Here's one of the ideas I've had for a cover, if Seven Miles on a Dirt Road starts to look like a book.
Here's one of the ideas I've had for a cover, if Seven Miles on a Dirt Road starts to look like a book.
El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
The art is very nice, but I feel that if you could give a hint as to what this journey on the dirt road entails by putting in something the character receives from someone else in the story, like maybe a bottle of water in his pocket or a soda can. Something depicting the severity of the journey. Or if the title is misleading and it's not about a journey but instead a kind of poetic title about something completely different from a journey then perhaps put something in there depicting what it is really about, but don't make it too obvious just make it to where the reader will not know what it means until they reach that part of the story.
Hidden Content a link to my blog for my fiction story
The book is a series of connected sketches modelled on VS Naipaul's Miguel Street. The sketches are about the people who live along the road, which runs 'from the edge of town to the edge of nowhere...' and ends in a village named Seven Miles. There is a village by that name in the Cayo District, and the village where I live is seven miles from the nearest town, so the title was sort of a natural for me.
One of several threads that runs all through the book is the story of a character we first meet as a kid rescuing a puppy. That's where I got the idea for the cover.
Looking at it now I'm wondering if the cover might give the impression it's juvenile literature. While it's 'all ages' rated, I wouldn't want adults to avoid it thinking it's a kid's book.
El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
The colours in the hat, writing and bike frame lead the eye around the picture well.
A new story
I finally got 'A Family Business' recorded and loaded, all 37 mins of it, much longer than any I have done before.
Hidden Content
Thanks, Olly. My efforts to make the colours work were not in vain.
El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
Simple and effective. I like it. The caption below could do a little increase, though.
Not bold enough, is it? Thanks for your general comment. I was worried about whether I got the colours too bright, but Olly's comment made me decide to leave them as they are.
By using the kid on the cover, do you think people might mistake it for juvielit?
El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
^ Using the outline-style for the font on the caption below makes it hard to read on its current size. If you want to retain the outline-style, increasing the font size by 1 or 2 should take care of that nit quite well. Or, maintain the size then go for solid-style lettering.
And no, I didn't think it was a kiddie novel. The title made that quite clear for me.
A question, though. Is the kid the protagonist of the story? That's fine. I recall an almost similar style of cover in Grisham's "The Client." The story's protagonist is also a kid. The novel worked quite well.
The kid is one of the principal characters. His story is threaded through all the other sketches. Each sketch centres around one person, but a few characters appear throughout. The real protagonist is the road which 'binds them all' to coin a phrase. The nearest to what I have in mind is VS Naipaul's Miguel Street which is neither a novel nor a series of short stories but is, rather, a series of closely related sketches, bound together by the street. My sketches follow a 20-year timeline, from mid 30s to mid 50s. Thus we see first see Danny as he rescues a puppy at age ten and at the end of the book as a veterinary surgeon at age 30. His life is one of many played out along seven miles of a dirt road.
Leaving the bottom line the same size but going to a solid typeface is what I think I'll do. Thanks for that suggestion.
El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
Why does the kid have his right foot on the left pedal? It makes him look posed rather than natural.
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