JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER (KG)
They say, "Never judge a book by a cover," but how often does that happen?
In my own day, I have rushed to buy books with intriguing covers, and run screaming from books with covers that seemed to foretell days of unbearable boredom or intense regret. One book cover actually made me nauseous - a book about radiation with a weird spiral cover that seemed to suck me into it, then made me dizzy. If I had awakened in another dimension or time period it might have been acceptable, but no, it was just the walls of my all-too-familiar room spinning around and around. From then on, I had to approach the book with caution, averting my eyes from it like Perseus locked in mortal combat with Medusa until I could get past the cover; but even so, as I read the contents, I could not get the cover image out of my head, it seemed to seep into the pages of the book and cause my head to spin regardless...
Certainly, when I asked Katalina to do the covers for my book, spirals were not on the agenda.
In this most important phase of artistic operations, Katalina and I finally agreed on a composite cover which would rearrange certain already existing elements from the novel and package them together in an appealing design. (That would be up to Katalina!) Several cover versions arose during this process, all of them employing the same general approach, but manifesting it in different ways.
Slightly different front covers were developed for the illustrated PDF version and the Kindle version of the novel, but both utilized the same portrait montage as the central feature. Below is the cover for the Kindle/Amazon version...
^ The March of the Eccentrics front cover, Kindle version, as created by Katalina Gutierrez. Portrait elements (from left to right) are of Julius Herman Abu, Ellen Scheherazade Abu, Amazonia Jenkins, and Freddy Wells.
For the illustrated PDF version, a back cover was designed as well. It featured a scene from Chapter 15, in which liberal demonstrators were assaulted by politicized thugs in New York City as the social divide in the U.S. grew to unmanageable proportions. The illustration was combined, in the design, with a blurb penned by yours truly.
^ The back cover of the illustrated PDF version of the novel, design and illustration by Katalina Gutierrez, write-up by J Rainsnow.
If the book had a print copy (which would probably weigh one hundred pounds and require crazy glue to keep the binding from breaking), the covers and spine would look something like this (except that the spine would be twenty times the current size):
^ Cover arrangement for an imaginary 3-dimensional version of the novel (K. Gutierrez). But for now, you may place that version next to the fountain of youth, and your own private spaceship...
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And thus ends this little tour of the visual art of The March of the Eccentrics novel. I hope you have enjoyed the art, and that I have successfully conveyed some sense of all the work and thought that went into its development from the time it was first conceived, to the time it was solidified, constructed, and finally given life by a skilled and dedicated artist. It is my hope that these images will inspire you to buy and read the novel, and to allow this vast story which possessed me for so many years (and which Katalina was skillful enough to provide visual entrances to), to also possess you. There is a whole world here waiting to be discovered, and waiting to affect the world in which we live.
For those intrigued by the art, the illustrated PDF version of the novel is definitely recommended (see "Marketplace.") That is where all this great art resides. The Kindle version (without illustrations) is for small-device convenience, and can be used to complement the PDF version when one is away from one's desktop or laptop...
And now there is nothing more to say than:
BON VOYAGE!
- J Rainsnow, Oct 2014