Tara Maya's Tales

One more day ... With just ONE DAY LEFT to the release of Wing, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the book cover. What goes into the design of a book cover? The first consideration is obvious: a cover should have aesthetic appeal. The image should caress the imagination, not assault the eyes. One mistake that some writers make, when they have control over their covers, is to want to stuff all the events of the book into the cover. Or they want to show a scene (not always a bad idea) with every detail exactly as it is in the book (always a bad idea). For a lot of reasons, that's not practical. Yes, sometimes the artist has time and a budget of thousands of dollars to hire models, make sketches, paint with oils, let the oils dry, die tragically young after lobbing off a few facial features, become famous after death, have his paintings posthumously sell for millions at auction,  have other artists rip off his style in cheap knock-off paintings done in artistic slave ...

Yay! Thank you to those who have waited patiently...Sacrifice, the third book in The Unfinished Song, is here! Almost. It should be available for review copies and early bird purchase on Monday, August 30, 2011. This will be a busy day for me, since it is also the day my oldest son starts kindergarten. UPDATE: Except, of course, I meant TUESDAY, because that is the 30th. D'OH! Here's a sneak peek at the cover:

My friend the Screaming Guppy has written a totally badass zombie story. It's got all the rampaging undead fun you would expect, plus a cool twist which sets it apart from what's been done. I did two mock covers. One attempts to show a scene in an arena built over the ocean, where sharks swim, waiting to devour the losers. I didn't really capture it, so I tried another cover, this time simply going for something creepy and zombiesque.

I found this peek at what goes into painting the cover art for a novel to be absolutely fascinating.

Fun and easy sources of writing challenges abound on the internet. Here's one method for generating story challenges: news headlines. Usually, when one reads one news article, along the side are three to eight other articles. Here, for instance, are the Telegraph's Most Viewed for today: 1. Venezuela`s Hugo Chavez tightens state control of food amid rocketing inflation and food shortages Government price controls on basic goods have been in place, in various forms, since 2003. But the restrictions have forced Venezuela to become increasingly reliant on imports of these products as local farmers will not supply the selected food staples at government prices.Mr Chavez last month won a referendum allowing him to stand indefinitely for re-election. 2. Pink dolphin appears in US lake  "The dolphin appears to be healthy and normal other than its coloration, which is quite beautiful and stunningly pink. The mammal is entirely pink from tip to tail and has reddish eyes indicati...

Oh my. I'm jealous of this cover on so many levels. The artist in me dreams of painting such loveliness; the writer in me longs for a book cover like this to grace my own stories. This is the kind of cover where I know I MUST buy the book, no matter WHAT the story is.  *Moonstruck sigh.* I haven't read it yet, only drooled over it, but it looks as though Freda Warrington  is fully capable of delivering a story to match the cover. * * * When I started writing Dindi, oh, ages past, fae / fey / faeries were rather rare in epic fantasy. Now they are everywhere. Did faeries jump the shark while I dithered in revisions? How depressing.... Here's the thing. My faeries aren't really European faeries at all. They're closer to kachinas or orishas. I made the decision not to call them kachinas, for a variety of reasons, but now I'm questioning my own decision. If I, as a reader, have noticed a lot of fae, chances are agents and publishers have seen ten times the number. I ...

Okay, Sara, this one's for you. I can email you the jpg file if you like. I tried to blend Alluvial Fan into the background and she came out with more glow than I intended. I hope she doesn't look  like a ghost. I'm afraid my pirate isn't quite as cute as the one on your site, but you should have seen the other choices. If you have requests for changes or had other ideas about what you wanted your cover to look like, that's fine too. Don't be shy, let me know.  :) If anyone else would like a cover for non-commercial use, feel free to let me know. (And, hey, if you want one for commercial purposes, that's cool too, email me.)

Here's another title and another take on the cover.  The main color theme is yellow, for reasons which would be obvious upon reading the book.  The previous cover used images of actual tribal societies. This one features a much more glamorous heroine, which, I must confess, I prefer.  :) I'm not completely happy with it -- the bear is a bit too obscured by the title. The corn cob doll peeking out here is actually a corn husk doll, and not quite right, but the only thing I could find available in royalty free stock images. This cover incorporates a lot of the themes: she is dancing (although I'm not sure you can tell); there's a bear; a corn doll; and corn. Only things missing are the fae and the hunky hero. But I couldn't fit everything.

One idea for a title was to name the series, "The Secret Society of Warrior Dancers" and each book a different term in the heroine's rise through the ranks, so to speak. First she would be "the Initiate" then "the Serving Maiden" then "the Traveller" and so on. I think I had seven, though I'm not sure what I did with the list. Anyhoo. I told this title to a couple of agents, one of whom specialized in fantasy and the other who handled only literary fiction and memoirs. The fantasy agent wrinkled her nose.  "Secret societies? Warriors? Dancers?" She shook her head. "It's all pretty trite." The literary agent, however, said, "Oh really? I thought it sounded unusual and intriguing!" Clearly, the thing to do is market my book as a memoir. *grin* So, here you go. This is a cover which would make the book look like a respectable addition to the literary section of the bookstore.

There's nothing so inspiring as wasting long hours designing cover art for your work-in-progress. In that spirit, I've mocked up a few different possible covers for Dindi -- the titles, incidentally, differ as well, but it's the same book. Yes, this is what I've spent my weekend doing instead of working on Book 2. It's okay. I'll get back to real work tomorrow.