does have this creepy haunted insane asylum. . . .we might just have to go visit it one of these days.
July 15, 2014
Tease 2: More Cover Peeks
My BIG COVER REVEAL will be this Friday, the 18th.
The thing about my cover is that it's this custom piece of amazing artwork that I knew I needed because of how important the art is in the story's progression. The cover, then, is a great hint at the layers of detail and the underlying themes of the novel.
So how about for today's sneak peak, I give you a little big of description from when we first hear about the mural? This is the co-protagonist, and she's opening her bookstore early in the morning, when this happens:
So that's part of the description. It's pretty interesting, huh? This, of course, was something that my awesome cover artist Lawrence Mann had as part of his inspiration for his artwork. I even rewrote a little of my initial description (there's more to it, of course, than what's here) so that it matched what he came up with. All part of the great collaboration of creativity.
The part that I'm showing you here is not mentioned in this description at all. How do you think it will work in? Of course you have no idea. (She laughs an evil laugh). The mural is an important part of the book, not just a character detail. I already know I need to add a bit to the final discussion of the mural once my developmental editor gets back to me on the first draft because I remembered after I gave the draft to him that I had meant to do something about the importance of the artist who draws this mural on my co-protagonists' wall, which I forgot to do in the excitement of wrapping up the story finally. It's just a short detail, and it's one of those things that sometimes you just read right through without thinking about it, but all of the little details help build the world around the characters in such a way that I believe makes you want more.
Some writers are very light on scenery and details like this, and that's cool. It's one way of doing it. But I like richness-- description of food, drinks, what music is playing, of clothing, of the quality of the light as my character looks out of a window thinking about the sticky situation she is in. It's all about this: write the book you want to read, yourself. I can't wait to share the rest of the cover with you, and eventually the whole book. It's going to be a wild and bumpy ride. But there WILL be pumpkin empañadas and coffee. Can't wait!
The thing about my cover is that it's this custom piece of amazing artwork that I knew I needed because of how important the art is in the story's progression. The cover, then, is a great hint at the layers of detail and the underlying themes of the novel.
So how about for today's sneak peak, I give you a little big of description from when we first hear about the mural? This is the co-protagonist, and she's opening her bookstore early in the morning, when this happens:
I’m a little distracted by trying to be distracted away from my insane not-a-crush, but as I walk towards the front flat part of my building where the front door with its amazing glass paned door is, I notice some color out of the corner of my eye where color is not supposed to be. Red, lots of it, and I am sighing, thinking it’s going to be gang tagging graffiti and that maybe my reprieve from the gang bangers ignoring my building (except for a few small ones) might finally have expired. I am already thinking about where I’ll need to go to get paint remover safe enough for my light brown antique stone facade and, as I walk around the corner to the one side of the three-sided building that has the least amount of windows to see how much damage has been done, I am stopped in my tracks by what is there on my wall.
Someone is painting the beginning tentative sketch-lines for some kind of graffiti-art mural on my wall. The corner closest to the front door is the part that has all the red on it, and the part that caught my eye. There are some loose, sketchy outlines that I can’t quite make out yet. But the red which has caught my eye is a cloud, a swirling typhoon, of red winged butterflies spiraling upwards. They arc upwards in a moving pattern around a dark silhouette of a woman’s body, like they are dancing and weaving around her as they flutter in increasingly wide spirals up to as high as one could reach on the wall without a major ladder (probably hard to drag along on a commando style mural painting gig). I can’t see her face— it is entirely shadowed. I wonder if it will stay that way. There are hundreds of various sized butterflies swirling up from this body, which somehow looks like she’s standing strong and firm amidst all the wing movement and change around her.
So that's part of the description. It's pretty interesting, huh? This, of course, was something that my awesome cover artist Lawrence Mann had as part of his inspiration for his artwork. I even rewrote a little of my initial description (there's more to it, of course, than what's here) so that it matched what he came up with. All part of the great collaboration of creativity.
The part that I'm showing you here is not mentioned in this description at all. How do you think it will work in? Of course you have no idea. (She laughs an evil laugh). The mural is an important part of the book, not just a character detail. I already know I need to add a bit to the final discussion of the mural once my developmental editor gets back to me on the first draft because I remembered after I gave the draft to him that I had meant to do something about the importance of the artist who draws this mural on my co-protagonists' wall, which I forgot to do in the excitement of wrapping up the story finally. It's just a short detail, and it's one of those things that sometimes you just read right through without thinking about it, but all of the little details help build the world around the characters in such a way that I believe makes you want more. Some writers are very light on scenery and details like this, and that's cool. It's one way of doing it. But I like richness-- description of food, drinks, what music is playing, of clothing, of the quality of the light as my character looks out of a window thinking about the sticky situation she is in. It's all about this: write the book you want to read, yourself. I can't wait to share the rest of the cover with you, and eventually the whole book. It's going to be a wild and bumpy ride. But there WILL be pumpkin empañadas and coffee. Can't wait!
July 9, 2014
Tease 1: Cover Reveal
I just cannot wait until I get to show you my cover for my book, Mariposa: A Love Story. The manuscript is currently in the capable hands of my developmental editor, where he is undoubtedly finding any serious problems that my love for the story made me miss. I'm sure there are going to be some, and can even think of a few already now that I'm not playing with it every day. I'll fix them later.
But in the meantime: my book cover is all done.
Squee!
I decided to spend a little extra and get a custom cover, because there is a very important element of artwork within the story. I remember when I came up with the idea for the mural in the novel's plot line-- it is a crucial part of one of the main characters' storylines. Andrew & I were talking about it one day and it just grew into this amazing vision of power & loveliness. And when the time came for me to start contemplating book covers, I knew I had to have the mural as my cover. There are a lot of great freelance artists out there designing book covers for indie writers and I liked a lot of what I saw, but nothing really said MY cover. Until.
I found Lawrence Mann's work on the Internet by searching google for "amazingly cool cover artists." Hey, if you ask correctly, Google will return the right results. I loved his image of a mermaid in that you can see here: http://www.lawrencemann.co.uk/portfolio/item/a-mermaids-tale/.
I knew he had to do my cover.
He asked me to describe what I wanted, and to send him a sketch. Very nicely, he told me that it didn't have to be very good. Luckily for him, I could handle "not very good". I sent him the vision I had in my head of a flat mural, and a lot of samples of other murals in the universe. I even sent him a picture of the building in San Antonio that I have imagined as my characters' bookstore so he could envision where the mural would be. Every time I pass this building when I'm home in TX I gaze longingly at it, dreaming of a day when it can be mine. It's in downtown San Antonio, just a few blocks from the Alamo, and it has been empty ever since I can remember.
I can admit that I honestly didn't do a good job at all with my art. I can imagine he got a pretty good moment of laughing out of it. :) It got the basic outlines of what I was looking for, but I knew there was no way I could do it justice.
He came up with an amazing version of my mural. To say it is way better than anything I ever imagined is to completely downplay how brilliant, how beautiful, and just perfect what he came up with is. I even rewrote parts of the novel's description of it so that the novel would mesh better with his art. And it has enriched my story, immeasurably.
I am going to reveal the ENTIRE cover to you as part of one of Sage's Blog Tours cover reveal on July 18th. But today, I think I'll give you a teeny, tiny little sneak peak.
And here it is. Obviously, with the title being Mariposa, there's at least ONE butterfly. Want to guess what else there will be?
But in the meantime: my book cover is all done.
Squee!
I decided to spend a little extra and get a custom cover, because there is a very important element of artwork within the story. I remember when I came up with the idea for the mural in the novel's plot line-- it is a crucial part of one of the main characters' storylines. Andrew & I were talking about it one day and it just grew into this amazing vision of power & loveliness. And when the time came for me to start contemplating book covers, I knew I had to have the mural as my cover. There are a lot of great freelance artists out there designing book covers for indie writers and I liked a lot of what I saw, but nothing really said MY cover. Until.
I found Lawrence Mann's work on the Internet by searching google for "amazingly cool cover artists." Hey, if you ask correctly, Google will return the right results. I loved his image of a mermaid in that you can see here: http://www.lawrencemann.co.uk/portfolio/item/a-mermaids-tale/.
I knew he had to do my cover.
He asked me to describe what I wanted, and to send him a sketch. Very nicely, he told me that it didn't have to be very good. Luckily for him, I could handle "not very good". I sent him the vision I had in my head of a flat mural, and a lot of samples of other murals in the universe. I even sent him a picture of the building in San Antonio that I have imagined as my characters' bookstore so he could envision where the mural would be. Every time I pass this building when I'm home in TX I gaze longingly at it, dreaming of a day when it can be mine. It's in downtown San Antonio, just a few blocks from the Alamo, and it has been empty ever since I can remember.
I can admit that I honestly didn't do a good job at all with my art. I can imagine he got a pretty good moment of laughing out of it. :) It got the basic outlines of what I was looking for, but I knew there was no way I could do it justice.
He came up with an amazing version of my mural. To say it is way better than anything I ever imagined is to completely downplay how brilliant, how beautiful, and just perfect what he came up with is. I even rewrote parts of the novel's description of it so that the novel would mesh better with his art. And it has enriched my story, immeasurably.
I am going to reveal the ENTIRE cover to you as part of one of Sage's Blog Tours cover reveal on July 18th. But today, I think I'll give you a teeny, tiny little sneak peak. And here it is. Obviously, with the title being Mariposa, there's at least ONE butterfly. Want to guess what else there will be?
