Starting Monday, May 2nd, Kelvoo's Testimonial will be available from Bolen Books in Hillside Mall! Bolen has set aside space for my display right on top of the Local Authors section!

Founded in 1975, Bolen Books has weathered many a storm that has resulted in the closure of the great majority of independent booksellers. Today, Bolen is as strong and independent as ever in its lovely 17,000 square foot space.

I am humbled and honoured that Bolen Books is carrying Kelvoo's Testimonial and I greatly value Bolen's support of local authors.

The day after delivering my books to Russell's, I got my first independent review via the NetGalley platform. I've certainly received many kind words from family and friends, but it's impossible to know how much personal bias might have deliberately or unintentionally crept it. As such, I was absolutely delighted to see the following review:

At last! My printed proof copy of Kelvoo's Testimonial. I'm performing a final proofread and then I'll be ready to order a first batch for distribution to many of the wonderful people who have supported my efforts so far!

I'm also progressing toward having the e-book available via Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books, and making the printed version available via Amazon and, for bookstores, on IngramSpark.

I can't wait to announce an official release date!

Since Kelvoo's Testimonial is an autobiographical account, I had envisioned a cover that featured Kelvoo, posed in a way that would be similar to autobiographies of celebrities, leaders, and other living humans. You can read more about that in my blog post, "Book cover - Initial concepts". 

I had recently received images from a 3D character model, created by brilliant artist, Alain Berset and I used the images to submit a couple of concepts to Jodi, an excellent cover and book designer.

Jodi came up with four excellent designs. Three were along the lines of my original vision, and she threw in a different design to provide an alternative.

I had a difficult time choosing a cover and I realized that I was too close to the project to make an objective choice. I decided to put the four designs "out there" on social media and ask my friends and acquaintances to vote.

!The results of the vote were:

A: 12
B: 17
C: 2
D: 7

So, B won by a fair margin. On the other hand, A, C, and D had styles that were very close to one another, so a majority of voters chose something other than B. This told me that, whatever I chose, I wouldn't go too far wrong (unless, perhaps, I chose C). Nevertheless, by that time, option B had "grown on me", even though it diverged the farthest from my original concept.

I let Jodi know that option B was my choice and I requested just a couple of minor changes. For example, B shows a few patches of bluish sky, while Kelvoo's Testimonial states that Kelvoo's planet, Kuw'baal, exists under a constant, thick layer of cloud.

Jodi made the requested changes and the cover of Kelvoo's Testimonial was created!

As I mentioned in my previous blog post (Book cover – Initial concepts), I wanted an image of Kelvoo to be the center of attention on my book cover. Typically, book covers depict characters in one of the following ways:

1. As vector art. This is often comprised of bold, colorful shapes with clean lines and bright colours. Although this type of art may look simple, it can be very effective in grabbing a reader’s attention.
2. As fine art. An artist will produce a drawing or painting of characters and a scene, sometimes in a very realistic form. Romance novels are perhaps the largest customers for fine art on the cover (think about tall men with rippling abs, embracing women with flowing hair, almost bursting out of a tightly laced bodices).
3. Using photos. An image of an actual person is typically used for biographical works, while stock photos may be used to illustrate a general theme.

In a perfect world, Kelvoo would be real and I would invite Kelvoo to a photographer’s studio to pose for the cover of Kelvoo’s Testimonial. Since that isn’t an option, I thought that a fine art depiction would have to do. The problem with fine art is a lack of flexibility once the final product is nearing completion. For example, if an artist was painting Kelvoo against a backdrop, such as a scene in space or on a faraway planet, and I wanted to change Kelvoo’s pose or lighting or position in the scene, it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to ask the artist to start over!

While thinking about an autobiographical cover, I recalled some previous exposure that I had to 3D modeling in computer graphics. I remembered dealing with artists who could produce models of consumer goods that could be placed inside a scene. For example, realistic models of home furnishings can be dragged onto a photo of a homeowner’s empty room, and put into various positions to provide a preview of what the furniture would actually look like in the room. Each piece of furniture can be rotated, its surface finishes can be changed (e.g. showing different fabrics on a sofa), and light sources can be adjusted to show the appearance of shadows and reflections off the item.

I knew that similar artists existed to create fantastical creatures for the motion picture and video game industries. Movies such as Avatar and the Lord of the Rings series demonstrate the realism and impact of 3D computer graphic characters. I decided to try to find an artist to produce a model of Kelvoo that could be posed, lit, and viewed in any number of ways and would be portrayed very realistically.

I performed a web search for “3D Character Artist” and found three artists with impressive portfolios that seemed to be in line with the type of work I was looking for. I asked each artist similar questions and I was especially impressed with the response from one artist in particular. That’s when I started working with Alain Berset, located in Switzerland.
​
I started by sending Alain two of my crude sketches of Kelvoo, along with a description of a Kloormar from the book.

Before any 3D modeling could take place, Alain produced a sketch, to ensure that we were on the same page. The sketch wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but the more I looked at it, the more I liked several aspects of it. For example, I was expecting the eye to be a simple hemisphere, but I appreciated the more natural looking saddle-shape of the eye’s base. The feet in my sketches looked like cone-shaped hooves, but I preferred the feet that Alain drew.
I did ask for a couple of changes, simply to better match descriptions in various parts of Kelvoo’s Testimonial. I asked for the “ears” (the tubes extending from the shoulders) to be shortened. As much as I liked the long, double-jointed lower limbs, my story describes the kloormari as being about as tall as adult humans when assuming a relaxed, upright stance. If the kloormar in the sketch stood straight, the kloormar would tower above a human, which didn’t quite fit my narrative. I traced parts of the sketch and sent Alain a few diagrams to clarify my change requests.

​After a couple of adjustments, Alain was ready to start on some preliminary 3D models to capture Kelvoo’s most basic shapes.

​There was a great deal of back-and-forth involving more bad sketches from me and excellent revisions by Alain.

​Alain added detailed textures and I was blown away by the results!
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Now, Alain was able to position, “paint” and light the model. He provided me with a variety of images with varying positions, viewing angles and lighting. As a result Kelvoo was “born”!

In the beginning, I imagined the cover of Kelvoo’s Testimonial looking like most science fiction covers, with an artistic rendering of one of the key scenes from the book. I won’t give away what those key scenes may have been, since I wouldn’t want to reveal too much of the plot.

​While I was sketching a very rough idea of what Kelvoo looks like, I was thinking about the fact that Kelvoo’s Testimonal stands out because it’s written from Kelvoo’s non-human perspective, as an autobiographical work. This made me think about some of the book covers for autobiographies of famous people. . .

. . . That’s when it occurred to me to use the idea of an autobiographical style of cover. The benefit of such a cover is that it immediately draws attention to the fact that this book, dealing with human first contact, is written from a non-human’s perspective.
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Here are four conceptual mock-ups that sprang to mind.

While some (mostly me) have said that the pencil crayon drawings possess a certain “homespun charm”, I am working with a professional artist to produce a top quality depiction of a kloormar. More about that in a later blog post.

There is one item that I forgot to include on my mocked-up covers. Did you spot it?... The author’s name! Perhaps my modesty was the cause, though certain of my family members may tend to differ.

As I write this, I really don’t know what the final cover will look like, but at least you know where I started.

​The first step in the publishing process for Kelvoo’s Testimonial was to get a professional opinion from an independent third party. An editorial evaluation helps to determine the quality of a manuscript and discusses the steps that could be taken to improve upon the work to increase its appeal to a wide audience. I was satisfied with Kelvoo’s Testimonial and people close to me loved it, but without feedback from a neutral party, how could I really judge the work given the likely biases of my readers up to that point?

An editorial evaluation was performed in June and July, 2021. The evaluation listed the story’s strengths and areas in need of improvement. The evaluation had several pages of details. Here are just a couple of excerpts from the “Strengths” section:

“The novel is well-structured and well-paced. After setting the stage in terms of what this book is about, why it’s being written, and who the kloormari are, you do a great job of pulling us through the novel by crafting chapters that each have a clear setup, complication, and resolution.”

“Despite the fantastic subject matter, the novel also feels highly realistic. This is helped by the level of detail involved but also by the frequent asides to the reader. Over time, it feels like a real first-person account of actual events.”

Under “Potential Areas of Improvement”, the main point was:

“The only real issues I identified have to do with the mechanics of the prose itself, particularly in terms of grammar, punctuation, and style.”

This section listed a wide variety of improvements, especially regarding my writing of dialogue. Kelvoo’s Testimonial is my first significant work that is written in first person form with a great deal of dialogue, so there were many issues with correct use of quotation marks and punctuation. Additional areas needing work included:

• Compound Sentences
• Dialogue Attributions
• Prepositional Phrases
• Oxford Comma
• Dashes
• Ellipses
• Numbers (using numerals vs. spelling out numbers as words)

Overall, I was very happy with the results of the editorial evaluation since it indicates that I’ve written an engaging story. At the same time, I was pleased with the level of detail and examples of areas that need to be cleaned up from a technical perspective.

​As a result of the editorial evaluation, a “complex edit” is now underway to tighten up the text and improve the overall writing style without altering my story. The complex edit work started in mid-August. As I write this, we are in the first week of September, so I’m expecting to see the results in the next week or two. I can’t wait to see the improvements!