Here’s the final cover!
As you see, the pony looks more like a pony, with proportionately larger head. He also has a much rougher coat and some feathering on the lower legs, not a huge amount of feathering, but some.
I think his color could be described in a lot of ways, but though I like the world “ash,” that would imply a grayer tone even though if you actually LOOK at ash in a fireplace, it’s paler and not as gray as you are probably picturing. I will note that I resisted “cream-colored” pretty hard, but couldn’t think of anything better.
And you know why I did not want to use “cream-colored” even though the pony is in fact just about exactly the color of cream? Because long, long ago someone criticized The City in the Lake for using the word “cream” too often. The word “cream” or “creamy” appears 26 times in 81,000 words — I just checked. Not sure that seems over the top. But City was my debut, of course, and I was so sensitive to criticism at the time that I’ve resisted using the word ever since. I guess it’s time to get over that, so “cream-colored” it is.
I thought City was longer, by the way! I remembered it being 90,000 words! I bet it was at some point. At 81k, it’s the third-shortest novel-length book I’ve ever written, after Suelen and Shines Now.
Tano wound up at 115K, a much more normal length for me.
I will be putting this up for preorder hopefully today, with a release date of … drumroll … March 1. It would be nice for it to pick up a decent handful of preorders in order to tickle Amazon’s algorithms just before the whole Tuyo series goes on sale a few days later.
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That is a gorgeous pony and, indeed, much more recognizable as a pony.
And I’m going to steal the cover photo now to go hype it up on Twitter…
Excellent, thank you!
Looks really, really impressive – I keep meaning to write about colours… Highland ponies have a colour that is called ‘mouse dun’ Dun is one of hte primitive colours seen in the early modern horses (Prezwalskis and the like) where the melanin shades along the length of the hair – as opposed to the creme genes where it shades across the hair (palomino, buckskin, smoky black and the double dilutes of cremello, perlino and smoky creme) (https://today.tamu.edu/2015/12/22/unlocking-genetic-secrets-of-the-dun-coat-in-horses/). It’s often associated with a dorsal ‘eel’ stripe and zebra markings on the legs – and seems to me very likely that the ponies of a mountain people would be this kind of colouring.
Not that it matters, but it’s nice when it fits. Good luck with it. M
Yes, I’ve heard the dun-locus colors referred to as primitive colors and I’m not surprised to know that’s what the Prezwalski horses have. I’m probably behind at this point, but I practically memorized Sponenberg’s book on equine color genetics when the first edition came out.
ANd it’s live on Amazon at last.
Looks great!