My latest novel, Rags and Muffin is now available for predorder! This is a rough, tough vision of the magical-girl concept that brings together a wide range of influences from the kumari veneration of Nepal to the film noir tradition of American cinema. Bone-crunching action blends with a brooding meditation on the concept of the child hero. Rags and Muffin is Fancy Nancy as written by Rudyard Kipling after binging on mecha anime while tripping on acid.
And I have to give a special shout-out to the team at MiblArt, which knocked it out of the park with the book’s cover art. This is an incredible interpretation of Rags and Muffin, compelling enough to change my own vision of the characters. I’ll likely review their services in the near future.
Since I just got the cover art near the end of October, I’ve decided to push the release date back to early December because I want to run some promotions that require a preorder window. But I recommend ordering now to lock in the low preorder price.
And in this image, you can see the final art for the cover of Rags and Muffin. I’m quite pleased with it, even if it’s not what I envisioned. This comes from Miblart, which makes a lot of book covers for a competitive price, but I’m afraid I don’t know the specific artist.
Although I’m impressed, my wife dislikes it. She says it looks like the cover of a horror novel. Interestingly, although the book is not out yet, it already affects different readers differently: My editor viewed it as a horror novel and said she found some of the content disturbing, even difficult to read. My wife, however, views it as a fun adventure novel.
Myself, I think the cover beautifully captures some of the book’s ideas and tone but not others. Rags and Muffin are supposed to be threatening characters, dangerous and forbidding. But what the cover does not capture is that they are also attractive, drawing people into their circle and rendering them unable to escape. In appearance and personality, Rags is similar to Fancy Nancy except with Kung fu, handguns, and questionable morality—but had we attempted to go that route with the cover art, the result would be deceptive and probably ineffective.
What I’m most happy with is that it turned out well despite the absence of guns. My original vision had Rags pointing a gun in your face, ready to pull the trigger—because you, in a way, are the villain of Rags and Muffin. Perhaps, even without the guns, the cover captures that anyway: This may be how Rags and Muffin look to a criminal, someone they are about to attack. Rags is looking right at you and means to kill you.
So the cover captures my original idea even without the guns.
Time to be working on my next project, a planetary romance full of war and exotic creatures, called The Cup of Agamemnon. The book is obsessed with cups and cup imagery from ancient literature, as will be evident from this three-part novel’s epigraphs, the first of which is Jeremiah 25:15–16.
I just made progress on The Cup of Agamemnon! So far I’m 4.5% complete on the Writing phase. 3 Months remain until the deadline.
Recently, Amazon ripped me off yet also didn’t. I have for many years had an Amazon Associates account, which is a method of getting a small amount of money from links and advertisements. Since I’ve run irregular review blogs for decades now, I’ve long had such an account. I haven’t made a profit from it—you need a crazy amount of traffic and click-throughs to make a profit—but it defrays the cost of my hobby a bit.
I had all but forgotten about my account, though I still habitually made links through it, simply because, until recently, I stopped getting any significant click-throughs after I switched from my old blog to this one. Just recently, after publishing my books, my click-throughs have begun generating what I consider a significant amount of money.
A few weeks ago, I got a notice from Amazon that, with no possibility of appeal, they were closing my account and handing my earnings over to the government. The notice seemed so unlikely that I contacted a representative to be sure I wasn’t getting hoaxed. It turns out it was genuine and also my own damn fault: I had neglected to update my contact and tax information for long enough that I was considered out of contact, and my earnings were therefore forfeit.
And that’s why you should keep track of that stuff.
I’m writing this in part because I opened a new associates account; as an indie author, it would be dumb not to have one as it means, at least occasionally, I can eke out slightly more royalties. Also, I need a few clicks to validate the new account, so in this post I am strongly encouraging you to buy Jake and the Dynamo. You’ll like it. It’s funny. That was an affiliate link, by the way.
I also, in the midst of this, accidentally discovered a feature I didn’t know existed. It appears that if I drop an affiliate link into the HTML editor with no markup around it, WordPress will automatically create that interactive box you see at the top of the post. That’s pretty neat, so I’m going to use that from now on.
Amazon has just added the ability to publish hardcovers through its print-on-demand service. I’ve seen other indie authors talking about this in hushed whispers, but the option just appeared on my KDP account today.
To amuse myself, I tried setting up a hardcover version of Jake and the Dynamo. The results were not unexpected. Although the interior dimensions of my manuscript are fine, the dimensions of the extant cover image are way off, as you can see from the image at the top of this post. Thanks to Amazon’s insistence that a custom cover be uploaded as a single file, this is no easy fix.
I’ve idly dreamed before of a hardcover of Jake and the Dynamo with full-color interior illustrations, but there are three things that make that difficult. The first, of course, is the need to redo the cover with a considerably larger image. I don’t know exactly what that would mean for the artists who made my cover, but I know it would mean a lot of money out of my pocket. The second thing, which is a much bigger nuisance, is that the software I’m using for the interior, Vellum, is unaware that Amazon offers full-color printing, so it automatically renders my interior illustrations in black and white. I will not be surprised if a future update fixes that problem, but that update hasn’t come yet.
The third problem, of course, is that the book would be ridiculously expensive. The paperback versions of both novels in this series already cost considerably more than I would like, probably because of the combination of length and illustrations. Judging from my sales, the novels are much more popular in Kindle and Kindle Unlimited versions than in print. I’m not sure what a full-color version would have to cost, but it would likely be upwards of twenty bucks.
However, since I now know this option is available, a hardcover version of Rags and Muffin may be a real possibility since it has no interior illustrations aside from the black-and-white chapter headings.
Here’s a look at the paperback version of Dead 2 Rites, the sequel to Jake and the Dynamo. As you can see in this picture, it is quite a thick book:
In fact, it comes to 514 pages. As should be clear from this comparison, it is considerably thicker than the first volume:
The text has the same luxurious formatting as book one, designed to be similar to a professional hardcover:
Like the first book, this one includes full-color illustrations from Roffles Lowell:
Unfortunately, even though we worked to make sure the illustrations would look better in this printing, some of them have come out too dark. I’m not sure of the reason for this.
The manuscript for Rags and Muffin is done, with just a few finishing touches needed. I had commissioned Eduardo Moura Barbosa for a chapter-heading image, but I was so pleased with the results I asked for some more so I can switch them up from one chapter to the next. The header image for this post is an example: Each chapter header contains objects associated with one of the main characters.
I also crossed my fingers, took a deep breath, and commissioned a cover. I decided a cartoon cover was inappropriate for Rags and Muffin, so I commissioned a cover from a reasonably priced company that appears to do good work. I haven’t seen anything for my project yet, but they claim their turn-around time is good, their portfolio looks solid, and they’ve asked me a lot of probing questions to ensure that they’re actually producing what I want. I’ll name the company after I have the final product and can discuss the overall experience. But if they’re as fast as they claim, I might just make my hoped-for October 1st release date.
The downside is that the cover will cost a pretty penny—at least by my standards. I’m not a guy who can drop $1200 on a book cover, at least not yet. This isn’t costing me that much, but it’s definitely a bite out of the wallet.
Anyway, remember that, if you pick up Dead 2 Rites, kindly leave a review.
Only one week left to get your eBook of Dead 2 Rites, the second volume of Jake and Dana’s misadventures, for 99 cents. Bigger and better even than the first book, Dead 2 Rites features mystery, action, lots of girls, and, of course, lots of laughs.
Dana Volt, eleven-year-old powerhouse, and Jake Blatowski, befuddled teenager, are back for more in the action-packed sequel to Jake and the Dynamo!
Just when Jake thinks he might finally get a break, he has to face down a murderous kaiju with a skin condition and join the city’s hardest-rocking magical girl in an underground battle against an army of bloodthirsty pastry chefs. As if that weren’t enough, he also has to deal with Pretty Dynamo’s newest rival, a human Swiss Army knife who revels in rule-breaking.
But behind the chaos of these latest threats to mankind’s existence looms a greater evil, for Lord Shadow’s baleful eye has again fallen upon the Earth. Now a conspiracy of monsters may awaken a mad god from the sea of uncreation outside the cosmos—and the only girl who could unite humanity’s defenders for a final stand is slowly succumbing to madness.
It’s been hectic in my neck of the woods. Right now, I’m finishing up some last-minute improvements to Dead 2 Rites. As of this writing, it’s still on sale for 99 cents and will be until it releases for Kindle and paperback on September 1. So if you’ve read Jake and the Dynamo and found it amusing, reserve your copy of the sequel now while it’s cheap.
I’m also working at getting the art for Rags and Muffin. I’m still hoping for an October 1st release date for that one but don’t want to pin it down yet. I really like the guys who did the covers for the Jake and the Dynamo books, but I think something a little different would be appropriate for Rags, so I’m hunting around.
I’m also currently at work on a planetary romance, a bit of a departure from my usual “theme.” I’ll discuss the details later. I have my fingers crossed for a release date before the end of the year. I really want four books out this year.
We have here the paperback edition of Jake and the Dynamo, currently available both at Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, with additional buying options forthcoming.
A view of the spine.As you can see, this edition has a wraparound cover. Amazon, for whatever reason, requires an upload of the cover as a single image even though other print-on-demand services will allow you to upload the cover piecemeal. So a wraparound works best anyway.
The first and second versions.Here you can see a side-by-side comparison of the two versions. The first is the original from Superversive Press, now sadly defunct, and the second is the new, currently available edition from Girls at Work. Both cover illustrations have points to commend them, but I’m particularly fond of the second one because it captures the iconic image of Jake and Dana I’ve always had in my head. I think I’ve described that picture to three artists, and this guy finally got it right.
A comparison of the interiors.Although we might weigh the pros and cons of the covers, the interior of the new version is unquestionably superior, as you can see in the image above if you will excuse my photography. I have provided a slightly larger font and a larger line height for improved readability. The font and line spacing are both bigger than the standard recommendations for Amazon print-on-demand paperbacks, similar to what you might expect in a traditionally published hardcover.
A full view of the interior.Because this edition has gone through a final and thorough revision, the text is considerably shorter, but because of the improved layout, the page count is considerably larger. The original Jake and the Dynamo ran to 382 pages, but the new version is 412 pages. No material has been removed, only improved.
An interior illustration.All of the interior illustrations from Roffles Lowell, including chapter headings and sections breaks, are present in the new version. I have no control over their final quality, of course, but they look to me to be comparable to, perhaps even slightly improved on, the original version. I have added captions to the full-page illustrations, something I always wanted them to have. I have also moved all of them to the chapter ends simply because it is next to impossible to prevent them from cutting the text off in odd places otherwise. The eBook version, of course, has full-color images.
