Ooo, Cover Reveals!

at the artist's place or ours

In an age of what often feels like instant publishing, books still take time. Our upcoming graphic novel from Sara Barkat took three years.

Why would a book take so long to produce?

Reasons vary. Including that life can get in the way.

With the upcoming graphic novel, that was partly the case. Art is highly personal and can take an inordinate amount of emotional energy to create.

Sara Barkat works very quickly, having completed, for instance, the art for The Yellow Wall-Paper Graphic Novel in less than two months’ time.

But the art for this project took about 5-6 months. Why? She was working in a new way: on textured black paper, with white ink, and gouache. She’s an expert at line art, but painting was a new adventure. The story was longer than The Yellow Wall-Paper, requiring meticulous hand-lettering—again and again and again. The black paper cost over $1 a page, and she didn’t want to waste even one piece at that price. So the work required a kind of perfection that can be challenging to accomplish.

Now, 5-6 months doesn’t equal three years. So what else happened?

Well, there was, as noted, life.

And multiple art and photography production puzzles.

And software crashes upon trying to handle such HUGE files.

And KDP refusing the uploads because the files were just too dang big.

Okay, but we finally solved all those issues!

Now we’re waiting to see a proof of the print copy. Will the white on black read? We’ve chosen the more costly premium paper option, so our fingers are crossed.

Oh, and did we mention that Kindle is giving us a hard time about our front matter? (Always, writer: do expect it :) ).

So, yes, three years and counting!

But?

We’re very close. Close enough that the artist is doing a cover reveal for paid subscribers today.

And we’ve revealed the cover to our patrons. (Are you a patron yet? We’d love to have you along, to help us bring beautiful work to light.)

The graphic novel is on the way.

At last.

See you in print (fingers crossed!) and on Kindle, soon…