Cover Girl

No, really, it has been a productive writing time of late. Finally talked myself into trying the iPhone-and-keyboard brunch during the workweek (that is, in the break room at work) and it, um, works.

But not as much as this morning, where instead of being early to work I hammered out 3/5 of the next scene in one intense session. Pity I can't keep that pace up; the next two scenes are going to take detours to refresh on some research material.

And all of that has damn-all to do with covers. I want to start that cover order, really I do, even if it is too early to do it. But that group really likes me to tell them what to put on the cover (we don't pay them enough to read the actual book). And I still have no good ideas.

So I wanted to revisit that hybrid cover concept. Like putting the Zuni sacred symbol in the New Mexico sky. Maybe not good branding because it looks too Hillerman but anyhow. Opens up splices like that. I had an Impressionist sky over a Paris rooftop view for the last and I could take something like that further. I mean, hell, there's a riff off the sequence from Kurosawa's Dreams in that same book, with Penny trailing the bad guys through animated Van Gogh fields.

I can't do a simple combination for the London book without it looking steampunk, but could do a slash-rip with one side being London Eye all lit up, Shard and all, the other being a black-and-white of barrage balloons and searchlights during the Blitz. Which makes it look more like a time-travel story than a dual-time narrative, but what can you do.

And it founders on Athens because while there is an absolute natural of a giant floating Greek helmet as the main visual element (presumably this one has the human element as foreground) I refuse to do a Corinthian helm. And furthermore, Laconia delenda est!

More useful at this moment, though, if creating a LOT more difficulties, is that the "Fox" titles are absolutely mystery cozy. Which these sort of are, even though they fall closer to Archaeological Thriller. Just a dialed-down action level (but the LA expat I met in Paris told me she hadn't expected all the James Bond stuff in the Paris book. Her words, not mine! And that's probably the lowest action level of all of them. Nobody even shoots at her in that book.)

The fresh take here is to go and do those Artifact titles, but do them properly. They don't have to be portentous and they shouldn't be silly or too obscure (a little hard not be somewhat obscure. History is like that.)

This tells the reader this is archaeological thriller just from the title alone. And it gives some idea about the cultural focus, so a reader who might not otherwise look but does want to read about turn-of-the-century Paris might be tempted.

So go with The Mirror of Amaterasu. And can also go with The Athena Sherd. Or Shard. Or just sidestep that whole issue and call it a "Fragment" or something. (Potsherd works, too.)

And, yeah, I know, too many books don't offer that immediacy of artifact. Not one that sounds interesting and that actually fits in the plot. We're not putting a Roman coin on the cover, either. In the title in this case but you know what I mean. The Blitz Diary makes it sound like it is a Blitz diary. That is, straight historical fiction, not the adventures of a student archeologist in modern London. Similar could be said for, oh, The Notre-Dame Gargoyle. Not to mention it isn't a gargoyle -- but that's another hill for another day's dying.

Okay, okay, The Zero Room is sort of intriguing. It doesn't really nail down history or location -- except for someone who already knows it. The problem is that this, like the Mirror, is giving away plot. These are unusual Archaeological Thrillers. The heroes don't set out to find the titular artifact. The nature of the thing is actually a big plot reveal. Zero Room might be obscure enough (but that also makes it less useful) but Mirror of Amaterasu will be staring the reader in the face probably before Penny even realizes the cult has one of the Three Treasures. (And no, not a washing machine.)

And New Mexico, the "history" is not a simple and distinct period. Okay...there's a bunch of stuff about pre-Clovis, generically Neolithic. And kind of a big point (ahem) that pre-Clovis is striking for being pre-Clovis. That is, for not having the Clovis Point. There's not a diagnostic artifact (in the transition period there's a Stemmed Point tradition, but you dial the way-back machine to the White Sands Footprints, and there's nary an artifact to be found.)

(Okay, the buzz is going around now about a possible travois. I buy it, sure I do. But some drag marks in the sand isn't enough to make me bronze that one. And there's not a nice culture name going with it. It's just generically "Pre-Clovis." Which is basically labeled by site anyhow. So people will talk about Monte Verde or the Gault Assemblage, but there's no equivalent to Bell-Beaker People.)

And the other half of the not-really-a-dual-time narrative is...a nuclear weapon. That artifact and that doesn't-have-a-name culture don't go together outside of Ancient Astronaut writings.

Still, unless you know the references (most won't) the current title choice is "Fox does something." I'm at the point where I'm having to source the quote in the epigram. "...said Napoleon." Pity changing titles is basically new book, new ISBN...and a completely fresh lack of reviews.

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And "The Thing of Thing" just came back to me. I think I lost that insight because it fell apart like all the others. But this was capturing a concept about the story that wasn't necessarily an artifact. "The Mirror of Amaterasu" is quite literal -- the Yata no Kagami does appear in the story -- but it also sounds like and can be read as conceptual. That is, of a way of looking at Japan, of the way Japan looks at its own past. At what turns out to be a key character arc moment as Penny re-enacts the moment when the goddess looked at her own reflection and was, essentially, reborn.

"The Relic" or "The Secret of Montmartre" works, and picks up the thread of belle epoque because while Montmartre is still damned well there, it is strongly tied to that period. And it and that period is strongly tied to the artists like the Impressionists. Which isn't just the title being accurate to the book, it is offering a contract to the reader. "Want to read about the Paris Impressionists and get a little archaeological mystery with it?" Um... "Treasure of Montmartre" also works. Well enough for this exercise, at least.

The Blitz, as I mentioned, is more key to the London story than is the tube. So it is absolutely " The thing of the Blitz." Or "...London Blitz."

And oh yeah. Remembered it now. "The Face of Athena" or "The Legacy of Athena" for the Athens book. In this case, the dual meaning is both the sherd and the almost-lost early Attic pottery workshop, but Penny being inspired (manipulated) by Athena...ambiguously, both the goddess and the character she created.

The Athens book always has the problem of looking like a Percy Jackson wannabe. So there's that problem. If the title seems to be making the same promise that Greek gods are going to play an active role in the text...