Book cover, part duex

Editing continues. I'm down to line-level edits. This is where the prose hits the fan. This is where you hear the author's voice most clearly. Faulkner, McCarthy, King, Gibson, Gaiman. They all have very different and distinctive voices. And it's the lyrical quality of an author that almost always grabs more than the plot. Characters are the most interesting part of a story to me, and the author's voice is very much a character. In part, this is why I like to read and write first-person stories. It's like sitting down with someone for a drink while they tell you about something that happened.

My book is told first-person from Daisy's point of view, so the voice I'm writing for her has as much to do with how you, the reader, interact with the story as the plot. That means I need to get it right. But I'm on the path. I know the voice, so I just need to be sure it comes through.

No, not mine. My wife, Taleena, has the first book in her new series up for pre-order. The digital release drops on Wednesday. There will be a hardcover release too, but she's waiting on the proof copy before opening that up for sales. You can pre-order your digital copy now.

It's also a detective story, but with a very different setting and storytelling style. I've read it. Good stuff.

Still looking for a full-time job. I've been doing a few freelance projects, but not enough to fill the hours in the day. I've had a few good nibbles, but nothing that has turned into bites.

So in my spare time, when not doing any of the above, I've been cosplaying as a sysadmin. I've set up a 10" mini server rack with an application server to run a bunch of self-hosted services, Home Assistant (like Google Home or Alexa to control my smart devices but without sending my data to Google or Amazon to sell), and Jellyfin (a self-hosted video streamer. My own personal Netflix.) I've also set up an Automatic Ripping Machine to convert all our physical media to digital to populate Jellyfin with all the movies and music we own. And I've set up a local AI machine and been playing with that to better understand how all the moving parts work under the hood.

Being my own sysadmin still comes with all the headaches of being a corporate sysadmin, but with none of the expectations of 99.9% up-time or a constant stream of support tickets I need to solve.

The response from you about which cover concept I should use was overwhelming. Not only did it generate the most response from all my readers, there was a clear winner.

This was almost everyone's pick. I'll admit it was not my first choice, but it's been growing on me. The style is too much like Anime. One reader said "Less cartoon, more grit." I agree. And EB's proportions don't really fit the description of him in the book. I'll need to work on that when I get with an artist. On the other hand, there is a long tradition of cover art not matching the pages they contain. The Dresden books by Jim Butcher have given the main character a wide-brimmed hat on every cover, something that never appears in the book.

This was my favorite. But it produced the strongest negative reaction. "Faces without features freak me out so B made me feel icky." Fair enough. But EB is supposed to be faceless and give people the ick, without giving away his backstory.

But the real feedback that convinced me that Cover B was the wrong path was a couple of readers pointing out that there is a certain sub-genre of romance for which this cover art style is popular right now. Not something I want to be associated with.

This cover had the fewest comments from readers. I think it's too much like Cover A to garner comment. My own thoughts are that it's too "fun."

This one only received one comment. "I hate a messy desk so I had a very strong negative reaction to D." The truth is, I really like this image for the back cover. I just need to make room for the back cover material.

Thanks to everyone for your feedback.