A Nice Birthday Present

Today is my birthday.  I'm not going to tell you how old I am, but it is somewhere between 33 and 35.

Ouch, that hurt!

Anyway, today I received a nice birthday present -- something I've been looking for since February.  To the left is the cover for my upcoming novel GUARDING THE HEALER.  Who did this incredible cover? you ask.  It sure wasn't me.

The artist is none other than the incredible Barry Napier -- writer, poet, cover-artist extraordinaire.

But, please, let me start from the beginning.

Back somewhere around the beginning of the year I finally gave in to all the self-publishing propaganda and decided that I would throw my hat into the ring.  I did some research and decided to have Rob and Amy Siders over at 52novels do the formatting, and then I chose my cover artist (who shall not be named out of professional courtesy).

The formatting went well.  Rob and Amy are great to work with, and I highly recommend them.  The cover artist . . . not so much.

I contacted him in February, giving him the specifics of my book, and some ideas I had for the cover.  He emailed me back and said he's have something for me the first week of April.

April?  I didn't like it, but I understood.  He was busy, and it wasn't really that far away.  I'm just an impatient person.  So, I waited.  And waited.  Each day I checked my inbox for any kind of news, and the closer it came to April, the more excited I grew.

The first week of April came . . . and then it went.  No word.  I gave it an extra week just for good measure then sent another email.  No answer.  So, I waited some more.  I have been so used to dealing with publishers and agents, crawling, groveling, begging for just a bit of attention, that I forgot that he was working for me.  I finally got an email explaining that he had had some system problems, and that he'd have something for me the following Wednesday.  That was the last that I heard from him.  Not even a response from the email I sent him stating that I no longer required his service.  Hopefully all is well, and I wish him nothing but good things, but business is business.

I have been following Barry Napier's blog for a while, and I connected with him on Kindle Boards, where he offered to help me with my cover art.  On May 5th I emailed Barry to see if he would still help me.  Here we are twenty days later and I have a cover for my book that I couldn't be more proud of.

If you are looking for a cover artist then I suggest you give Barry Napier a call.  He's professional, timely, friendly . . . is it too much to call him a visionary?  I'll let you decide.  Anyway, shoot over to his blog and check out his work.  You can see some of the covers he's done for his own books here, here and here.

GUARDING THE HEALER should be available shortly on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, and Smashwords.