Crime Scenes

Like someone revisiting the scene of a crime, the last month has had me revisiting a forgotten library of incomplete works, fragments, malformed ideas, and Frankenstein’s monsters. There are many. And there’s simply not enough hours in the day, or years in a lifetime to complete them all, alas.

Despite some attempts, over the last few years, it hasn’t been possible for me to concentrate on writing. Indeed, the muse and catalysts for my imagination have found their way to the attic, to dusty shelves, or hidden in dark corners. My imagination has ticked over in other ways, but not exercised sufficiently in any free sense of the word, always running up and down in the confines of pragmatism, shared worlds, and the practicalities of the day job.

Last month, however, saw my unrestrained imagination running freely over hills of corruption, into bright lights, horrors, and beauty without borders, and finally to a place where it is steadied, hungry, and yet stronger and more disciplined than before. Despite not having written much in the last few years, I am a better writer… strangely. I put that down to having experienced more about life in the last few years than in the previous thirty or so. I know more about what it is to be a person, and that’s translating nicely into story.

It’s also easier to find inspiration and easier to order my thoughts. Writing is an old game, but technology has helped me organise it more than ever. 

And inspire too. I’ve always found book covers an inspiration (and if you want to know why, check out Grady Hendrix’s book Paperbacks From Hell). In my early days, my publisher consulted with me on book covers, which I took very seriously. I’m not a fan of lazy covers – and yes, I do judge a book by its cover, because a cover for me shows the care, the attention, and the interest for words inside. If the cover is lazy, then I expect the story to be. If the cover is strange and unusual, I hope that it reflects the words within.

Now that I’m writing again, and I’ve discovered my writing mojo, my book-cover mojo has returned with a vengeance. Whether I enter the realm of self-publishing or not, it will be useful to have a mock-up of a book cover. It will remind me of the prime objective (to get my words in print for you, dear friend) and inspire me. That is the purpose of book covers, to inspire, to draw you in. 

I’ve probably created a blog-sized rod for my back now, but here’s a cover I’m working on for one of those fragments that I’m not currently writing, but might be in the future. 

Won’t say much more, but after trawling through thirty or so unfinished projects, most now have prototype book covers, courtesy of hours of iteration via Co-pilot to tweak them until I get what I want. (Just to say, using Co-Pilot is not so different from how some of my covers were commissioned in the past… except the fine-tuning takes minutes not weeks.)

So now I have thirty projects, and I have thirty book covers, but more importantly, I have the thirst for words and stories again. As I get to the 100-page milestone of the new book, I feel inspired, and reinvigorated, to keep going. And better still, by hook (a trad publisher) or by crook (self-published) the new book will likely be out there at some point next year or so, dear friends. 

Something I never thought I’d say again…