Cover collaboration and the rise of the multiversal mustache

I made a last-minute adjustment to the "final" revision of II Crimsonstreak on Tuesday night. A character's mirror-world doppelganger ended up getting facial hair, a play on the much loved trope from the "Mirror, Mirror" episode of Star Trek. It's not exactly Spock's goatee, but it's close enough.

I didn't think of this myself, actually. This addition was part of the collaborative process of putting a cover together.

I'm working with my editor Kate Sullivan and talented artist Brooke Stephenson (who did the cover for I, Crimsonstreak) to come up with a cover for the sequel. I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted. The idea was so clear, in fact, that I created a mockup in Photoshop. I'm decent with Photoshop, but my skills as an illustrator aren't professional grade. Still, I like to think I have a decent idea of how things look.

The cover for the first Crimsonstreak book went through a few different versions. We ended up going with a fantastic design Brooke made based (very, very) loosely on a concept I had for the cover. Trust me, I was as surprised as anyone when the cover concept ended up being something I came up with while fiddling with Photoshop. Brooke added the key touches that made the book come alive, such as the illustration of Crimsonstreak (my mockup used the Flash as a stand-in) and the idea to use newspaper cutaways to fill in the white space. The latter was a nod to the newspaper articles in the appendices and the character's background in journalism.

So, when it came time for II Crimsonstreak to go through the cover design process, I came up with a concept cover that echoed the first one. Seriously. The cover mockup I sent to Candlemark & Gleam utilized the same basic layout as I, Crimsonstreak, ripped pages and all. I even used the Flash again. Crimsonstreak meets a character in the second book named the Bluestreak who can outrun him. I pulled a page out of the Mortal Kombat palette-swap playbook, using a "blue" Flash and a "red" Flash to represent the Bluestreak and Crimsonstreak, respectively. Brooke will use that as a template and make it 800 million times better. I can't wait to see what she comes up with.

I'm really, really excited about the back cover. I mean...super stoked. Brooke plans to draw five comic book panels that echo comic's Silver Age. She'll use scenes from the book as the basis for these illustrations. So while the comic book characters of the Crimsonstreak-verse don't take form in a traditional comic book sense because it's a novel, Brooke will breathe life into several of them. Her rough, proof-of-concept sketches put a big smile on my face.

One of the characters caught my eye because she'd drawn him with a mustache--something I hadn't considered. We're dealing with an alternate universe doppelganger (yes, yes, again), and while I had written a specific physical difference between the character and the "real" version of that character, I hadn't considered giving him a mustache. Brooke's sketch convinced me he needed one, so I made a last-minute change to incorporate that particular feature as a gag.

I didn't have to do that. I could've told Brooke to forget about the mustache. I am, after all, the creator, right? Yet something about her drawing felt right, and I couldn't ignore that feeling. Now, that character has a multiversal mustache, all because of a little collaborative effort among Brooke, Kate, and me.

People will tell you that you lose a few things when you decide to go with a small press. That's true. But for every "take," there's also a "give." I get to help design the cover of my book--something a lot of authors think about but don't usually get to have much input on. The collaborative process of that design, in turn, ended up making a nice little addition to my novel. It's a minor change that amounts to nothing more than a few references, but it adds something memorable.

And for that, I'm grateful.

Game of (Writing) Thrones

About a year and a half ago, I said goodbye to my trusty writing chair. After I acquired it in 2004, the chair survived two moves, seven novels, and several dozen short stories. It also lived to tell the tale after my brother and I almost killed each other while putting the blasted thing together (weren't not exactly engineers).

Toward the end of its days, Old Reliable looked like this:


That chair, which lasted nearly eight years, had to be replaced. We took Old Reliable to Goodwill in hopes that someone could fix it up and make something out of it. We played "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes...it was an emotional time.

After fighting fits of uncontrollable tears, I finally bought a replacement. I assembled New Chair myself, expecting Old Reliable's successor to last just as long. It appears, though, that the daily process of butt-in-chair writing was too much for New Chair to handle. The fabric ripped and it started leaning to the right after about a year and a half. Here's how it looked:


Sure, it doesn't look that bad. Just try sitting in it. The snowman, by the way, is a sign that winter is coming for New Chair. It's getting a sendoff as well:


I don't know why Spock isn't there--we sent him an invitation. And before you get any fancy pants, J.J. Abrams-rehash ideas, we didn't launch the chair toward the Genesis Planet. Right out the torpedo tube for this one. No "Amazing Grace"--just pure explodey.

Old Reliable's gone. New Chair's a distant memory of inferior craftsmanship and space debris. What's next?

I have to have somewhere to sit when I write. I need a place to work on rewrites for III Crimsonstreak and polish The Franchise. Here it is:


I don't know what to call it yet. I just hope it's more like Old Reliable and less like New Chair. Because New Chair is a disappointment, like the Xbox One reveal and the Star Wars prequels. And Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

(This post was partially inspired by Cathy Day's piece on Writing Machines & Writing Spaces)

Another quick update

I plan to turn in "final" revisions on II Crimsonstreak by the end of the week/weekend. My rewrite fixed most of the issues with the book. Obviously, when you rewrite something significantly, you'll always find little bits that need to be tweaked. While reading through the book on my Kindle, I also spotted a few misspellings. I have to correct those and look at a few dozen notes I made while reading the manuscript. We shouldn't be too far off from having a cover reveal.

I'm also rereading III Crimsonstreak and making some notes on it. I want to give it some more polish before sending it to Beta Reader Mike. I need to consolidate a few things that happen in the last third of the book with events from the first third.

After that, I need to figure out which project I want to do next. I have a fantastic idea for another novel (one that's actually not a superhero book). I also have a book that's about 60% finished; I should probably go back and finish that (and re-plot the last act). I'm leaning toward working on the latter. I have a tendency to want to work on something new ("Oooo...ooooo...SHINY!") and leave other projects aside. It's very difficult to finish anything that way.

III Crimsonstreak and II Crimsonstreak latest

Not much of an update here, but I thought I'd post something today.

I finished my first draft of III Crimsonstreak and read through it (via Kindle) this weekend. I think it's in much, much better shape than its predecessor. An outline did wonders for the book, something I will one day blog about. It's...uh...right next on the list to the Jurassic Park book vs. movie post that I've been planning to do. Anyway...it's nice to have a first draft done. Plenty of work is ahead, of course, including revisions, the addition of appendices, and the incorporation of reader feedback.

As for II Crimsonstreak, I received feedback from my publisher and my second-round edits are due near the end of May/beginning of June. We're on target for an October release and should have an exciting cover to reveal soon. The same awesome cover artist is on the case, so I know we're getting something fantastic.

II Crimsonstreak revisions and notes on III Crimsonstreak

I'm wrapping up the last book in the Crimsonstreak series. I didn't set out to write a trilogy...it just kind of happened. Currently, the end of the book feels a little too much like the end of Peter Jackson's Return of the King. By that, I mean there are several plot threads/character moments to resolve. A few character threads got lost throughout the first draft and will need to be added during revisions.

It's tough saying goodbye to these characters. I'm not saying I'll never revisit them (in fact, I have an idea for a book based solely on Mortimer P. Willoughby that traces the history of Morty and the various Crusading Comets), but I'm going to take a break from this particular group of superheroes. I can't say much about the book (or II Crimsonstreak for that matter), but Christopher Fairborne goes on quite the journey. He has to learn to say goodbye and let go of many of the people close to him. So, as he says his goodbyes, I say my own to those characters. The ending packs an emotional punch...and I hope it translates for readers.

III Crimsonstreak is a long way off, though. That manuscript will have to be revised, I need to come up with some appendices, and my Super Beta Reader will have to Super Beta Read his way through it. Even in the best case scenario, in which I turn it in at the end of summer, we're looking at we're looking at a spring/summer release. But I'm getting waaaaay ahead of myself.

Let's talk about II Crimsonstreak. I received edit notes back from the massive revision I did on the book. Seriously, it was like performing major surgery (or at least my fictional conception of what performing surgery is like). Mastermind Kate at Candlemark & Gleam was very pleased with the edits. I have about two weeks or so to go through the additional markups and make any changes, a process I plan to start this weekend after wrapping up III Crimsonstreak's first draft.

Make no mistake, II Crimsonstreak revisions were a major undertaking. The book had a great concept, but my execution was lacking (I'll do a separate blog post about this soon). I twisted myself up in plot threads, had dodgy character motivations, and underutilized a major character. I some parts, our fair protagonist acted like a jerk simply because it was convenient for the plot.

No more.

I've fixed most of that, meaning that my biggest concern revolves around whether Falcon Gray has a beak or not. I think I can live with that.

We're shooting for an October release.

Decent writing weekend

I didn't have a great writing weekend on III Crimsonstreak, but I turned in a decent effort. Friday netted only 1,000 words. I rebounded with 3,000 words on Saturday.

I fared better on Sunday despite a terrible start. After several hours in front of the keyboard, I ended up with only 1,600 words. I went back in the evening and pounded out another 3,000 words, bringing my total for the day to 4,600 words. For the weekend, I finished with 8,600 words. That wasn't quite the success story from a couple weekends ago, when I averaged 5,000 words over a three-day span.

The first draft now stands at more than 82,000 words. I'm wrapping up the main storyline now. The last act will need some major revisions--I'm again juggling a lot of characters and my "character geography" is a little off--but the important thing is that I kept at it. I think the first three-fourths of the book are solid since much of that is revised from a previous, inferior version of the story.

I will end up making a flowchart for the final battle because I need one.

Boom, baby...times three!

I haven't dragged out the Reggie Miller Writing Continuum in a long, long time. However, after a blockbuster weekend of writing, I needed to do it. I hit the hallowed level of "Reggie at the Garden" on three consecutive days, churning out more than 15,200 combined words on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I'm hoping to finish the first draft of III Crimsonstreak before the end of July. The draft currently stands at about 60,000 words and I'm aiming for 80,000 to 85,000. That does not, of course, include any supplemental materials.

Current Kindle reading list

Here's what I'm reading (or planning to read) at the moment:

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (reading right now)

On deck:

The Age Atomic by Adam Christopher

Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

Micro by Michael Crichton

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover

Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn

Tales from the Cobra Wars edited by Max Brooks

World War Z by Max Brooks

Ascension by Drew Karpyshyn

The Godfather Returns by Mark Winegardner

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Update on projects

Writing production was non-existent last week. I read through some projects but didn't write anything new or revise III Crimsonstreak.

Shame on me.

I'm usually good about writing five or six days a week--it just didn't happen this time. It's okay; sometimes you're going to have a bad week. Usually, I'm able to eke out a few words even when I'm feeling a little stressed out, but I just felt stretched thin. The important thing is not to allow last week's drought to turn into a drought that drags on for several weeks.

I'm working on revisions for III Crimsonstreak tonight. I've also read through The Franchise as notes trickle in from Beta Reader Extraordinaire. I expect to work on final edits for II Crimsonstreak, first draft/revisions for III Crimsonstreak, and reworking of The Franchise simultaneously. This will leave blogging at a premium...and content is at a dearth as it is.

On the plus side, I finished reading Jurassic Park and hope to write a book/movie comparison soon. It won't be comprehensive, but I'd like to talk about the key differences and what I liked/didn't like about each version. I've also started reading Les Miserables to give myself an infusion of the classics.

My reading list is waaaaay too long, FYI.

Still revisioning

I hit the "halfway point" on revisions for the third Crimsonstreak book. I put quotes around "halfway point" because I'm not really halfway finished. As I've written before, I had about 70,000 words written on the book. Then, after doing revisions for II Crimsonstreak, I realized the third book needed a fresh coat of paint and wasn't going anywhere. I trimmed 10,000 words immediately (a section that was fairly pointless) and ended up cutting another 5,000 words.

This was after I went back to the drawing board and wrote an outline that laid out the plot in great detail. Since I'd tweaked the ending of the second book, I had sections to rewrite and characters to add. Some things from the original draft stayed, some things went away. So when I say I'm at the "halfway point," it means that I'm at page 170 of my 340-page Word document.

And I still have LOTS of work to do. Once the revisioning is done, I'll have to write the darn ending. And, yes, I know "revisioning" isn't a word. Then again, neither is "Reaganing" and that worked out well for Jack Donaghy.

I decided this week that I wanted to read Jurassic Park again and write a blog post about the differences between the book and the movie. I started last night and got about 50 pages in. More on that later.