My 15,000-word short story "Carcass and Mallet" now has a new cover, the one above. The e-book cover should be available any time now, and the print edition will be out within the next month or so.
The cover does not work all that well for an e-book, or as the front alone, but as a complete cover I think it is appropriate for what I was attempting. I was going for a bit of a 1960s surreal fantasy vibe, but updated a bit and not too surreal. Also, as can be noticed, the design formats are now the same for all my John Dee stories, and will continue to be so for any future stories; this is intentional for marketing purposes.
Without reading the story (and perhaps even with reading it), the cover might not make much sense. The central pyramid figure is the resting place for Cyrus the Great, which still stands to this day in a remote part of Iran; my representation of the pyramid is not exact and is not necessarily meant to be, but is more of an iconic figure. The city in the background appears in the story, and I'll say no more about that. The little dust up on the right, with the flags and such, is actually from events in the story, a game of chogan, which is an ancient game somewhat similar to modern polo.
By coincidence, so far all three of the covers I've done for Dee stories have had somewhat of a desert theme. One on Mars, another in modern Iraq, and this one in 7th Century Persia. Again, that's just coincidence, and there are plenty of Dee stories that take place in other climbs (though one of them is in Vegas in 1969 ... hmm, another desert ... maybe there's something going on here).
What a great title, man!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Charles. I kind of like that one myself. For some reason, I give my Dee short stories a lot more thought than usual when it comes to titles. There's generally something almost poetic about them, at least to me. When working up a Dee title, I've been known to peruse Milton and Dante for ideas, my thinking that Shakespeare and the Bible have mostly been played out.
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