Changing how I look

This is the new cover for a madcap speculative novel of mine – Spells for the Second Sister – that you can find in my ko-fi store. https://ko-fi.com/s/f312aa059a

It came out last year with an entirely different cover that didn’t have much colour. I’ve seen at events over the winter that people weren’t even picking it up to look at the back, where books with stronger colours on them get a lot more attention, which was a significant motivation for the new look.

I like colour. A lot of my fiction books have comedic elements – this one certainly does and I think brighter visual approaches better represent who I am and what I’m doing. My fiction is speculative, and increasingly playful. Some of my older books are more troubled, but I think people need humour and joy at the moment far more than we need challenges.

I’ve been doing quite a bit this last year to lighten and brighten how I present myself – which started by revamping this blog. I’m a joyful person by nature. My gothic tendencies include appreciating ruins, nocturnal creatures and certain aesthetics, and there can be great beauty in melancholy art, but I’m not into misery or relentless gloom. I previously let my visual presentation with books be too defined by someone else, and I’m enjoying breaking out of that into brighter, lighter approaches. Updating this cover has been good. I’m going to sort out the print version shortly.

This last year has been a time of real flourishing for me, in all aspects of my life. I find myself stretching and growing in all kinds of different directions. I’m also a lighter, brighter person than I used to be. It’s not unlike the way many plants flourish if you take them out of dark corners and let them have as much sun as they need. Figuring out how I want to express that is an ongoing process, and one that I’m very much enjoying.