The Big Coverup! - Umberto Tosi

Img-Eleanor Spiess-Ferris/ Ds-Roger Carpenter

Perhaps this will sound gushy to the prolific masters of mystery novels among my distinguished colleagues here at Authors Electric. But I can't help being over the moon at the moment -- and deserving of a pause to enjoy! I reached another book publishing milepost the other day --  creating a cover for my latest book, putting production on it's final leg towards release, promotion, and, I hope, sales. It's a kick no matter how many books I've published, no matter how many candles on my author's cake.

You can't judge a book by its cover. but the cover can get us to buy one, often as not. It sets the tone, particularly when it comes to fiction. It gives us a taste. 

The best ones intrigue, tease, whisper compelling secrets and become an icon for the novel, its sequels and adaptations. Sometimes it's clever, morphing typography that tells the story, for example, Joey Hi's design for Lauren Beukes' Zoo City. 

Sometimes it's an image, for example, a devil-profile from one of imagist Eleanor Spiess-Ferris' oil paintings that I borrowed for my satirical novella, Satan, The Movie, Other times it's an abstract form, or a visual, narrative pun. Think of the compelling design of covers that introduced some of our most famous novels. They grabbed you, whether nor not you liked the novels themselves; The Godfather, Jaws, The Handmaid's Tale, Song of Solomon, A Clockwork Orange, 

This is not to say that major trade publisher bat .300 or even .100 when it comes to their book covers, which, in my experience, they tend to foist on authors with little or no consultation. Most trade book covers are pedestrian at best, following standard formats for fiction and nonfiction titles. 

Books promoted widely enough do okay in spite of their covers, not because of them. Of my books published by major New York houses, only one exception - Ballantine's best-selling paperback edition of High Treason - elicited more than a yawn. Another, however,  was an outright fiasco. The cover that a New York publisher put onto Gymboree's first, parents' guide to child development that I co-authored, pictured children of the wrong age group - misidentifying the book's target readership, parents of babies and toddlers, with thousands of books already printed and distributed! The publisher's art department apparently ignored the dozens of photos I took of babies and toddlers at play that ran with the text.

Not so with indie publishing! I guided the cover every step of the way and a thrill, I admit! Reviewing the comps, made my manuscript feel real. It was no longer a project a work-in-progress. It begins a life of its own, ready to toddle into the real world of publishing and face the slings and arrows of reviews and outrageous fortune -- or, reap a fortune, I dare say, fingers crossed.

The new cover image had already permitted me to launch Oddly Dead, a Frank Ritz, Hollywood noir, detective sequel to The Phantom Eye (published last June), as a Kindle book. Another round of proofing, and it will be present in the world of things - as a paperback book, with pages. gloss cover, spine and heft. 

I'm surprised that my latest mystery spin turned out engaging enough to rate such enthusiastic praise from peers whose opinions I especially value. Hell. I'm surprised when I can finish a book or a short story, period, full stop!.

 So far I've been fortunate to earn praise from much-admired colleagues to whom I sent preview copies, and whom I quote on my cover. Among these comments and reviews are::

"... Darkly funny, Oddly Dead is richly layered with eccentric, roman à clef characters caught in a fast-moving, unconventional whodunit.
 – Bill Kirton, a long-time erstwhile Authors Electric blogger and author, Jack Carston mysteries

"... Umberto Tosi's Oddly Dead leads the reader on a Katzenjammer Kids romp through suspense, mirth and astonishment."
– Lewis Perdue, master of thriller novels, including of The Da Vinci Legacy, The Tesla Bequest, and Daughter of God, and author of 20 published books that have sold more than four million copies.

"Tosi writes with tremendous style ... Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, make room for Frank Ritz!" "
  –  Elizabeth McKenzie, best-selling author of The Portable Veblen, managing editor, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Chicago Quarterly Review.

Image: "The Ark" - by ESF 

"Tosi’s works remind me of Chandler's The Little Sister, and The Big Sleep of course."
  –  Film and stage actor/playwright Gary Houston

"One-eyed Frank Ritz joins a gallery of rogue private detectives, from pulp film and fiction: Phillip Marlowe, Lew Archer, Chico Cervantes, Jake Gittes, among the rough company. ..."Tosi has a wicked eye for the sinister follies and misfortunes of primeval Hollywood, a territory he well knows from his own boyhood and his career as a journalist, from the ’40s through the early ’60s...,"       

"Tosi has a wicked eye for the sinister follies and misfortunes of primeval Hollywood, a territory he well knows from his own boyhood and his career as a journalist, from the ’40s through the early ’60s... In The Phantom Eye, Umberto Tosi takes to Raymond Chandler's mean streets, 'dark with something more than night', in a faithful homage that never loses a singular spring in its step."
 -- John Blades, Chicago Tribune book editor emeritus, fiction editor, Chicago Quarterly Review.

My inamorata, surrealist/imagist painter, Eleanor Spiess-Ferris has been generous in allowing me to chose cover images from among hundreds of her works. Our collaboration began eight years ago with my alternative history novel, Ophelia Rising. I was able to chose from images of Ophelia that Eleanor had created for a 2014 exhibition themed on Shakespeare's fair maid to create a cover that never fails to attract readers and elicit awed comments. Slovakian graphic artist Gabrielle de la Fair incorporated Eleanor's Ophelia image in her flawless design this five-hundred-page book, which I am planning to re-release in two volumes later this year.  

Likewise, Gabrielle de la Fair designed and laid out my covers for Milagro on 34th Street, my reinvention on the classic 1947 Christmas film that re-focuses a New York Santa's on the plight of two immigrant children. We chose a photo from my own days as a department store Santa as the cover's main image. Also, we chose a 8.25" x 6" horizontal holiday book layout over the customary paperback vertical. Looking back, I wonder if that was a mistake, in that it presents the book as a family Christmas tale instead of the semi-satirical socio-political narrative it is meant to be.

KDP's build-your-own cover function offers basic design templates and formates that are relatively workable once the users gets the hang of them. The key is to acquire or create an image compelling enough to carry the cover and transcend the formal stiffness of the app's choices. Eleanor's 1988, sea-of-skulls, Ark, gouache-and-pencil-on-paper achieved this for the covers -- front-and-back- - of my short story collection, Sometimes Ridiculous. 

I've found it's best to go full bore with a capable graphic designer to whip up images and content into a ready-made cover, as I did with Ophelia Rising. Graphic designer Roger Carpenter is doing same for Oddly Dead, putting the finishing touches on an original cover that displays Eleanor's deliciously spooky, "The Fog" (24"  x 24" oil on linen) image. Roger is a long-time friend and colleague with whom I worked on Francis Coppola's City of San Francisco weekly in San Francisco.

Writing is solitary task, but as I leaned working as an editor long ago, publishing is not. It's a team effort -- maybe not as collaborative as filmmaking, or theatre, but still requiring a mix of skills, temperments and talents. Indie writers and publishers like myself, however, still must wear many hats. If there's any one rule, it's to go for quality with each step.

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Umberto Tosi's recently published books include the highly praised, Frank Ritz, Hollywood noir detective mystery The Phantom Eye, plus his story collection, Sometimes Ridiculous, plus Ophelia Rising, High Treason, Sports Psyching and Our Own Kind. His short stories have been published most recently in Catamaran Literary Reader and Chicago Quarterly Review where he is a contributing editor. His nonfiction essays and articles have been published widely in print and online. He began his career at the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer and an editor for its prize-winning, Sunday magazine, West. He went on to become  editor of San Francisco Magazine. and managing editor of Francis Coppola's City of San Francisco. He joined Authors Electric in May 2015 and has contributed to Another Flash in the Pen and One More Flash in the Pen. He has four adult daughters. He resides in Chicago.

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Enjoy my Hollywood noir detective thriller: The Phantom Eye (a Frank Ritz Mystery)  - soon to be followed by Oddly Dead and Death and the Droid.
 "Tosi writes with tremendous style and a pitch perfect ear for everything that makes the classic noir detective story irresistible. Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, make room for Frank Ritz!" - Elizabeth McKenzie, best-selling author of The Portable Veblen.