new release in progress

[julesjones]

The main edits on If I offered thee a bargain have gone through, and late last night I was sent the draft cover art. The latter is interesting -- it is utterly wrong if considered as a literal representation of what's in the story (white-haired and bare-chested elf when it should be black hair and teeshirt, cliff beach scene instead of drumlin). It's also spot-on in giving an *impression* of what the story's about. I thought about it for at least 3 seconds before saying yes. :-) Because the cover's job is to get the prospective purchaser to fondle the merchandise, and what I've been given does that job well.

I need to check whether I'm allowed to post the draft in public, so not putting it up tonight - maybe later this week.

In other writing news, slightly fitful progress on Taxman. Monday 305 words, Wednesday 323 words, Saturday 333 words, and on Sunday I cracked the 30k mark with 526 words to take it to 30,269 in total.

ETA: final version has just been posted, but I'm too tired now to upload it to my site so I can link to it. Will try to do it tomorrow.

Comments

[julesjones]

It's an odd one, because I rarely have a clear description for artists to work from, and yet this particular story did have them. But the details here are ones that aren't actually vital to the story. By comparison, the first draft of the Lord and Master cover had a wedding ring visible on Steven's hand -- and while it was faithful to the story's final scene, and the artist had put it in specifically to show the happy ending, I asked her to take it out, because I was concerned that someone browsing covers would see it as "married man having an affair before coming out of the closet".

There are a couple of practical issues with Bargain -- the correct landscape would be very difficult to show clearly in something suitable for cover art, and *I* couldn't find something suitable when I went browsing for stock art to show the art director. And this is a short story, so there's a very limited budget and they need to use stock photos. (Loose Id wouldn't even do an individual cover for one this short, it would get a generic cover.) I'd prefer to have the right colouring for the elf's hair, but it's not something I'd turn the cover down for if the emotional tone is right and the colouring isn't actually relevant to the story.