Halfway through NaNoWriMo, and I'm right around 25K words written for the month so far. 24,553, to be exact, though that number will increase further after tonight's writing session. I'm quite pleased, especially considering I've managed it even while taking my son to visit family in Alabama, followed by coming down with a horrendous virus that knocked me flat for three straight days. Fortunately, I've been striving for 2K per day, so when I had two days of 0 wordcount during my illness, it didn't set me back too badly! Right now I'm at the point where I can actually count scenes until the end of my
Labyrinth of Flame draft, which is pretty exciting. Really looking forward to finishing this rough draft so I can start serious revision, the part I love most.
In other good news, the German edition of
The Tainted City is
officially up on Amazon.de, ready for pre-order. Complete with new cover art and title, of course!
Die Chroniken von Ninavel: Stadt der Magier, a.k.a
The Chronicles of Ninavel: City of Mages (or perhaps,
City of the Mages). Release date is
May 16, 2014. Check out the new cover!
Very atmospheric, even if the desert looks more Sahara-like than Mojave-like. For those who haven't been to the Owens Valley in California, which was my inspiration for Ninavel's environs, here's a picture:
 |
| The Mojave desert in the Owens Valley. Lots of sagebrush and prickly pear cactus, not so many sand dunes. |
But the thing about covers is, they're not meant to be exact depictions of the world within the book. They're meant to SELL the book. So I'm quite happy with the German cover - I think it looks intriguing and evocative, and goes quite nicely with their
cover for the first book. I hope German readers agree!
And now, back to the word mines. The end of
Labyrinth is in sight...
That's some beautiful cover art! German readers are pretty lucky!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've been delighted with what Bastei Lübbe has done with the books! I feel very lucky because I've heard from other authors that covers for translated novels can be a bit of a crapshoot - sometimes foreign publishers don't want to spend much $$ on new art - but BL did a wonderful job.
DeleteBut the thing about covers is, they're not meant to be exact depictions of the world within the book.
ReplyDeleteI do feel conflicted about that, should art be representational, or not. As long as it sells the book, though...
I know what you mean. One of the reasons I always loved Michael Whelan covers was because Whelan made so much effort to get every little detail in the art exactly like it was in the book. As an engineer, I can't help but love accuracy! But if the art's dead accurate but doesn't convince readers to pick the book up off the shelf, well, then it's a failure as a cover. (Interestingly, I've heard that readers in US markets are far more concerned with accuracy in cover art than readers in foreign markets. Don't know if that's actually true, but it's interesting to speculate on cultural reasons why it might be...)
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