So, here I was, about ready to go ahead and put the hard copy of the book up for sale as soon as I saw the proof, but one thing was nagging at me: Wouldn't it make sense to do the new layout first? Especially if I was ultimately able to drop the price--it seems kind of annoying to be like, "Ha-ha! If you had waited a week, you could have paid less! Sucks to be you!"

And then, I was worried about the cover, in two regards. For starters, I'm actually kind of serious about my worries regarding the lack of wacky art. It seems like nowadays, there are two kinds of sci-fi: The fun adventure sort, and then the stuff that takes itself extremely seriously, where the author came up with their own kind of physics or their own theory about the meaning of the Universe, and then wrote a book to explain it all. The covers of these books tend to be sparse: A black background, with maybe a space station on it, or a vortex, or nothing at all.

Trang, a book in which quite literally no one knows how stuff works, and the lead character is completely ignorant of even basic technology, is not that kind of book. So the relatively sparse, dark cover is actually specifically misleading to fans of sci-fi, because the people who like the adventure stuff will be put off, and the people who like the really hard sci-fi will read it and then will be put off.

The other concern about the cover is that the lightning (almost typed "lightening"! bad girl!) is clip art. Like most people, I've generally used clip art with abandon, but then again, I've never sold something that had clip art on it. So I decided that I'd better double-check and make sure I can use it on a book jacket, and the answer is no--if you're going to sell it, you can't put clip art on it (at least not the clip art I have).

So, you know, that's pretty much the third strike right there. This means I'm going to do the new layout before I release the book, and that I'm going to have to--try not to laugh if you know me--create real cover art! Like, the kind where you draw it, and color it in--oh, this is going to be interesting. I'm not sure if I should try to risk human figures or just stick with planets and ships and stuff (human figures would be more suitable to the kind of book it is, though). I know I'm going to rely heavily on the fact that this art won't be very big, and that most of the cover art in this genre isn't exactly Renaissance Master material.

Can I still release it this month? God only knows....