Raveler Update: The Cover!

ByJohn Brown

Back in July, I contacted the talented Victor Minguez again to do this cover. I sent him a creative brief with three scenes that I thought would work well. Victor read the passages, then came back with some sketches.

One of the scenes was of Sugar, battling howlers in the world of soul. Two parts of the reference I gave were the following. The first suggested an interesting lace pattern that fit my image of Sugar’s skenning. The second was a dead ringer for a howler. It’s actually “Lion,” made of used tires and steel by Yong Ho Ji. Okay I found it on Pinterest. But it’s absolutely gorgeous. I really thought this scene with Sugar would be the one.

Skenning   Howlers

Victor’s sketch is below. You can see the howlers in the foreground about to attack.

RavelerSketchSugarHowlers

The second and third scenes were of Argoth facing down Mokad’s Guardian and Matiga and her fell-maidens in the final battle. The fell-maidens are women you don’t want to mess with. Some of the reference included these. BTW, if you’re interested in other images I’ve captured, feel free to browse my Pinterest collections.

Matiga Matiga2 Matiga3Matiga4

This is the sketch he came back with. His notes explained that the enemy line would be reflected in the sword.

RavelerSketchMatiga

I love the idea of Sugar and those howlers. I can see the image in my mind, and it’s awesome. But we felt this would make a more appealing cover. Maybe someday we’ll pay for someone to do that Sugar illustration just for the heck of it.

The next step was to do a value study. This was the first.
 RavelerValuesFirst

I wanted to see what a couple of variations might look like.

RavelerValuesCloseUpView  RavelerValuesMoreFaceSketch

Ultimately, I thought all three of these were powerful. The first two really draw attention to her eyes and give a great focal point and hierarchy. In fact, I still go back and forth even now. But I did like seeing more of her face. I think anyone of them could have been great, but we ended up going with the third. A little magic from the artist, and Shazam!

RavelerFinal

There are a lot of things to love about this. Victor’s gorgeous backlighting and halo effects. The part of the story told in the reflection in the sword. And the fact that this woman is not some fluff bunny, running around in ridiculous bikini wear. She’s even got a bit of sneer or growl going on. My friends, this is a freaking fell-maiden. I also like that Victor etched an important symbol into the armor.

Here’s the illustration in the cover.

RavelerFullSpreadWeb

Share

Similar Posts

  • Fab Readers, Time to Make Your Voices Heard

    ByJohn Brown

    Whitney-logoEvery April, the Whitney Awards holds a gala to announce the year’s best novels by LDS authors. But how do they find and select the novels to consider?

    They start with you, dear reader.

    The Whitney committee  asks the public to let them know about novels by LDS authors they like. A panel of judges reads those novels that receive 5 or more reader nominations and select what they feel are the top 5 in each genre as finalists. Then the Whitney Academy, a group of “industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others,” vote on those finalists. The winners receive a Whitney Award. It’s like the motion picture Academy Award, but for LDS authors.

    Back in 2009, readers nominated my debut, Servant of a Dark God. The judges made it a finalist. And it won its category!

    (And there was much rejoicing.)

    This year, I released Curse and Raveler, books 2 and 3 in that series. Both are eligible. If you liked Curse, nominate Talen, Sugar, Harnock, and the gang  to be considered for the Whitney. If you liked Raveler, give the characters another chance and make a second nomination.

    Don’t delay. The more nominations the better. You only have until December 31st! 

    Here’s to hoping the Dark God makes another appearance.

    Share

  • Curse of a Dark God draft 2 finished!!!!

    ByJohn Brown

    Rejoice! Sing! The draft is done!

    Hallelujah.

    Based on my records I spent:

    • 48.5 hours on the pre-draft for this book
    • 503.5 hours to finish draft 1
    • 130 hours to finish draft 2
    • A total of 682 hours of work to this point

    If I’d been working full time on this that would be roughly 17 weeks. That’s about 4 months. I don’t think that’s so bad, considering this book clocks in at 230,000 words. Not bad at all. But no wonder just finishing a novel is the thing that filters most would-be writers out. That’s a freaking huge amount of time. I hope as things progress I get faster.

    Here’s what I focused on in this draft.

    • Sugar’s story. It was a mess and the biggest problem with draft 1. I had to rewrite or massively revise about a dozen of her chapters. In fact, I ended up added three chapters to her story: White Tower, Withers, and Loyalties. I’m very please, however, with the result. I think it works very well.
    • The Gnolum. I had purposely left the seeding chapters for these giants out (seeding as in I can’t just have them show up at the end without laying some groundwork). I had to add 2 chapters for them to this draft.
    • Early Argoth chapters. The first two chapter of Argoth’s story needed to be totally rewritten. The second needed major revising.
    • Chapter titles. For titles in draft 1 I used the name of the main pov character in the chapter and a short summary of what was happening. It helps keep things clear. So those are now out and the chapter titles in.
    • Rough stuff. In many of the early chapters I was still feeling my way into the story. Yes, I had an outline, but I just can’t get the whole story until I begin to write. So there were many chapters with notes to myself or blanks to fill in. Some things no longer worked because of later chapters. All this I had to fix.
    • Reordering chapters in the last half of the book. About halfway through the book Talen’s story breaks off from Sugar’s and Argoth’s. So when I was originally writing them, I found it easier to just write all of Talen’s story and then all of Sugars and Argoth’s until the three met up again. Well, this created some time gaps. I fixed those. I also had long stretches of one pov. For example, I had Talen’s story running for 14  chapters without any break to the other viewpoints. All this had to be fixed.

    So I’m very pleased with this draft. Here are the first three chapters for your enjoyment: CODG draft 2 beginning for readers. Remember: feedback from my wife, agent, editors, and other early readers will change it. You’re welcome to contact me with any comments you might have about it.

    Share
  • |

    More info on the American Fork Arts Council Gig

    ByJohn Brown

    Fat head alert.     

    Not to be missed – the most useful speech on writing you will ever hear! Keynote speaker John D. Brown will present ‘Three things you MUST know to write killer stories.’ John Brown is a prize-winning short story writer and novelist. His epic fantasy novel, “Servant of a Dark God” will be released in North America in September 2009. 

    “Most useful” is nice. Let’s hope I can live up to that one.  🙂 I’m looking forward to this event. A lot of other great authors will be there as well as editors from Deseret Book, Covenant, and Cedar Fort. If you’re a regional writer, you won’t want to miss this. Full information here on the American Fork Arts Council council for writers.

    Share

  • Halfway finished with 10% trim of CURSE

    ByJohn Brown

    I’m at the 51% mark with my trim and have cut 10,000 words. Right on target. And I haven’t cut any story, just flab in the writing. Usually when I revise, I add words. I thought I wrote lean, but that’s clearly not the case.  Strangely enough, I have to say that I’ve enjoyed every hour of this. I’m loving this edit,  improving the flow and immediacy, cutting out redundancies and superflous lines. Who would have thunk?

    For those of you who are numbers geeks, here’s a peek at the spreadsheet I’m using to track my trim goals and actuals. “Var” means variance. “CTarget” is the target to cut from the chapter.  

    Share
  • |

    John guests on Writing Excuses season 3 episode 19

    ByJohn Brown

    writing-excuses-the-guys2-300x139

    Here’s the third episode I recorded with the Writing Excuses guys.

    In the first podcast we talked about putting and not putting ourselves in our writing and making characters who don’t all sound like the author. In the second, we talked about how to not repeat yourself as an author. In this one, I shared some basics about generating emotion in readers and dealing with negative emotions writers face when they encounter rejection, compare their career with others, hit writer’s block, or hear someone didn’t like their story.

    As usual, the guys had some great insights. Check it out: Emotion in Fiction.

    Share

One Comment

Comments are closed.