The Case of the Crazy Cover Art. (And Why.)

-her name is Layla and as soon as I saw her I was sunk. So I'm a foolish old man. (Who cares?)

by Louis B. Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved







http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/629847


This has been cropped and of course the text has been inserted. Under the license, it may not be used as a 'stand alone.' It can be distributed, copied, etc. But it cannot be claimed as my own work, 'without alteration.' It does not require attribution, and there aren't any fees. I downloaded it in about a second.

Nothing in life is free. One; I spent six to eight hours looking through morguefile.
Two, I don't have exclusive rights--anyone can use the same image as a starting point.

So here's a direct quote from morguefile:

morgueFile free photo

You are allowed to copy, distribute, transmit the work and to adapt the work. Attribution is not required. You are prohibited from using this work in a stand alone manner.

So what I've been doing is trying to come up with some kind of cover for my third novel, 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' to be released in e-book form November 1.

I don't know, but the girl makes up for a lot and it saves me trying to come up with a credible painting in a month. Anyway, that's what the public wants, right? New faces.

I have other options, and there are still five weeks before deadline. The key thing is to work my way through another eight and a half re-writes or so.

This book has a bit of a history, or 'provenance.'

I wrote about 140 pages of it in 1993. I couldn't think of an ending, and I think I moved or something. After my first two novels, at a bit of a loss for what to do next, I dusted it off--it was literally printed sheets in a file folder--and began in-putting the thing into my computer.

As I went along, I couldn't help but do a little re-writing, and finally the thing had an ending. I swiped a detective fiction ending from Agatha Christie! I put them all in a room and the hero solves the mystery, and the bad guys get what's coming to them.

This book is a parody of a space opera, only this time, due to my policy of inversion, I made everything as realistic as possible. If the ship loses power, they are also going to lose their artificial gravity, something often overlooked by TV producers.

But let's be honest--on the production set, zero-gravity is kind of expensive and tricky to operate safely with all those people around.