There will be a bigger deal made about this in the next week or so, but: my adult-fairy-tale-with-elements-of-horror-and-romance novel will be coming out through Brother Wolf Press (e-pub available in the Kindle store), exact date TBA, and here’s the cover!

Unlike some of my art projects, I was able to create to something that almost exactly matched what my brain visualized. Actually, in this case, the cover is better than I imagined it, because I hadn’t figure out how wonderful the sky would be. But it is wonderful.

I wanted it, first of all, to look like a tarot card from the Rider-Waite deck, at which task it seems to succeed admirably. The coyote is crazy adorable; her design is based on the wolf from The Moon card. The Hermit is, of course The Hermit, but her face is more the Queen of Cups, except less constipated looking, and she is disarmingly unassuming. The landscape also takes cues from other cards, although the sky is kind of improvised. Even the font turned out spot-on. And then there’s the gallon jug full of magical water. Intrigued at all? I even had a lot of fun with the little sigil/signature in the bottom right, which, at first glance, looks a fair amount like the artist’s mark on the Rider-Waite deck, but is actually comprised of my initials.

My instinct is to always keep tinkering with it, but of course the Rider-Waite deck is hand drawn and imperfect, and anyway, my whole thing now is letting it be imperfect. Perfectly imperfect.

Love it.