Go ahead, judge this book by its cover

This is very exciting. The cover design for “Ghost in the Machine” is done. My friend Chris OBrion designed it for me. Chris is a great editorial cartoonist whose work appears in The Roanoke Times and elsewhere. One of the best decisions I made as editorial page editor was to hire him as a freelance editorial cartoonist. But he’s also an excellent graphic designer.

I came up with the concept. I was out for a walk a couple of months ago and was struck by a barren tree. I thought about how much the pattern of the branches looked like dendrites in a brain. The tree itself was almost in the shape of a brain. Of course, the novel was heavy in my mind at that time, and I suddenly had this picture of a brain superimposed over a tree. Well, I don’t have to describe it to you, really. You can see the cover. Chris absolutely nailed the concept. As I told him, it’s not exactly what I saw in my head: It’s better.

It absolutely fits the tone and content of the novel. I think it will scale well for ebooks or printed books. It’s perfect.

Now all I need to do is finish the revision. Since the burst of activity in November and December, I’ve given myself some time off. I’ve worked a bit here and there, but nothing sustained. It’s time to get back to it, though.

I still have to decide what to do when the revision is complete. I had been leaning heavily toward self-publishing, but I had a talk with a friend who really thought I owed it to myself to try to find an agent, for a variety of reasons. What he said made a lot of sense. But I’m not sure I see a downside to getting the novel out there as an ebook, as long as I retain the rights and the potential to sell it to a publisher.

I’ll keep pondering. The key thing right now is to finish the first revision.