Newsletter: The Big Reveal
Cover reveal and synopsis for Company of Ghosts
I skim most of the art in an art museum.
I don’t say that to sound dismissive. I love art. I can point to specific exhibits that have literally changed the course of my life. But I’m a veteran at this point. I don’t need to stand in front of each individual work and search for layers of meaning. The eye knows what the soul needs to see. It’s enough to walk through a room and wait for that magnetic pull from the periphery, the irrefutable instinct that there’s Something Important on the other side of the room.
For me, that usually means landscapes.
Don’t get me wrong. I like people. I’m a firm believer that people are the point of the whole endeavor, but I need my people to be rooted in a place, and I need those places to have as much depth as the people who inhabit them.
My favorite landscapes have, as Margaret Atwood writes, “a tangle, a receding maze, in which you can become lost almost as soon as you step off the path.” The tangle doesn’t need to be literal, but there should be a sense that an entire world exists among the hills and trees. Who are the people in this picture? Where are they from, and where are they going? The eye bounces around the frame, searching for answers and finding unexpected new details. I get the feeling that I could spend weeks exploring these places.
So naturally, when I set out to find a book cover, I knew that I wanted the landscape to be the central focus. I started the search with local artists, then cast a wider and wider net as the near misses and unanswered emails piled up. Inspiration struck a few months into the process when I realized that other people had already spent literal decades collecting and promoting fantasy landscape artists. Best of all, they credit the illustrator on every Magic: The Gathering card, and some of those artists have websites.
My search eventually led me to Bruce Brenneise, an award-winning illustrator who’s done work for Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard, Ubisoft, Paramount, and a few other household names. As I clicked through his portfolio, that feeling of getting lost in the work—of wanting to drop into the canvas and follow the path into another world—happened over and over and over again.
Of course, now that I had a talented illustrator in my corner, the next challenge was to give Bruce something to work with. I knew my own world well enough, but how well could I explain it to another person? Bruce spent weeks gathering notes, listening to feedback, and sharing rough drafts while we got closer and closer to the finished product.
And then, one day, I had this in my inbox.
Suddenly, I was staring through the lens of someone else’s imagination into a world that I had created. Stranger still, I recognized the place: the Governor’s Palace that Ferrec still refers to as a “castle,” the unadorned gate that Kyrede walks through in Chapter 18, the mountains that guard the city of Lletra from the north. For the first time since setting pen to paper, I could experience this world as an observer. I could wonder without knowing.
But my favorite part of the process was one of the last emails from Bruce, where he said this:
I'm excited with how this one has come out; it's got a little bit of a Brangwyn vibe that I don't think I've hit in my work before.
This is why we do it, folks. It isn’t just a commercial exchange, where I trade my hard-earned ducats for a shiny new jpeg. I learn from him, he learns from me, and we both gain something in the exchange. The project of shared humanity continues apace.
But wait, there’s more!
I also have a back cover, and true to form, it has a little summary of what the book is about, for people who are into that kind of thing (please be into this kind of thing).
This one definitely fits on the fantasy shelf. I’ll briefly set myself aside from the competition and reiterate that I’ve tried to sidestep a lot of the genre tropes here. The main character isn’t a special teenager with special powers. There are no ancient prophecies or powerful dragons or invading hordes. I think I have… *checks notes* …one swordfight?
Lots of secrets, though. The kinds of secrets you can’t avoid in a nation perpetually at war with itself. The kinds of secrets that are dangerous to share, probably even dangerous to know.
Upcoming Dates
Finally, I have a few dates for you guys to mark on your calendars.
July 18th - Proof copies arrive on my doorstep. This is where I verify the final layouts and hold my book in my hands for the first time.
August 13th - August newsletter and sample chapter. It’s pretty long, but you’re basically getting like, 5% of the book for free, so that’s kinda neat.
September 16th - Launch day!
September 17th - Day after launch, where I begin selling my soul to various deities for book reviews. (If your chosen deity offers a referral program, let me know, and I can mention you.)
TBD/ASAP - Preorder links. I will be annoying about these as soon as I have them. Please forgive me.
That’s all for now. See you all next week for another Micro Monday!