Volume One is Done!

The latest book is done.

Judge, Jury, Shaman, Volume One of the Aser stories from the Piker Press is complete, put in order, and ready for uploading to Lulu.com to be made into a paper and ink book. High time, I say. I've dithered around with this project for months, trying to come up with catchy illustrations to insert here and there.

Now I could use the original illustrations that accompanied the stories in the Press but although they were cute little sketches, some stories had a lot of illustrations (well, three) and most had none at all. Maybe a couple years from now, I'll get into a manic drawing fit and illustrate the stories like they ought to, but for now I'll follow Josh Brown's advice and just get the damn thing into print.

So this evening I spent almost 3 hours trying to learn enough about Photoshop 7 to make my cover images. I bought several reference books on Photoshop to help me learn how to use it effectively; I have learned just enough to make myself dangerous to my files. Not enough to do what I wanted to do with the cover images. Okay, so maybe a couple of years from now, when I do the illustrated editions, I'll have learned enough to do the cover I had in mind as well.

In the meantime, I went back to my stupid dumb baby "Photoshop Elements" and cobbled together a tentative front cover, and the background for a back cover. Maybe. I just realized the back cover and the image I want to put on it don't have enough contrast. Crap.

I don't know why I worry so much about this stuff. A stroll through any book store will provide a viewer some of the worst cover art imaginable. Not only is a lot of it UGLY, but a lot of it is so DUMB I'd be ashamed to have it cover my book. So I shouldn't worry that the cover to Judge, Jury, Shaman is just a stony background with the big fat nasty curse-stone and some of the Ur-Jennan family totems on it.

And I suppose I shouldn't talk about other covers being ugly, because the ogre Hoke the Horrible is going to adorn the back, and Hoke has a reputation for being ugly enough to make a wizard puke.