behind the scenes Archives - Tachyon Publications

behind the scenes

February 24, 2015

The secrets behind Julie Dillon’s beautiful cover to THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized a dribble of ink, behind the scenes, collection, cover, elizabeth story, essays, fantasy, julie dillon, kate elliott, short stories, the very best of kate elliott

For A Dribble of Ink, Kate Elliott reveals how Julie Dillon’s gorgeous image became the cover to THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT.

When I decided to commission an artist to illustrate a short story in the Spiritwalker universe, I was thrilled that Julie Dillon agreed to work with me…

Besides the black and white drawings for The Secret Journal of Beatrice Hassi Barahal, I also asked Julie for two color illustrations. I picked the subjects based on passages from Cold Steel that I thought would be visually evocative.

I particularly wanted an illustration for a scene in which the heroines, Cat and Bee, emerge from a cave onto a beach whose strand, instead of sand, is “red coals and smoking ash.” Here in the spirit world the sea isn’t water; it’s smoke. In the scene a dragon rises out of the sea of smoke to confront them.

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Therefore, when Tachyon Publications approached me about the possibility of publishing a collection of my short fiction (now available as The Very Best of Kate Elliott), I asked if they would be interested in using this illustration for the cover. They politely agreed to look at it, making no promises that it would be suitable, right up until the moment they saw it. At that point they were, understandably, quite enthusiastic.

Not every illustration or photo can be used on a book cover because the dimensions and balance have to work together. Furthermore, using the wrong typeface, color, and design can ruin an otherwise interesting image. Designer Elizabeth Story did an incredible job turning the illustration into a gorgeous cover. She flipped the image (my daughter, also a designer, explained why the image works better flipped on a book that opens on the left; it has to do with the way the eye gets drawn to the right and thereby to the side of the book you open). The clean, classic typeface doesn’t clutter, nor does it draw attention to itself and away from the image. The gold color of the letters echoes the fire in the dragon.

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You can buy prints of the color illustration at Julie’s INPRNT store.

Read about the rest of the process including the black & white sketches that lead to the finished image at A Dribble of Ink.

For more on THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Julie Dillon.

Design by Elizabeth Story.

February 11, 2015

The secret history of Alastair Reynolds’ SLOW BULLETS

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alastair reynolds, behind the scenes, elizabeth story, Marty Halpern, More Red Ink, novella, science fiction, slow bullets, Thomas Canty

On his excellent More Red Ink blog, editor Marty Halpern reveals the events and the process behind Alastair Reynolds’ forthcoming SLOW BULLETS.

So when I contacted Alastair Reynolds last year about submitting a novella for Tachyon Publications, he responded with – much to my delight: “I am working on a novella right now which does not yet have a home.” It doesn’t get any better than that because I obviously had the perfect home for that novella. That novella is entitled SLOW BULLETS and will be published in June.

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But back to SLOW BULLETS: The first draft of the manuscript that Al sent me clocked in at around 40,125 words. To meet novella requirements, the story had to have a maximum word count of 40,000 words, so I asked Al to review the manuscript and cut a minimum of 250-300 words, to ensure the story was safely below the 40K word cap. Having worked with Al previously, I knew that he would accomplish this self-editing with the skill of a surgeon – make that a brain surgeon. When I read the second draft of SLOW BULLETS, the story flowed so flawlessly that I couldn’t tell where words had been cut or changed; I would have had to use the “compare two versions of a document” option in MS Word to determine the specific edits. I also suggested a couple tweaks to the content itself for clarity.

Read the rest of Halpern’s interesting article at More Red Ink.

For more about SLOW BULLETS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Design by Elizabeth Story.