Author: Deborah Makarios

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The Confusing Colour of a Cover

Preparing the cover for Amiant Soul was a confusing and somewhat nerve-wracking business. It wasn’t just that I wanted deeper tones on the cover image, or even that I wasn’t entirely qualified to make those changes (i.e. completely ignorant of how to go about it, and succeeding only by means of some rather messy trial and error).

Illustration of silhouetted man facing desert dunes.
The original image.

It was the way the image appeared on the screen – or rather screens. I work with two screens, one built into the laptop I use, which is a more bluish toned screen, and one separate monitor, which is less blue. Naturally, the cover image appeared different on each screen. That I was prepared for.

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Amiant Soul: the Cover Revealed!!

On the 11th of October 2020, I started playing around with a new idea for a book. One thousand, two hundred, and twenty-nine days later, that book is on the cusp of taking physical form. Mere minutes ago, I ordered the proof copy – the first of what will hopefully be many copies to be printed.

And what, I hear you ask, will it look like? Behold!!

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Is It A Bird? Is It A Bug?

New Zealand has a history of strange elections. That time the Prime Minister called a snap election while pickled to the gills, for example. The time when two parties who respectively got the support of about 1/15 and 1/21 of the enrolled voters got into government.

And yet, despite this history of oddity, I was nonetheless Yours Truly Baffled last night when I read in the news that seventh place in Bug of the Year went to Powelliphanta superba.

Which is a snail.

A large dark snail shell lying among small plants.
P. superba staying in and having an identity crisis.

This is even wackier than a bat being voted Bird of the Year. Birds have wings, bats have wings. Bugs are the Things With Many Legs, snails are…(checks notes) legless. So legless, in fact, that they’re gastropods, i.e. the Things Which March On Their Stomachs.

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