Just FYI, final cover, plus gratuitous puppy pic

I thought you all might like to know how the “voting” looked for the cover of the Tuyo World Companion.

So:

Looking at everyone’s top or top three choices, Covers #1 and #2 got the most thumbs-up reactions. They were equally preferred. I like both of those too. Having said that, I stumbled across a different textured background that is similar to #2, but with some black to it that picks up the black of the various frames and the black of the lettering. I have decided to go with that one, and I hope you will mostly be pleased, or at least reasonably content, with that choice.

“The” Tuyo World Companion vs Tuyo World Companion got roughly equivalent votes. I totally understand both positions. I have decided to go without the “the.” But –>

Twice as many people prefer to see some of the text on the top and some on the bottom. I personally agree with those of you who commented that putting all the text on the top makes the image look squished toward the bottom. However, it’s true that putting “Tuyo” by itself at the top could in theory produce confusion, though the cover is SO DIFFERENT from the actual TUYO that I feel the risk someone would buy the book by mistake is low. Nevertheless, I’m going to put “Tuyo World Companion” on the top and just my name at the bottom, but bigger to help the cover look more balanced.

Here is the final version. Barring substantial feedback that forces me to change my mind, I don’t expect to do more than maybe the very tiniest tweaks to this version. That is, I could easily move text just a bit up or down or change the size of the text. Other than that sort of thing, this is it.

Hopefully you will all see this cover for real on Amazon before TASMAKAT drops — or at worst, possibly in August.

My hope is that I will be able to set this for release July 1st, thereby potentially driving a final uptick in preorders for TASMAKAT. I’m not sure whether that will be possible. Despite my vivid awareness that I wrote TANO in three weeks, the (presumably) much shorter story included here is going to take much longer. TANO was written (a) over Christmas Break, and (b) before puppies arrived, and also (c) I had a quite clear idea of the whole story in my mind, with just details to work out. None of that is true for this new story, except that I have a clear idea of the ending scenes. I think.

The puppies are in the cutest but also most distracting and time-consuming stage right now. I mean, seriously, I get up in the morning and immediately carry all the puppies outside (three trips up and down the stairs.) Then I bring them in and feed them (three more trips up and down the stairs). Then I take them all out again (you’re counting, right? this is nine trips up and down the stairs so far). Then I give the impatient adult dogs their breakfast. Then I take the big puppies into the puppy room to play with the little puppies. They are ENORMOUSLY cute. They are so interested in each other! I keep putting a hand between a big puppy and a little one whenever the big one looks like he might be getting too overwhelming for the little ones, but it’s no hardship to supervise because SO CUTE, I AM DYING OF THE CUTE.

Then I take them all out again and bring them all in again (we are up to 15 trips up and down the stairs so far). Then I do ordinary morning things, which includes extra loads of laundry because I use these big, heavy, washable pads in both the puppy room and the playpen. Then I have about half an hour, maybe forty minutes before it’s time for MY breakfast and then I take the puppies out again to let them play (that makes eighteen) and then back in again (21 trips up and down the stairs) and then I can get ready to leave the house.

My knee is holding up fine so far. I take the stairs carefully, you bet, but in only a few weeks some of the puppies will go off to new homes and the others will be big enough to handle the stairs on their own. I only have to make it that far!

In the afternoon, I get a little more work done, but although proofreading and correcting NFS was incredibly tedious, it was also something I could do at low-energy times of the day. Working on the first draft of a new story is not. So we’ll see! But hopefully I will have this story finished soon and then I will send that story to first readers, think about what else to add to the World Companion, and set a release date.