Perhaps the suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor. C. S. Forester
When a very smart filmmaker turns this novel into a movie, the happiest person involved will be she who gets the role of Rose. Rose became my favorite character as I wrote the book, but I can’t explain why or how without spoiling the story for readers. So you have to trust me. My readers already know something about Claire and Baldo from my two previous novels, but Rose appears in A Cloud of Fraud, and she’s special. I see my characters as I write them. And I certainly do see Rose.
Closer and closer to actual release. So now, thoughts and opinions and aesthetics about the color of the font on the front cover. It’s black on the paperback but white works best and the digital version allows that.
More beta readers are reporting that they love the book. There’s some encouragement!
Goodness…what a chore this business of margins and dropped caps can be. I will never master it. But I grow fonder of the story every time I reread it and catch yet another typo.
There must be a very special place in heaven for paper book formatters. Whew! Ask me how I know. Anyway, like Brexit, one way or the other, this book will be out soon.
Authors who publish their own writing via the services available on the internet know very well how frustrating the formatting process can be. It’s a labor, but it’s a learning process too. A simultaneous release of a book, as I am doing for this novel, requires a separate format for each version. While I believe I know something about the English language and formatting that, I am no master of book formatting.
The cover of this book is a detail of the great Mary Magdaleme painted by Carlo Crivelli around 1480, around Ascoli Piceno in Italy. It hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, one of the world’s greatest art museums. So special thanks to them, again.
Getting the cover right format-wise is part of the labor. This permits that font; that permits only other fonts. And so on. Then there is the business off getting the position of the letters in the right place on top of the image. On and on it goes. Thanks to Carlo Crivelli’s genius, the readers can just focus on that beauty and use the text over top of it as a source of mere information.
We are in Italy this week, in Le Marche, working on the book launch. It’s looking like June 1 will be the day. While here, however, we are turning all the wheels for yet another book. These magnificent hills are covered in green and early spring flowers that offer up ever more beautiful ideas.
In the great City Hall building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, a massive gorgeous building, the story begins.
The magnificent painting on this website is a detail of the gorgeous painting of Mary Magdalene by Carlo Crivelli in the Rijksmuseum. My tremendous thanks to them for the ability to use this image. It is a great museum and I hope that all readers will visit and stare for a very long time at this masterpiece.
Writing and polishing a novel is really a labor of love. So I am “in love” right about now, looking forward to releasing this novel ASAP!