May 23, 2021

Hello All,

Well, we’ve got an ISBN and a Library of Congress Control Number.

Here is the cover. It needs a bit of important copy to plug into that white void on the back, a final page count to adjust the spine, and it’ll be done. 

I struggled with the cover art. I initially thought I wanted something pretty, and harassed good friends with my bad ideas. As any sensible person would expect, the results of that direction didn’t translate the content. Also, my ideas of fanciful colors and dynamic fonts didn’t elicit any questions or emotional responses from the people surveyed. Another discovery showed those ideas were lost in the field of contemporary covers.

In a flock of swans, it’s the mangled farm goose that captures your attention. 

Out of frustration, I smashed the front of this in a few seconds and it stuck. It’s the frustration that speaks. The emotion. Those of you that don’t know my story probably understand what’s depicted here on a visceral level. Way down under the level of consciousness - where letters have no meaning and language is unrecognizable - pictures speak. 

All over the world, primitive cultures without a written language scratched and pecked momentous events into stone. Many of those friezes depict times of loss and death; these scrawls often have a horizontal line separating stick figures above and below while some exhibit rows of humanoid figures - both upright upright and inverted. That’s how we described burial or the debarkation of the living to the world of the dead. That’s how we recorded our pain.

Also, I think this cover works for reasons you’ll understand when reading my story.

Anyway, there’s your dose of nerd for the day.

The proof read will be completed and sent to Inkshares on Wednesday the 26th of May. From there, they will merge any repairs into the final pour. After that, it’ll be a few more weeks until the E-Readers are sent to you. Paperbacks follow shortly after that.

Thanks for your support,

Sharek