Today, I thought it’d be fun to take a look at the actual dead trees edition of The Invisible Crown (available now, hint hint).  Back before the book came out, I saw a digital mock-up of the cover.  It’s pretty awesome, but getting to hold the actual, physical thing in my hands is even better.  And that’s down to the fine folks who designed it all.

Generally speaking, most people tend to skip over the Acknowledgements page in a book.  I know I usually do, because I don’t know them and I won’t get the little in-jokes and personal asides that pepper those pages.  But when you skip over the Acknowledgements, you miss out on finding out who all supported the author in creating the book.
So today, let’s take a look at a couple of those individuals.  First, there’s our cover artist, Freddy Torres Vega.  Freddy came up with several character pieces of Eddie Hazzard, Miss Typewell, and a couple of other characters.  It’s some cool work, even if I’m a little iffy on his portrayal of Hazzard with a mustache.  His use of color is fantastic, though, and he really came through with a cool design for the cover (way better than whatever crappy pencil sketch I initially sent them.  That’s why he’s the guy who designs covers, and I just write the words that go behind the cover).

The other hidden superstar of the book is Cindy C. Bennett, the editor and book designer.  She did all the layout and formatting for the book, chose the fonts and all that jazz.  She’s also the reason the book isn’t composed entirely of commas.  She made some great choices, too: the font for each section heading page is awesome, and the little symbol she used in place of my * * * between subsections?  It’s freakin’ cool.  I mean, look at it!

So, yeah, without the hard work of several other people, this book wouldn’t look as good as it does.  So, thanks to them!