Artist challenges Author (Reese Dante & me)

(Apologies for posting what's still Thursday night - in the UK, it's 30 minutes to midnight.)


Just as I was wondering what to write about - I had a cool conversation on Twitter with Reese Dante, my cover artist of Scorpion and all-round awesome person. She's even part of the inspiration behind my current release, Incursion. (If you feel tempted to learn about that, there's a huge excerpt up on the page, and I talk a bit more about the story and the inspiration during my blog tour that's still going on).


So, with the nearly mandatory plug out of the way, what transpired between Reese and me?

I can't work out how to show the whole twitter conversation, but it went something like this:

Reese: "Hey, Aleks, what's you favourite hair colour for lead characters?"

Aleks: "Right now, it's blond, but that's because my next novel's main love interest is blond." (Note: that changes a lot and depends on the book and the taste of the *other* main character.)

Reese: "Great, thanks."

Aleks: "Okay, but it begs the question whyyyyy?"

Reese: "*evil grin* cause I'm doing something which is hopefully...inspirational. LOL"

Aleks: "You keep doing that! Did we ever talk about what you want me to write?"

Reese: ":) rather than think of a storyline, I thought about making up a cover and seeing if that inspires a story in itself."

Aleks: "Ok, deal!"


Which is how quickly I'm committed to starting a new project (yes, it's really that easy and quick). The interesting/intriguing bit is that it's usually the other way round. The onus/duty is most often on the cover artist to produce a cover that fits a brief (written by the author), and translating words into images is really hard work. It's a skill that's extremely important for cover artists, and I have a huge amount of respect for that.

With this, it'll be different. I've tried before to work to a cover, but it fizzled out (and I got distracted by something cooler), so this can still go terribly wrong. But I really like Reese's work, and I love a good challenge. And reversing the usual roles of author/artist is a cool experiment for me. Also, I have no doubt that Reese's cover will start the process in my brain. They usually do. I'll just have to relax and allow it to happen and let the Muse work on it.

I'll keep you guys updated how it goes.