Cover Art Part I: The Art!

Without much further ado ladies and gentlemen : The Cover!

I’m very pleased with it, and it is way beyond my expectations.  The interview of Tatiana, the artist, whose choice easily won my poll will occur this weekend.  I will probably be able to post that early next week, hence why today’s blog is part 1.

So while I wait for that interview I wanted to go just a little into what I liked about it so much. Originally I wanted to focus on the ship, as it was an iconic part of the book.  However when I got the first rough draft back the island so overtook the ship in terms of visual impression to me that I had her reduce the ships importance drastically.  Not to mention that the floating island showed off some of the uniqueness of the world even more than the ship does.

You will also notice two light sources, and this is due to their being the Sun Above and the Sun Below in this book, which the artist incorporated into the final version of the piece.  The font also is striking, and gives the book a slightly different feel then others, and tied into why I fell in love this with this cover.

Book status updates: both versions of the book, the kindle version and the one with my publisher are being formatted right now.  The process will probably take a little over a week for each, so I doubt I will have much news to give on either version next week, but does mean optimistically I will probably beat my July deadline of getting it published foreseeing anything major.

Before I go onto my poll I wanted to share another tidbit about the world since I have gotten to private emails about wanting to know about the Allmother (hey everyone, you can sue the polls for that too : ) ) and her church in this world.  Basically it has many similarities to the Catholic church during the Renaissance era but there are a few major differences too.  One, they worship a creator who is female and therefore the Priestesses in this church are too.  Most women except the poorest families either become priestesses or marry, so it is one of the few ways women have power in this society.  Another difference is instead of having one written book they have a collection of songs and tales told orally.  There are written versions of these tales but the primary ways they are passed on is through song in the church.  Although there are other differences the last I will bring up here is one of the main ways a woman born into poverty can have any amount of control of her life is if she is adopted as a ward of the church, and then eventually becomes a Priestess at that same church.

Now for the poll:

This is kinda meta, it’s a poll about polls.  I have noticed a drop off in the past few polls, so I wonder if people still want them.  Here are the choices.

1)Yes, polls every post please.  I just like answering polls.

2)Continue polls sometimes, but not every post needs a poll.

3)We don’t really need polls anymore.  They were fun when helping with the process and affecting how the book would turn out, but I would rather only see them if it was that level of impact again.

Take Our Poll

Also as always, the directions I take this blog depend upon what is said in the comments below!