Matt Mitrovich asked me to write a guest post at Alternate History Weekly Update about my second forty-second career as an ebook-cover artist. I don’t think I’m qualified to write a how-to article on tying shoelaces let alone designing ebooks, but I scribbled some criteria and design ideas for his readers anyway. Matt has been phenomenally helpful in promoting Altered America, which in turn played a large role in its sales spike a few weeks ago.
Rereading said post, I find its upbeat tone almost unrecognizable to me, particularly in the last graf. I’m a much different person than I was a few years ago. A big part of that is due to our house, which is very near completion (the last contractor finished today). It has been a transformative 11 months. I’ve become even more Ron Swansonish about institutions — banks, insurance companies, governments — but more Chris Traegerish about individuals. Throughout the process, so many faceless bureaucracies were lined up against us yet our skins were saved time and again not just through our own tenacity, but also because of the effort and understanding of all the people who’ve worked on the house or supported us. If I go through the day without having to extinguish some kind of brushfire crisis — What’s that? You’re NOT cancelling my homeowner’s insurance for arbitrary reasons? Hooray! — then it’s a great day. I think that optimism has spilled over to how I feel about others and their projects and ambitions.
