And today, I need yours! Because my next novella, The Black Beast, is just about through its final edit. And it needs a cover, so I made the cover you see here. And now I need your opinions of this cover, because the only feedback I’m getting from my darling family has been ‘I like that font’, ‘Well, do you like it?’ and ‘Claws? I don’t see any claws’.
Click on the picture: Those are quite obviously claws. Specifically they are claws from a black bear, because that’s how I described the Beast’s claws in the story. They may not be quite as large as the claws described in the story, but it wasn’t a very big bear. In fact it was kind of furry and cute and a little bit derpy-looking. I think the Beast would have probably kept it as a pet or eaten it, not sure which.
Anyway, I need your opinions about this cover. Don’t be shy. Also don’t be my son, who kept up his ‘claws what claws’ shtick for a full minute past the point where it was still funny. I realize that at thumbnail size you’re seeing fur and maybe fingers? but at full size you can tell that’s not a human hand.
For those of you who have asked me about whether or not I was going to make The Black Beast available online again, obviously the answer is yes – but as original fiction, and I had to do a significant amount of rewriting to get it there so when you see it again it might seem like a whole new story. Because the particular fandom the fanfic version was written in…well, there were some pretty fandom-specific tropes in there, and someone not familiar with the M7 TV series fandom or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves would most likely have taken one look and called me a racist. So, I rewrote it. Twice. And then I spent a couple of years poking around editing it, and now it’s nearly done. It just needs one last editing run-through to make sure I got all the typos…and it needs a good cover. 😉