Bodacious & Sundry #19: Bodacious Creed Cover Reveal, The Wild West Steam Fest

Bodacious

Today under Bodacious, we have the full color cover reveal for my upcoming novel, Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western! In Bodacious & Sundry #18, I revealed the line drawing of the cover by artist Joshua J. Stewart. Josh finished coloring it several days ago and I must say, I was excited to see it for the first time.

I then work-shopped the title and byline text on Facebook and ended up with what you see here.

The needs of book covers have changed greatly since I was a kid, teen, and young adult. Before Amazon and the widespread acceptance of self-publishing for writers, people bought most of their books in physical book stores. That experience hasn’t changed. You look over the display racks and the shelves, and when a title or cover catches your attention, you read the back of the book and maybe a page or two to decide if it’s something you want to buy.

In a book store, you see the cover at full size. For genre fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, intricate paintings used to be the norm, with characters taking up only part of the cover and grand scenes stretching around them. Those covers look amazing on a B. Dalton or Barnes & Noble shelf, but on Amazon, things are different. Your first glimpse of a book cover will likely be as a thumbnail about 100 pixels across and 150 pixels tall. Suddenly, those epic paintings became hard to interpret, the titles even more difficult to read.

That’s why I commissioned a portrait of my main character, U.S. Marshal Robert “Bodacious” Creed, and why I had to play with the title text to make sure that it not only represented the genre, but would be easy to read when reduced to thumbnail size.

I hope this cover gets all of you excited about the book! I’m working hard on the second draft and I still plan to have the book published in August 2016. Meanwhile, you don’t have to wait until August to experience the Creedverse. Join The Mostly Steampunk Newsletter for free and read The Obstructed Engine, a Bodacious Creed prequel story, today.

Sundry

This weekend, I’m attending the Wild West Steam Fest in Santa Ana! My son and I will be wearing our western steampunk costumes, and I’ll definitely have my new camera. I can hardly wait to share pictures here and in The Mostly Steampunk Podcast.

There will be special guests like Deux Ex Vapore Machina (God in the Steam Machine), and Steam Powered Giraffe plus panels, vendors, and activities.

I’ll also get to meet members of The Star Wars Steampunk Universe, many of whom I’ve interviewed for this very blog. They do a lot for charity, including autism awareness, a cause close to my heart.

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