The Stupid 365 Project, Day 32: Cover Story
November 2nd, 2010
This is the jacket for CRASHED, the first Junior Bender mystery, coming to the world of e-books right after Thanksgiving.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s quit here and call it even.
Okay, I heard the boos and hisses, plus the occasional whip-crack from Everett. Three hundred words or nothing.
The designer of this terrific jacket is Maria Sandamela, who also designed the website you’re looking at right now. Maria is not only talented, but also a pleasure to work with, something that can’t always be said for talented graphics people, who tend to think they’re smarter, at least in terms of graphics, than I am. And they’re usually right.
But book design is different since, in addition to catching the eye, it’s also supposed to convey something about the story. In CRASHED, Junior, a burglar who works as a private eye for crooks, is hired to figure out who’s sabotaging the production of a very expensive porno film and becomes involved instead in trying to save the film’s unwilling star. Thistle Downing, who was America’s biggest TV star between the ages of eight and fifteen is now — at age 23 — broke, drugged out, and half-unaware of what’s being done to her. And she’s also the target of a murder attempt.
Junior has to walk a tightrope between betraying his very dangerous client’s interests and protecting Thistle from herself — and a surprising number of others. There. I got the plug in, and wasn’t it done cleverly? But it’s very cool how Maria has captured so much of that — the battered door, the tarnished star, the bottle of candy-colored pills.
I’m hoping Maria will be able to do all the Juniors, including the next one, LITTLE ELVISES, with this sort of painterly approach, while the amazing Allen Chiu continues his magic with the Simeons. Allen is already at work on a font for PULPED, made up of teensy bits of paper.
It’s very gratifying to me to have these two wizards work their magic on my books.
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8 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 32: Cover Story” -
EverettK Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Lovely. Perfect. Absolutely captures the essence of the core of the story. Well, okay, maybe she could have worked in something from the burglar angle, but let’s just throw the nits out the window. A wonderful job! (And you can tell I said so. I’m sure that will mean a lot to her.)
So now I suppose we’re going to have three or four blogs about how you’re going to post the first chapter, etc.
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Jaden Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Beautiful cover, Tim. And what a well-placed and eloquent plug. The book sounds terrific.
Tonight’s reCaptcha: informal painden
An establishment in which people in casual clothing engage in S&M?
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Thanks, Everett — You’ve read it (or at least some of it), so I’m glad you liked it. I don’t think the graphic could have dealt with one more story element. And no, there won’t be three or four blogs about posting the first chapter, there will be three or four blogs about whether I’m going to write a Thanksgiving and/or Christmas story. And I’m not going to run the first chapter at all — I’m going to run the chapter where he and Doc have to walk Thistle back to consciousness.
Thanks, Jaden. I like it myself. Maria is terrific. Very funny Captcha — maybe we should save a bunch of them and have people suggest translations.
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Laren Bright Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I like the name Junior Bender. For many yearsI’ve been collecting names from signs I see while driving. I don’t know why I’m doing that because I don’t ever expect to write a book that has actual characters.
But if I ever do, it will have a character named Crenshaw Fish. Or possibly Object Aribessi, which is the recaptcha code for today.
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fairyhedgehog Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 4:50 am
It’s a great cover. I like the overall look of it and the combination of items invites curiosity.
Nice one!
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Bonnie Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:55 am
Who did the Poke Rafferty covers, Tim? I like them a lot, too, though I don’t think they are as effective on my Kindle. Thistle Downing, by the way, sounds a lot like a reCaptcha, too!
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Wahh, don’t have an e-reader, but I love the cover, and would love to read it. Maybe for Christmas…
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 3rd, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Umm, Crenshaw Fish, Laren? Can I have that? I’ve been meaning for years to use a genuine Koreatown acupuncturist named Dr. Ow or a Venice surgeon (he has a little surgical center on Washington Boulevard) named Dr. Fillet.
Thanks, FHH — I like the painterly feel of it. Very different from the Simeons. And I agree that the objects are kind of provocative.
Hey, Bonnie — the Poke covers are done by the art staff at William Morrow and they’ve gone through a couple of changes of emphasis. The first three were all sort of architectural — Bangkok at a remove — and each featured a shadowed man, which was taken directly from NAIL in a piece of dialog when Poke says to Arthit that the missing Uncle Claus has left no footprint; he’s like a cut-out in that the only reason you know he’s missing is the space where he used to be. Then my most recent editor rethought it and set the covers at street level, which is what you’ve got in the paperback of BREATHING WATER and the hardcover of QUEEN. He also kept the shadowed figure of a man. Of all the conventionally published books in my career, these are the jackets I like most.
I’m sorry, Lil. The Kindle, at $139, is the greatest electronic gadget in the known world at present, especially since there are THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of free books available for it, and tens of thousands more (maybe hundreds of thousands) that are available at substantial savings over the paper prices. It pays for itself in less than a year. You know, you can order one, see how you like it, and send it back for a full refund within 30 days. (You can also demand a refund on individual Kindle books, which isn’t so widely known.)
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