Exit – print edition cover reveal

The print edition cover for Exit has finally been released. If you still haven’t read the preview yet, then you can do so here.

EXIT – available in paperback now!

When I design a cover, I usually have a number of ideas. I mock them up and then take a week or so to consider each, sometimes changing fonts and placement. This time, I knew exactly what I wanted.

I didn’t take the photo. In fact, I didn’t take any of the photos this time. Both the front and back images came from stock I found on Pixabay.com several months ago. I simply tweaked the base images to suit my needs. All in all, it only took a few hours for me to get the results I wanted.

The face model on the back cover is a good friend of mine who generously sent me several photos that his talented wife had taken of him. It was hard trying to choose one from the options I had been given. The one that made the back cover had just the expression I was looking for. Cheers, Sam!

I say it every time, but this has to be one of my most favourite covers. The front just sums up the story nicely. It is Tommy if that makes any sense? Dreamlike. Unsettling. Empty.

Feel free to tell me how the cover makes you feel below.

Cheers!

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EXIT is available now at

Amazon, Apple iBooks, Kobo, Google Books, and Barnes & Noble

 

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Meetup – Writers of the Round Table | Osaka

I know. It has been an age since I actually posted anything. Work gets in the way and the little time that I do manage to scrape together I generally use for writing rather than updating. For what use is updating if I’m not writing anything to update about?

In this instance, however, I thought I’d provide a little insight into how I’ve managed to carve out a regular slot of time in order to at least get some writing done when all hope seems to be lost.

Back in 2016, I fought a running battle on two fronts with life and work being the opposition. Time was the battlefield and it was touch and go as to which would control the field. As I write this, it remains in a state of flux.

I did, however, find a way to fortify the hard-won ground that I had bloodied myself upon. The answer came in the form of creating a Meetup group.

The Forgotten Picnic Basket

In between shaping earth, scribbling in notebooks and bringing Mac back from the dead, I have also been working with an author/illustrator on their short story, “The Forgotten Picnic Basket”. The story is a simple, but heart-warming, tale about a forgotten picnic basket and the little mouse that finds it.

Sadly (in my opinion), it will not be published or released to the general public. Instead, the story will be handed out freely, in print, to a limited number of persons unbeknownst to me. It is uniquely small in size and contains 10 pages of artwork (a sample sketch can be seen at the end of this post).

Rock under Tree

Taken from my rocky perch beneath an old pine tree.

There I sat scribbling notes for additional scenes within “Glade”. The wind was quite fierce and the threat of rain ever present, but it only added to the tapestry unfolding within my mind.

Although the old tree is not in these photos, it is quite interesting. You see, it was struck by lightning during a thunderous storm several months past. The tree caught fire and blazed ferociously yet was not entirely consumed. Half the tree continues to grow and yet the other half remains scarred and barren.