Posts Tagged ‘artist’

Posted by XanderRichards at 4 May 2012

Category: News

As you’ve probably gathered by now, I am incredibly grateful to have met Jonathon Earl Bowser, the artist who painted the awesome cover for ‘COAST: An Act Of Burial’.  I am now even further indebted to him for this excellent review which he posted on Amazon.  Holy cow do I ever owe this boy a few beers!

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“When I was asked to produce the cover art for this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I can’t really say I’m a fan of the genre in general, and certainly not an authority on such things.  But I have indeed read every one of Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, and I think Richards’ book compares favorably to them.  It’s exciting, funny, knowledgeable of its subject, and packed full of quirky “Britishisms” that really made the old formula seem fresh.  Most importantly for me (the cover artist who must find a way to convey in a single image some of the substance of the whole story) were the vivid descriptions of the many exotic locations.  I found surprisingly complete, almost cinematic, pictures forming in my mind as the dynamic action unfolded.  It’s easy for a narrative to lose its way when many crazy things are happening, but Richards keeps you well anchored with an unusually strong sense of place – rather like he is recalling events that actually happened (and he did slyly raise an eyebrow at me when I jokingly suggested as much to him in one of our design meetings).  Can’t wait for the sequel!”

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Thank you Jon!  And that is all for now.

Roger and out, X.

 

Posted by XanderRichards at 13 March 2012

Category: News

Great news!  The copyrighting of the cover painting of my spy novel happened today.  So the image is ready to go.  All I have to get is a letter of permission from Jon the artist (hopefully less than a thousand words LOL) so that this blogger doesn’t end up behind bars.  I’m not great with legalese, so I’m using a broker to take care of such things for me, rather than creating a lot of litter myself by filling the forms in wrongly.

I recently had a discussion with a colleague who asserted his opinion that copyrighting is going to die out and that this was a sign of the times.  I’m not sure I disagree.  I think in the long term it’s certainly possible.  Let’s face it – all over the world people are infringing others’ copyrights and some seem to have a very cavalier, “catch me if you can” attitude.  Nonetheless I’ve heard of several successful prosecutions in recent years.  Who doesn’t have a music MP3 of a commercial market record on their computer somewhere?  Anyway, I think copyrights will stay as they are for a good few years yet, so I’m slotting into that bracket.  I am still hoping to be able to announce the tile of my espionage book by the end of next week!

Changing the subject in a hard left curve, I am so grateful to live in Saskatchewan.  When I lived in Europe I was always forgetting the time change, daylight savings as they call it here.  I remember my embarrassment at turning up to places either an hour early or an hour late, depending on the time of year.  Now I suppose we’re all so engaged in social media that we’re unlikely to miss it thanks to many online reminders.  But here in Saskatchewan we don’t have to remember it and I’m really glad about that!  I’m sure the spies in my novel would have some clever spy gadgets which would figure out the time change for them, but maybe an ordinary GPS receiver will do that, I don’t know.

So anyway, that’ll do for now but I can’t deny I’m excited.  I don’t want to say too much, but Steve’s internet marketing tech is starting to work amazingly well.  Shhh… don’t whisper a word!

Roger and out, X.