Covered.

I turned in the cover for VIETNAMERICA last week, so thought I'd post the process leading up to the final. It began with thumbnails scattered throughout sketchbooks and paper scraps... whatever I had on me at the time an idea struck:



After narrowing down those sketches, I refined a few concepts which were then submitted to my publisher:



And the winner was: [druuummmrrrooolll] none of the above! There was a seventh sketch that, when submitted, was unanimously agreed should be the cover so you'll see that when the book actually comes out. (Or for you industrious types, it'll be popping up somewhere on the interwebs soon enough.) Sorry to say, this cover was rejected by my editors pretty early in the brainstormin' process.

Washes: D-O-N-E!

Guess what's next? Yeah, "colors", I'm looking at you. You can run and hide, but I've got you locked on target...

Before and After: An example of obssesive compulsive time wasting?

Version A: Original art from book pitch to publisher.



Version B: Revised art for final published book.



See the difference? Yeah, me neither. Perhaps redrawing my pitch pages was not the best use of my time, but there are subtle tweaks in the revised versions that help improve story flow... AND if I had just "cheated" and reused the originals in the final book I know I would never forgive myself.

The proud new owner of my first-ever ISBN!

The biggest change from self-publishing to having a publisher is accepting that it's not all under my control anymore, especially marketing and distribution. Case in point: I had no idea you could pre-order my book in Canada and the UK. (The control freak in me would like to point out that besides the author name, publisher, and language all the other book deets are inaccurate.) Suddenly it all feels... very... real.

How I celebrated the arrival of 2010:

Happy New Year everyone! With the exception of book peripherals (like chapter headers and endpages) and a few re-edited/re-composed pages/panels, VIETNAMERICA is finally I-N-K-E-D! Reaching this benchmark took longer than I predicted, but still deeply satisfying as a huge weight is lifted and I float closer to the finish line. Now on to completing the washes...