Tag: Novel

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The Cover

With the publication date locked, I need to get a finished cover design. Without it, all the promotional material is stalled: social media posts, pictures, ads, the book trailer, everything.

My novel is about two people separated by time. She lives in California, near the Giant Sequoia forest in 1989. He’s across the river from New York City in 2019.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve worked on the cover. I’m not a graphic designer, but I’ve done a few professional jobs and know my way around Photoshop. I tried several different designs with no luck, but the image I came up with that clicked for me, was a composite of two photographs. The first by a fantastic photographer, Zetong Li, of a majestic forest of Sequoias.

The second was a striking image by another brilliant photographer, Burst, looking straight up at a cluster of skyscrapers vanishing into fog. I manipulated the images, accentuating the height, and intensifying the colors.

My cover art.

I next started experimenting with different fonts trying to find one that worked for the title. My design PC has over 10,000 fonts available. But you can’t install that many, or the poor thing couldn’t run. Still, with about 200 to choose from, I failed to find anything that popped.

I realized the smart thing to do would be to hire a professional for the job. So I did.

Zenon Slawinski is a graphic designer from Virginia with a long list of credits, including many book cover designs. You can check out his amazing portfolio HERE.

My concern about the cover is I want it to appeal to both male and female readers. I didn’t want a font style that might repel one or the other. Zenon set to work and within two days I had about a dozen proofs to look through.

On Friday I put out the call to my friends, family, folks on my mailing list, and my beta readers, to ask for help narrowing down the many options Zenon has provided me. The feedback already has been tremendous.

I will be meeting with him again on Monday and narrowing the choices down to just a couple variations. I’ll have an official cover reveal when it’s finalized. If you’re curious to see the variations or to participate in the process, please sign up for the newsletter with the form above. Your contact information will never be shared with anyone.

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Big news…

My debut novel, A Different Time, will publish July 2, 2019.

I’m simultaneously thrilled and petrified.

So, how did it happen?

The process began October 23, 2014 (my Dad’s birthday).

My daughter had produced a year-long photography project taking a different photo every day. When it was finished she showed it to me. It was so cool looking through the images, making connections between the locations and the people. That was when the idea popped.

But because I wanted the main characters to be able to interact with each other, I changed the medium from photography to videotape.

I jotted down some quick notes and scanned them into my files. I’m a digital pack-rat when it comes to my writing. I save everything.

My original chicken-scratch that became my debut novel.

It was an interesting idea, but I was busy running The Gamers Box and I wasn’t writing regularly. So it remained in my IDEA FOLDER on Evernote, for almost two years.

In the summer of 2016, after working on several non-fiction projects, I participated in the inaugural creativity sprint Write Like You’re Alive, hosted by Zoetic Press. It was a month-long challenge to try and create something new every day for 31 days. Halfway through the event, I was running out of ideas. So I blew the digital dust off my original note from 2014, and turned it into a short story called, “What Time Is It?”

By the end of the month, I’d created 21 new pieces, including stories, poems, and photographs. The editors from Zoetic Press selected “What Time Is It?” to include in their anthology.


The 2016 anthology published by Zoetic Press

It can be downloaded for free. HERE

The process of creative writing for a solid month was invigorating. I decided to collect the best material written during that period and published it in May of 2017 as Anansi and Beyond: Short Stories, Magic, & Nightmares.

My first published collection of short stories.


In November of 2017, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month. After spending some time considering what story I wanted to tell, I decided to expand “What Time Is It?” into novel-length. I wrote the first draft of the manuscript from November 1 to December 6, 2017.

The revisions began January 2, 2018 and finished March 11, 2018.

Then I handed it off to my brilliant editor, Dave Taylor, from ThEditors, to work his magic. He turned in his notes on May 14th.

On June 13, 2018, I had my final draft.

Then began the long process of pitching the book to agents and publishers. Nine months later and now the light at the end of this long process is finally visible.

Over the next eight weeks or so, I’ll post the work happening behind the scenes and keep you in the loop as we countdown the launch. Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm. It means everything.