Saturday, November 14, 2009

Cover Art Named "Smith"

Hang around enough writers and you will inevitably hear the topic of book covers come up. How good ones can make you, bad ones can break you, and forgettable ones leave you drifting in the wind. (This isn't an absolute truth by any means, but you will still hear it spoken as if it were.) And, in most cases, it's not something we writers have a whole lot of control over.

I am both looking forward to and dreading my first cover, because I have NO idea what it will look like. My novel is straight-forward fantasy enough that I can see it generating a fairly typical fantasy cover (guys in cloaks with swords peering down alley/around corner, or fighting someone, or sneaking somewhere, or something) but also dark enough that it could generate something really cool (no idea what, but hope springs eternal). But, in either case, all I can do is sit and wait...

Well, that, and read this blog post over on Babel Clash by Annalee Newitz about cliches in book covers, along with a chart breaking down the most commonly recurring elements found in fantasy novel cover art in 2008.

Come on, dragons-weilding-glowing-magic-swords-in-front-of-castles-while-eating-horses!! Woo hoo!

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