For a few weeks, I’ve been “radio silent” except for a few forays on social media and occasional e-mail messages, keeping my head down and plowing through the final revisions for Dragon’s Rook.
Aside from a fantasy short story written earlier this summer, the revisions have been the most creative writing sessions I’ve experienced all year.
Brutally creative.
It’s as if light punched through the grimy windows of my imagination, and I saw the novel with more clarity than I had since its inception as a piece of flash fiction twenty years ago.
Scenes were removed, replaced, rearranged. The word count shrank by 22,500 words, more than enough to compose a novella or a modern version of A Christmas Carol. The story came alive.
By comparison, the past couple days have been a letdown. Now there’s “real work” — editing for clients, preparing back cover copy, writing acknowledgments.
What keeps me jazzed? The thought of soon seeing a completed cover for Dragon’s Rook.
Below is the artwork, depicting a dragon’s eye and the reflection of a tower — a rook, a prison, a fortress. A crumbling ruin. This painting is like poetry, condensing the essence of a complex story with big ideas and themes into a deceptively simple image.
If you’d like to read about the artist‘s process, visit Suzan Troutt’s post over at Penworthy Press (here and here).
Dragon eye, c2014, Suzan Troutt
Adventures In Fiction 
Peter Stone, author of 'Forager'
August 22, 2014 at 1:58 am
Great to hear about the progress you’ve been making, looking forward to seeing it when its finished. That’s an awesome piece of artwork too.
Keanan
August 22, 2014 at 6:53 am
Thanks, Peter!
Nissa Annakindt
August 22, 2014 at 7:47 am
I love the artwork. Great idea to have the reflection in the eye. And I’m in awe of the fact you are doing so well with revisions.
Keanan
August 22, 2014 at 8:35 am
Yeah, I like the reflection, too. 🙂 The idea of the dragon eye and the reflection was my brother’s — I can take no credit for it — but then Suzan took the concept and created something better than I’d envisioned.
(What if it’s not a reflection, but an image projected from the dragon’s mind? Hmmm. There is a bit of that in the story, though some of it was omitted in revisions.)