Month: September 2021

Cover up!

I enjoy mocking up covers for my stories, even before the stories themselves are ready for publication. Sometimes the covers help to crystallise my thoughts on how the story needs to be refined, and help me focus on key elements that I highlight in the cover.

I’m no artist, but I flatter myself that I know my type and have a reasonable grasp of the Adobe tools.

In this case, the aspects I want to emphasise are:

  • the protagonist, Jane, who is a little weird
  • the wild countryside of the north Midlands
  • the looming presence of those from the other side of the sky
  • and some hints that it is not contemporary
This one came closest after a preliminary search.

There are other elements in the story, but I don’t think they would catch the eye to the same extent. I wanted a face and a figure. People respond to faces on book covers. Looking through royalty-free photos, I found nothing I really felt was suitable.

But the problem is that it was too modern. That’s not an 18th-century face. It stares at you and grabs you, but doesn’t go with the long subtitle.

The single eye seems a bit odd to me as well. So I went searching.

Neither of these worked for me. Note that I decided to move the title up to the top of the page, and expanded the subtitle. But in the end, I decided a photograph was not the right thing to use. I discovered a portrait by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who was one of the great portraitists of the 18th century (IMHO – you can keep your Greuze and all the other French artists of that era).
LeBrun self-portrait

So, Wikipedia has a lot of her paintings, including this delightful self-portrait:

And also this:

Unnamed young girl

And this is what I came up with:

I made the image monochrome other than the eyes, which I made very saturated green, and placed it to one side, with a good deal of transparency.

But it still didn’t look right to me, so I moved the title and increased the font size.

Probably not the final version

Almost certainly it will not be the final cover, but it does give me inspiration to continue and get the book out. Here’s a little bit of what the book is about:

Posted on by Hugh Ashton

Done (but not dusted)!

I’ve now finished the first draft of my next book. Provisional title: On the Other Side of the Sky.

Current length: 103,000 words. That’s a lot of words.

Date started: 20 August 2020 (I have written and published a couple of shorter books in the meantime)

Setting: 18th century Europe

Protagonist: A girl with a strange parentage

Antagonist: Her father – who is from the other side of the sky

Other characters: Some members of the Lunar Society including England’s greatest doctor, Erasmus Darwin, assorted alchemists, mesmerists, mountebanks, rabbis, and German Landgraves. A sprinkling of the English aristocracy and some revolutionary sans-culottes.

Supporting cast: Some beings from the other side of the sky, and some Rosicrucian-type Elementals (Sylphs, Gnomes, Undines and Salamanders).

Genre: Historical paranormal. Similar in its way to Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Method of writing: Seat of the pants. Watch and listen to the characters and write down what they do and say.

Research and sources: 17th and 18th century books on alchemy, Jewish legends, serious scholarly work on Kabbala, biographies of some of the Lunar Men and of that period.

It’s been a wild ride through lots of Jungian landscapes. It’s either a complete load of self-indulgent crap, or it’s a very good book indeed. I’m not sure I can tell the difference at this stage.

Now comes the hard part – editing.

If anyone reading this is or knows an agent or publisher who might be interested, please let me know.

Posted on by Hugh Ashton