July Updates & Reading List

 

JULY (3 books | 663 pgs)

25.) Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix (Novel, 248 pgs) | 3/5

26.) Strange Pictures by Uketsu (Novel, 236 pgs) | 3/5

27.) A Path Through the Forest by Alisha Galvan (Stories, 179 pgs) | 2.5/5

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Pretty slim reading for the month of July. You'd think that, since I quit my job at the start of the month, I would've read more. Honestly, I've been neck deep in work on the next two books. 

I've been keeping my "wake up at 5am, eat breakfast, be working by 7am" routine since my last day. It's been especially liberating to grab a nap around 5pm, know it won't jack up my entire next day, and then wake up around 7pm to get more writing done until about midnight. The fluidity of progress is really helping with the ideation, which is really helping with the creation once a piece is ready to have its story told. 

I spent most of today putting final touches on more cover art, but mostly in trying to create my own specific "decorative letters that begin a chapter." You know, the very artistic and massively oversized letters that begin a story in fairy tale books. There are a number of names for these, each shade of meaning containing a new component of the letter: initials, drop caps, rubrics, illuminated. 

I don't know what's been more informative with my design process: the amount of time I've spent painting out in my garage the last few years or all the time spent watching other friends of mine work in Photoshop as they create event flyers or my book covers. Both have been incredibly vital and have shown me new ways of working. 

Let's start with the latest iteration of .corpsegod's cover. The cover of a book needs to be its own statement. It needs to scream "look at me" while also screaming "I'm actually interesting" and have something inside its covers worth saying. I wish I had video from this past weekend's Boozy Book Fair of the numerous people who walked by my booth and had to rubberneck and make a beeling to my table after seeing the cover of Under a Black Rainbow. 

The first few ideas I had for .corpsegod were a background of stonework and some simple lettering. Nothing extravagant, very plain, but statement-making. It was...fine. It was a starting point while other concepts started marinating. 

But the more I started writing the stories within and realized that this was less a book of dark fairy tales and more like a black bible of sorts, the design took on a whole new aspect. This was not just another book, it was a cursed book. A cursed book is often made of leather, has been well-worn due to decades of being read. Some of the stories would be told in biblical fashion, with chapters and verses and passages. Others would be more like parables or fables. 

When I realized this was the path the book was headed down, I started playing with leather background, wanting to find the right color of a dark brown or reddish-brown leather. Recreating the gold embossing is a bit out of my creative wheelhouse, but I think I found a pretty decent stand-in for an embossed look. 

A little neon lighting on the yellow text, some offset backdrop shadow text behind it...yeah. This felt better. Closer to what I was looking for. 

But this also felt a little TOO simple for what the book was becoming. There needed to be extra added features to help give it more of a personality. This isn't just some random book to be read and tossed to the back of the shelf. This is a book that you become a part of, a book that requests you shepherd its stories across the countryside, regaling others with the nightmares inside. 

The book needed embellishment. It needed to feel like something older than god. It needed to feel like there was something growing within its pages, aching and crawling to get out and escape into the world. 

A simple circular, splotched ink design appeared. Then a more decorative circle design emerged within that. Then another decorative circle design asked to be added. The use of a dead/dying tree image become the use of three tree structures to create the effect of some kind of corruption growing and crawling up out of the book through the cover, and then I knew I was on the right track. Add in a little golden filigree to help build up the fee that this a TOME rather than just another flimsy book, and this is where we're currently sitting at with the cover art. 

It will almost certainly change before I finish the next 27 stories, but I like what it's doing to me and I LOVE what it's evoking. 

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As stated previously, I was a vendor at the summer edition of the Boozy Book Fair here in Kansas City. Great event put on by great people. Well organized and unbelievably well attended. I believe they said there were close to 3,500 people in attendance for 80ish authors and another 20-30ish literary-themed vendors. 

My first time attending was this past February, and I sold 46 copies of my books then (assuming I'd only sell about half that number, MAYBE). Did NOT expect that level of success my first time out, especially since I'm a bit of an odd duck peddling my surrealist horror wares amongst a ton of romantasy/cliterature authors. However, that actually seemed to work in my favor as many people that stopped by my booth (both then and last time) were glad for the change in genre that they could check out. I sold 50 copies this time around, so...slightly better. 

It also got me super jazzed to come home and continue working on this one so it's ready for next year. Again, there are another 27 stories I need to write for it, so it'll be a cool minute, but progress has been execptional on nearly every aspect of the process. 

I have another event coming up in October out in Olathe (with another potential in Arkansas). The last few I've attended locally have been out in the Blue Springs area, so hopefully this will bring out a completely new crowd that has no idea who I am yet. More details to come on that one next month. 

I've also started making more author friends as we continue to run into each other at all the same events. The literary event moves people have been making (Sparking Ambition, Dark Flame Society, The Gilded Page, etc., just to name a few) here in KC has been absolutely phenomenal for the city. Tons of great authors getting their names out more regularly, giving the readers of the city a fantastic number of book options to check out is always a good thing. We've got a ways to go, but these have been amazing strides in making the city more literary-minded and offering up more literature event options. 

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I've updated some of the furnishings in my home. I'm about to update some of the lighting fixtures. Other internal home projects are finally able to be put back into the queue now that I've got the actual time to devote to planning them. 

My stress is at an all-time low; my sleep quality is at an all-time high. I spend the majority of my days working on something creative, putting my brain to constant work so as to not stagnate during this time between uobs. Until then, expect more updates like this one where you'll get a deep dive into the current processes taking up all the space inside my brain. 

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