It took bit longer to get a post out than anticipated.

Cover art and other marketing bits

One of the upsides of being an indie writer is complete freedom in everything related to the creative process. You can write what you want, publish what you want, say what you want, no matter how trite, depraved or idiotic. (Whether or not anyone actually buys it is another matter...though any illusions one has about the taste of the reading public tends to die off very quickly once you get into the weeds.)

The downside if that you have to do everything, including something that is potentially soul-crushing, a task that grinds you ego down to a worn nub and scattered the pulverized crumbs of your self-confidence to the uncaring winds. I am, of course, talking about marketing.

There is no getting around it though. Marketing is part of the package, and I've been neck deep in it over the last ten days. Getting a moment to merely write is a breath of fresh air in a fetid room.

As part of the process, I created a number of different variations for a potential cover for the book. This one made the cut:

And here are all the others:

I liked the way this came out:

And yes, I used AI to generate this. I’ll have more to say about this in a future post.