Well, the decision has been made. It’s the lightning bolt cover.
I had a say in the matter, and I leaned in that direction myself. In the end, it was a decision by acclamation, but it was definitive only numerically, not in terms of strong preference. I think folks’ feelings mirrored the general division of all you who responded on both my website and facebook.
In the end, the lightning bolt cover spoke more to the content of the book, though none of you could have known that. You’ll just have to wait until you read the book to see if you agree.
So we move on.
Title: Lone Dog Road.
Cover: Lightning over the Badlands image.
(Grouchy authorial muttering: “Why the hell couldn’t they find an image with a road in it?”)
Now we come to inside design — print size, font, leading, etc. Things that make the text visually appealing and readable. This is really a territory for publishing experts and I have no say or claim to say in it beyond my general wish that there be a lot of visual air in the text and that they use my very idiosyncratic poetic/journalistic paragraphing style rather than the more staid conceptual paragraphing style that we had bludgeoned into us in English classes lo those many years ago.
I’ll keep you updated on the ongoing design decisions. But for now I’m going to move on to giving you some excerpts that will introduce the characters to you.
Stay tuned. They’ll come out in dribs and drabs. Lone Dog Road is coming to town.
Please an over 40font, won’t have to find my glasses.
I Have as much control over font size of my books as I do over America’s foreign policy. I would love 40 point type, but the book would then have more pages than the OED.
I know well your frustration about loss of control in layout, font, and font size; if only just in being, now, a blog post writer for a local weekly almanac. I have a terrible time accepting such poor composition i.e., picture positioning, font sizing, etc, that I’m often on the verge of just quitting the post altogether. My wife has for years wondered aloud why in heaven’s name I haven’t written a book — after being a publisher and editor, and now I can point to your post here, why, because it’s just more of the same; why go through the frustration?
In the light over his kitchen sink, a couple days before Christmas in 1994, my friend Joe and I over a few beers impulsively started a little magazine. I won’t go into the story, here, but we did it for 24 years, accidentally filling an previously unknown niche in the Northwest Minnesota human interest category. It evolved from a 4-page ‘zine’ printed on a copier, to a full-color 24-page ‘irregularly-published’ magazine we called, THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota’s Original, Art, History, & Humor Journal that three of us: Joe, my wife, and I published from our rural farmhouse in Roseau County, and ceased publication in 2018.
I know your pain, Kent.
I look forward to reading it. Your writing has influenced my creative path so directly, so immensely and I am beyond grateful for everything you bring to us. See you, read you on the Road then!
I agree with the grouchy authorial comment muttering “Why the hell couldn’t they find an image with a road in it?”
But, oh well! I’m intrigued to see how lightning fits into the story so well! Onward!
Hi Kent, so glad to see this coming along. Here’s what I don’t understand. With all of the photoshop tools available, why does the cover need to be a single image ? Or is that just the budget constraint ? I’m sure there must be an appropriate road image that could be blended into this dynamic sky and landscape to get what you envision ?
I have read the book and Audio book neither Wolf nor Dog. Wolf at Twilight and The Girl Who Sing to the Buffal0
I world also like to read the new book
And … (“Why the hell couldn’t they find an image with a road in it?”) Why couldn’t they CREATE an image with a road in it? That’s what an artist/ illustrator does, isn’t it? I think an artist’s imagination is the foundation of their work. As a sculptor, you didn’t need an image of something to go by, did you? Shape a piece of wood to suit an example you found online or in a book that someone else has done? I may be wrong, but I think I read where you discovered the life within the wood itself. I agree with ‘Mike Wicklein,’ above, that with all the creative tools at their disposal the artist could have sculpted an acceptable image rather than adapt another image to fit. However, cutting her a break, we don’t know her constraints either.
Go back a couple of posts. The folks at the publishing house didn’t think the cover needed a literal reference to a road, but were happy with the evocative dimension of their options. Feeling is more important than description, they contended. I disagreed, saying that a road would create a third dimension and draw people into the image. I didn’t argue too strongly because I knew I would lose against the arrayed forces of the company decision makers, and because I was pleasantly surprised with the options they presented me. I have had some wondrously shitty covers in the past where I was overruled by the power of groupthink. In this case, their choises were good enough that I acquiesced without too much grousing. You don’t fight to the death over the type of bread you use in a sandwich. It just has to be good enough to make potential consumers take a bite. It’s what’s inside that counts. This cover should get folks inside, and that’s where everything matters.
For anyone who has visited the Badlands in SD you will see many ‘roads’ that animals make which are known as ‘paths’ they follow them to move in and out and around this most unique landscape.
So I did look at the cover for roads in the perspective others did guess 🤔
Doug
Covers do make a difference to new readers. I was browsing at the Smithsonian’s American Indian Museum when I picked out the first book of yours that I read. The Wolf at Twilight. They have a LOT of titles…and that title and graphic sold me. I had a lot of choices. Once I read that one, the cover did not matter…at all. Just your name and the title of the book. Obviously your publisher knows they can count on XX sales from your fans…but they and you always want a broader audience. I pitch your stories at people whenever I can. There’s soooo much to learn…and in these days of DEI, you’ve been tackling that for years. No one group has been abused more than our Native people. Slavery ranks WAY up there…but we never tried to exterminate Black folks after they were free or put them in boarding schools. We went to great lengths to keep them in line, but only killed enough off for that purpose. This new piece of work by you is coming to light at a VERY historic time…created during a very historic time. I’m really glad to see you so excited about this. Bravo to all….and thanks in advance.
Thanks, Mike. I do so wish our paths would cross. As to this book, I have no idea if it will find a readership. Some of my favorite books barely had a heartbeat before they passed into overstock oblivion. I do think that I caught something of significance in Lone Dog Road, though: the way that different wounds, different modes of understanding, different burdens and different dreams, are all part of our common human journey.
There was a blip in time (blessedly, only a blip, I hope) when the legitimate anger of people too long unheard pushed us into a world where no one was assumed to be able to speak of the experience of another whose experience was different than theirs. There was corrective merit in this, but it undercut our common humanity, which always sits there right along with our uniqueness as individuals or groups. The artist’s job is to use his or her creative imagination to enter into the world of others sufficiently to bring that world forth through his or her art form. I think I’ve done that in this book, and it is enough of a kin to the Dan trilogy to bring along my core readers. If it can keep them or if it can expand beyond that group, only time will tell.
Where do I get Lone Dog Road? I have just finished reading the trilogy and need to have another of your thought provoking novels .
Margaret Dykhuis
Patience. Will be out in May from New World Library, the same publisher who did the trilogy. Mark your calendar.