This week sees the book getting officially launched on Wednesday. This week I’ll be doing a series of five posts about the interior art. Comment on a post to be entered to win one of three pieces of Near + Far jewelry; comment on all five posts and you’ll be entered five times.
So left to right above are five of the interior illustrations from the book. One of the things Mom said to me last night was how much she was enjoying the afternotes, so I’m trying not to repeat those too much, but to add a touch more to them.
Leftmost is a star like pattern, which accompanies far future story “Timesnip,” in which 18th century Victoria Woodhull copes with life in the future as a traveling saleswoman dealing in time travel. It’s actually a version of one of the other illustrations, arranged in a star cluster, which mark didn’t point out to me till later. That seems very fitting, given the circularity of the story.
The second pattern is one that accompanies the story “Amid the Words of War.” Its cramped interior echoed the desperation on Six’s part that I wanted to convey over the course of the story. The story is about war and conflict and the distrust they force on each other. The pieces in the book are black and white and here Mark’s chosen to create a white “eye” for a number of the illustrations which (to me) just adds to the coolness and makes each one become a creature presenting itself sideways to the camera.
The third design accompanies the story “Kallakak’s Cousins”. Again, there’s that eye looking out, and sometimes it’s a creature and sometimes a face, sometimes a helmet built of butterflies and submarines.
The fourth accompanies a flash piece, “Futures.” It resembles a submarine, or perhaps a rocket ship, although once more there’s an eye, set dead center in this case.
The fifth is used with the slipstream afterlife story, “Bus Ride to Mars.” It’s one of Mark’s older pieces, a sideways slash of a piece that appears differently in here than in the book itself.
Near + Far jewelry, based on interior art by Mark W. Tripp.
Wow, this is great Cat. I can’t wait to both see and read the book! I like the way the designs evoke the essence of Hindu and/or native indigenous art. Very well done!
Love these, and wish I had all five. I like the blue to green background gradient, which sets off the ink drawings so well. I think my favorites are the rocket ship fourth one, and then the eight point star first one. Congrats on Wed book send off!
I really like the visual cacophony of #3…guess I’m not all about the fives today after all, although #5 is a close second for me. It looks like an idealized, mechanized beetle.
Each piece is this series is highly evocative. Wonderful work by Mr. Tripp, and I’m sure the stories they’ve been paired with are equally delightful.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
WIP: Teaser From "Red in Tooth and Cog"
This is what I’ve been working on today. It’s a lot closer to being done that it was.
This is how Renee lost her phone and gained an obsession.
She was in the park near work. It was a sunny day, on the edge of cold, the wind carrying autumn with it like an accessory it was trying on before settling for it for good.
She set her phone down on the bench beside her as she unfolded her bento box, levering back metal flaps to reveal still-steaming rice, a quivering piece of tofu.
Movement caught her eye. She pulled her feet away as a creature leaped up onto the bench slats beside her, an elastic band snap’s worth of fear as it grabbed the phone, half as large as the creature itself, and moved to the other end of the bench.
The bento box clattered as it hit the concrete, rice grains spilling across the grey.
She’d thought it an animal at first, but it was actually a small robot, a can-opener that had been greatly and somewhat inexpertly augmented, modified. It had two corkscrew claws, and grasshopper legs made from nutcrackers to augment the tiny wheels on its base that had once let it move to hand as needed in a kitchen. Frayed raffia wrapped its handles, scratchy strands feathering out to weathered fuzz. Its original plastic had been some sort of blue, faded now to match the concrete beneath her sensible shoes.
The bench jerked as the robot leaped again, moving behind the trash barrel, still carrying her phone. She stood, stepping over the spilled rice to try to get to the phone, but the leaves still on the rhododendrons thrashed and stilled, and her phone was gone.
If this is all that your social media plan consists of, you may want to put more time and thought into it.Are you a writer on Twitter because you’ve been told you need to be on there? Are you trying to establish “a social media presence” while not quite sure what that involves? Relax and don’t worry. Twitter can be easy and often a lot of fun as well as useful, as long as you take the time to learn some of the basics for Twitter use.
One useful tool for making the most of Twitter is the list feature, where you can sort a subset of your followers into their own group. If you’ve never used it, you may want to start by reading through Twitter’s own basic tutorial on lists.
Twitter lists are a great feature that are worth making the most of. I’ve got a few set up for industry professionals, close friends on Twitter, members of various writing groups and organizations, former students, and people in a variety of fields. But there’s one that is more important than any of the others.
Building Your Followers
A pack of followers made up of people who followed you back because you followed them is not a particularly useful list. You want followers who retweet your content, help spread your message, and who provide interesting and useful content that you may want to share in turn. For this reason, it’s worth putting a few minutes each day into maintaining it. I use two tools to help me do this: Buffer and Justunfollow.
Buffer allows me to schedule tweets (which I also like because I can post stuff when not around and find new followers that way). When I initially post a link to a blogpost, for example, I can go ahead and set up a couple of additional mentions further on down the line. More importantly, I use Buffer when doing my daily follower check, looking to see who’s following me that I want to follow back. I look at each new follower’s tweets and usually favorite a couple or find tweets that I want to retweet, sticking them in my Buffer queue. (I should note that I am not using the free version of Buffer but the next version up, which lets me schedule roughly ten days of tweets in advance.
Who I Don’t Follow Back
I don’t follow everyone back automatically. Here’s the list that’s evolved over time of profiles I don’t bother following back:
Sell, sell, sell. Is your stream full of nothing but links to your book on Amazon? Then I’m probably not worrying about.
Nonexistent. No photo, no background info, no tweets? I’m not going to bother.
Promising me social media success. I’m not buying Twitter followers, nor am I paying for expensive seminars that tell me things that are common sense.
Hate speech. That should, I think, go without saying.
Disagree with me politically? That’s fine. I enjoy conversation. Post nothing but silly puns or kitten pictures? I’m fine with that. I’m even good with total nonsense. This sorting stage is where I build a lot of my lists, though not that crucial one I want to talk about. That one comes later.
The Interactives List
Lists are a terrifically useful feature of Twitter, allowing you to create subgroupsand view tweetstreams made up of only tweets from people on that list. Many of my lists are devoted to either a specific group like former students or players of a MUD I used to work with or an industry niche, like book reviewers or editors. And then there’s the most important list of all.
This list is top of my heap and it’s titled Interactives, for people that interact, who RT and reply and generally signal boost. I try to periodically thank people for RTing, which means running through who’s done it recently, and I add people to it at that point. The people on that list have demonstrated that they enjoy my content and want to spread my message. That’s a very good reason for working at building a relationship with them.
When I’m just poking at Twitter, looking to see what interesting conversations are happening or what content is noteworthy or a good candidate for retweeting, I go to that list first. If I’m filling up my Buffer stream with some interesting content, I can find it there, and continue to build the relationship while also giving my followers interesting and/or entertaining content.
If you’re worried about it getting too cluttered, run the tool I mentioned, Justunfollow, periodically to weed out people not following you back and inactives. That should do the trick for all but the most popular of Tweeters.
12 Responses
I was looking at these today and the details are so rich and gorgeous, yet simple at the same time, much like your writing.
Wow, this is great Cat. I can’t wait to both see and read the book! I like the way the designs evoke the essence of Hindu and/or native indigenous art. Very well done!
Love these, and wish I had all five. I like the blue to green background gradient, which sets off the ink drawings so well. I think my favorites are the rocket ship fourth one, and then the eight point star first one. Congrats on Wed book send off!
Those are lovely pendants. I like the feel of them. I’d be happy to wear one.
I love sci-fi and so do my daughters, so we can’t wait to read your Near + Far! The jewelry is sooo cool! I am very excited for you, Cat!
You’ve inspired me to try working with epoxy resins in my jewelry making. I love the look of these.
Mark and I have really been having fun with the resin. I’ve been making some pieces with bottle caps as well.
Love them! What a fantastic idea. If you want to do a giveaway, I’m game. although I’d want to give away to myself. hahaha.
I meant if you want to do one on my blog. doh. And now I’m at least entered once myself.
Totally happy to provide one for a giveaway on the blog! Mail me what you would need – jpgs of the covers?
Beautiful pieces, and what a fun idea!
I really like the visual cacophony of #3…guess I’m not all about the fives today after all, although #5 is a close second for me. It looks like an idealized, mechanized beetle.
Each piece is this series is highly evocative. Wonderful work by Mr. Tripp, and I’m sure the stories they’ve been paired with are equally delightful.