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So, if you've been following my social media at all over the past few months, you've probably seen me mention The Alchemy of Sorrow at least once (but more likely dozens of times). It's the big project that has been taking up all of my waking hours since January of this year (aside from a brief break for QuaranCon2022). What is it you ask? Well, it's an anthology of SFF short stories that are all centered on the theme of grief & hope. We ran a Kickstarter for it back in February and it went pretty well (we raised over $24,000, which was almost 400% of our initial goal). One of the things we were raising funds for was an awesome illustration by Zoe Badini to use for our cover.
If you're interested in the process for how we came up with our artist brief, read on!
For the cover of The Alchemy of Sorrow, we wanted to create an image that was evocative of all the stories contained within its pages, without being specific to any single one of them.
Since most of our stories have female protagonists, we chose to center the image on a grieving woman. We wanted her to be a woman of color, to celebrate the diversity of our stories and authors, and to represent the majority of the world’s population. We asked the artist to portray her standing among ruins, with her grief transmuting into light, which in turn begins to transform her surroundings.
We also took inspiration from the Japanese practice of kintsugi - in which a fractured piece of pottery is restored using precious metals mixed into the lacquer so that the items cracks become a beautiful feature of the piece rather than a flaw to be hidden away - and we asked if the woman’s skin could feature cracks lined with gold.
From those sketchy details, Zoe Badini conceived of the stunning image you see below of a woman standing before a broken stained-glass window, with light coming from the cracks in her skin. The light forms swallows, a symbol of rebirth, and renews the dying jasmine around her.
If you want to know more about The Alchemy of Sorrow here's the back of book description:
eBook - 978-1-952667-92-3
Hardcover - 978-1-952667-93-0
Paperback - 978-1-952667-94-7
Audiobook - 978-1-952667-95-4
Sarah Chorn - lead editor
Virginia McClain - acquiring editor/coordinator
Stories by: M.L. Wang, K.S. Villoso, Intisar Khanani, Sonya M. Black, Angela Boord, Levi Jacobs, Krystle Matar, Virginia McClain, Quenby Olson, Carol A. Park, Madolyn Rogers, Rachel Emma Shaw & Clayton Snyder
Since most of our stories have female protagonists, we chose to center the image on a grieving woman. We wanted her to be a woman of color, to celebrate the diversity of our stories and authors, and to represent the majority of the world’s population. We asked the artist to portray her standing among ruins, with her grief transmuting into light, which in turn begins to transform her surroundings.
We also took inspiration from the Japanese practice of kintsugi - in which a fractured piece of pottery is restored using precious metals mixed into the lacquer so that the items cracks become a beautiful feature of the piece rather than a flaw to be hidden away - and we asked if the woman’s skin could feature cracks lined with gold.
From those sketchy details, Zoe Badini conceived of the stunning image you see below of a woman standing before a broken stained-glass window, with light coming from the cracks in her skin. The light forms swallows, a symbol of rebirth, and renews the dying jasmine around her.
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After receiving Zoe’s gorgeous artwork, the task then fell to me to design a text layout that didn’t detract from it. I did my best to convey all the information necessary and make it legible without obscuring too much of the artwork. And also tried to make certain pieces of the illustration pop more by adding contrasting darkness. Which lead to this:
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And from there I set up the ebook cover which looks like this:
If you want to know more about The Alchemy of Sorrow here's the back of book description:
Here be dragons and sorcery, time travel and sorrow.
Vicious garden gnomes. A grounded phoenix rider. A new mother consumed with vengeance. A dying god. Soul magic.
These stories wrestle with the experience of loss—of loved ones, of relationships, of a sense of self, of health—and forge a path to hope as characters fight their way forward.
From bestsellers and SPFBO finalists to rising voices, 13 exceptionally talented authors explore the many facets of grief and healing through the lens of fantasy and sci-fi.
And if you're thinking "This is awesome, Virginia! But when and where can we get a copy if we didn't back the Kickstarter?" The answer is that the public launch date is November 1st of 2022, and you can pre-order digital copies of the book here: https://books2read.com/aos Eventually, that link will also include audiobook pre-orders at the handful of audiobook retailers that allow pre-orders (which isn't many). The audiobook (which we funded with that awesome Kickstarter I mentioned) will go live on November 1st along with all other formats!
Vicious garden gnomes. A grounded phoenix rider. A new mother consumed with vengeance. A dying god. Soul magic.
These stories wrestle with the experience of loss—of loved ones, of relationships, of a sense of self, of health—and forge a path to hope as characters fight their way forward.
From bestsellers and SPFBO finalists to rising voices, 13 exceptionally talented authors explore the many facets of grief and healing through the lens of fantasy and sci-fi.
And if you're thinking "This is awesome, Virginia! But when and where can we get a copy if we didn't back the Kickstarter?" The answer is that the public launch date is November 1st of 2022, and you can pre-order digital copies of the book here: https://books2read.com/aos Eventually, that link will also include audiobook pre-orders at the handful of audiobook retailers that allow pre-orders (which isn't many). The audiobook (which we funded with that awesome Kickstarter I mentioned) will go live on November 1st along with all other formats!
If you are a print-only book person, don't worry! We've got you covered! The print book will soon be available for pre-order at most major online retailers and we'll post links for that here and everywhere else as soon as they go live, but they aren't ready just yet.
To help you find all the formats later, here are the ISBNs for each format!
eBook - 978-1-952667-92-3
Hardcover - 978-1-952667-93-0
Paperback - 978-1-952667-94-7
Audiobook - 978-1-952667-95-4
And here's a bunch of other facts about the book!
Sarah Chorn - lead editor
Virginia McClain - acquiring editor/coordinator
Stories by: M.L. Wang, K.S. Villoso, Intisar Khanani, Sonya M. Black, Angela Boord, Levi Jacobs, Krystle Matar, Virginia McClain, Quenby Olson, Carol A. Park, Madolyn Rogers, Rachel Emma Shaw & Clayton Snyder
And we are delighted to be working with Crimson Fox Publishing, an indie publishing co-op that will help us get into libraries and bookstores!
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