June Blog -- Cover Reveal

June Blog 

Cover Reveal

 

Does your mind do a flip-flop when you hear certain words or phrases?

June Blog? My brain did a quick backtrack to elementary school, a time when the June Bug provided hours of fun and games…the idea of which was to catch June Bugs and chase each other and shove the bugs down the back of the unlucky soul’s shirt. As the runt of the litter, I can attest to the scratchy feeling of an unhappy June Bug scampering about looking for an exit from a smelly hot t-shirt.

Now many years later and beyond my June Bug days, I still enjoy traipsing around memory lane, but with books and movies. Some of the scenes or the spoken words are timeless:

“Go ahead, make my day,” Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan in Sudden Impact in 1983.

“Here’s Johnny,” Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in The Shining in 1980.

Montag, the fireman in Ray Bradbury’s 1951 novel Fahrenheit 451, racing the Salamander to douse a book owner’s home with kerosene and burn it down; or,

Winston listening to the telescreen broadcasting the Ninth Three Year Plan Update in George Orwell’s 1984.

NOTE - Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair.

So where does this trip down memory lane take me? Not wanting to be trite, but I have to “traipse” back down memory lane again to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

In a nutshell, that has been my experience with the design and format of the cover for my upcoming novel, We Were Yong Once… I know and understand storylines, plot development, and character development, but I am not an illustrator. That is not to say I don’t have a good idea of what I want on the book cover. I can picture it in my mind, but trying to explain it to an illustrator is like telling someone what broccoli tastes like. I know it, but there is no way I can tell someone what a taste is like. The same thing holds true for me what trying to get across my mental image of a book cover to an illustrator.

We Were Young Once… ended up perfect. But what a journey it was. My mental image was a young adult couple, the Chihuahua desert, the border wall, and a deserted house.  Now, doesn’t that sound simple? Try it. I’d be interested in your rough draft of what you think the cover should look like.

I thought this project would be quick and easy. Alas, after trial run after trial run, add, subtract, modify, trash, and start all over, the end product finally came through.

Maybe what I thought was so simple because of a little fact–I had lived it. The illustrator had not. Bless her heart. They must have thought I was crazy, but in the end, it happened.

Then, like a shot out of a cannon, up jumped another hurdle. We had to delay the rollout—Coronavirus has knocked every industry back a few days to a few weeks on turning out their product. In my case, it was ACX, the audio version of We Were Young Once… Now they say it will be early August before we can have a rollout for this second book in the Border War Series.

Patience was never one of my virtues, and this setback hasn’t helped. As my mom used to say, “Tommy, just bite your lip and hold on. Everything is going to be okay.”

Okay, Mom. One more time I will listen to you.

Readers take note. You have time to get the first in the Border War Series with Color of thePrism. It is not in audio but print and eBook. Autographed books are available at www.thomasjnichols.com/ Usually mailed within 24 hours of order.

Our word to the day is “Ruminate.” = to go over in the mind repeatedly and often slowly and carefully.