Pages

Friday, November 9, 2012

SEASON OF TERROR BOOK COVER


Just this afternoon I received from Daniel Pratt, art director at the University Press of Colorado, the cover design for my forthcoming nonfiction book Season of Terror: The Espinosas in Central Colorado, March-October 1863.  I wanted the readers of this blog to be among the first to see it.  I think it is not only a very handsome design but has the advantage of displaying images of the actual pistols used by two of the serial killers, Felipe Espinosa's .44-caliber 1860 Colt Army revolver and the .44-caliber 1858 Remington Army Revolver used by Felipe's nephew José Vincente Espinosa.  Both are now housed at the museum of History Colorado (formerly the Colorado Historical Society) in Denver.  The pistol carried by Felipe's brother, José Vivián, has, unfortunately disappeared.

It has been a busy couple of months, with the advent of my first e-book, Vengeance on the Sweetgrass; our preparations to e-publish a second Western, Above the Caprock; and now the upcoming announcement of my Espinosa book in the UPC Spring catalog.  Just when I thought I was aging out of the writing business, it seems that fate is pulling me back in.  Just goes to show, I guess, that airing one's dreads in public, as I did in some recent blogs, can be not only therapeutic but can perhaps slightly bend the arc of one's fate too.

Everyone at UPC has been great to work with, and I haven't made it any easier because as a novelist I wasn't well versed in the arcana of academic publishing; but the staff has been most patient with me.  I think the final product will be just as fine-looking as the cover; the contents, of course, will be wholly mine, and I will be judged by their quality or the lack thereof.  I hope many of you will get it and enjoy it; its story is an almost unknown yet highly significant slice of Western history.

No comments:

Post a Comment