Greetings all,
About a year ago, Heidi Angell, T.W. Iain, Richard Drake, and I released The Power of Words, an anthology dedicated to the First Amendment. My story for that collection was Stealing Freedom, and fun heist story about a mother who’s planning to shut down the servers that ruthlessly enforce the prohibition of speech and communication on her planet.
As per the agreement we had on that anthology, we’re allowed to release our individual stories (the anthology will remain available) after a year. In preparation for that, I’ve commissioned my artist, Carlos Villas, to do the cover. So, without further delay, I proudly present to you the cover to Stealing Freedom, scheduled for release Oct. 1, 2019.
It always amazed me to see what Carlos does with my concepts. For those who are interested, take a look at my request and little thumbnail:
I told him, “The frame is from the bridge of a girl-child’s nose to just below the collar bone. Around her neck is a metal (techno-looking) collar about an inch thick. Blue electricity is arcing around the collar which is visually undone.”
Carlos patiently went through 13 drafts of the image until we got to the image you see above. The bulk of the revisions were in getting the collar to where we wanted it and then getting that arcing light to look perfect.
He did all that work in perhaps a week? If you’re an author looking for a dedicated artist who will eagerly take direction and produce that level of work quickly, I couldn’t recommend Carlos highly enough.
Once I got the final image, I located a font I liked and designed the overall cover with the author and title text. One may argue my author text is a bit dark, but on a monitor it works out fine. I’d be more worried if it were for a print cover (as printing brings up color and density issues), but if my color-challenged eyes can make it out, I’m confident others can see it. I downloaded the font (for free) and placed everything.
The Audible cover (yes, the audio version of this novella will also be available (I hope) Oct. 1.) was more challenging. In order to keep everything I wanted, I had to place the text over the face. My options were to put text over the face or crop the face out. I opted for the first choice.
Once more, you can expect Steal Freedom to be available on Kindle and Audible Oct. 1 (give or take a day or two).
Thanks for reading,
Matt
M.L.S. Weech 