Test Cover for "La Bruja del Barrio Loco"

5/10/2018

How is this for a book cover? I took Eric Yankee's advice and I used Canva to design this piece. I like that image a lot; the image I got from pexels by samer daboul. I still want to use my sister's painting, but I have to reduce the glare.

I actually don't know where it went, so it may be forever immortalized as part of my blog.

Anyway, I will see what Eric thinks. He's the expert after all.

6 Comments

Elizabeth Marino link

5/11/2018 05:47:36 am

Maria Jesu -- I think that at this point, your publisher should be hooking you up with an actual professional designer, for a professional product. This is not a self-published giveaway. A design professional could take this lovely design and make it work technically, so that it is printer and/or e-book ready, as a job and not a favor, and in a timely way.

They might want to use your sister's painting as an end cover or end of text image.

Jesu Estrada

5/11/2018 09:51:51 am

Hey GF, I am the publisher! Plus, have you seen the shit covers, presses put out? They are ugly as fuck and hard to read online. Anyway, if I ever get a publisher, then yeah, a professional can design the cover. But I am adamant that students be able to download the *.pdf version. You know this is a labor of love for me, unless I lose my job, which is highly unlikely, but not impossible.

Elizabeth Marino

5/11/2018 11:10:44 am

No, I did not entirely know this. Thought the manuscript was being prepared for submission to small presses AND to be available in PDF to your own students. My own experience had been with small press publishers/editors (dancing girl press, Puddin'head Press, Moon Journal). Josephine LiPuma was brought in to the Debris project to design the cover art, then worked with the publisher/editor on layout adjustments.

This was speaking from my own experience. I also have seen projects which screamed intellectual author, with no design judgemental or proofreading skills. At a book table, which will be picked up and purchased?

With more automation, these editorial expectations as becoming less in use -- but they are still useful.

Jesu

5/12/2018 03:45:38 am

I know. Automation sucks, and should liberate workers instead of replace them, and I wish I had a small press to work with. But, I figured the short works could be my own, and get a better writing rhythm going so I could submit stories. I plan on doing that this summer. To my joy, I am hitting my writing stride daily, religiously, and producing quality and quantity. The novel, The Harvest, however, I am definitely going to try to send out to presses. I don't care if they are small or large. The other problem is that unless you are know or agented, I doubt anyone will take my story collections. I have two done, but I am taking Yankee's advice and self-publishing one a day. See, your role is super important in all of this work. LOL.

Fabio

5/11/2018 06:59:06 am

Hey Professor:

I like this cover a lot. The painting looks a little too dark. Maybe because you're not giving it enough space on the cover. Maybe move Laura's comment down a bit and extend the painting.

Jwsu

5/11/2018 09:47:23 am

Hey Fabio! Thanks for the design feedback. I will take that into account. I need to try that graphic design sight and see if I can lighten it.

Dr. Jesú Estrada,
Chicago, IL

I grew up on the outskirts of Yuma, AZ, close to the Cocopah reservation. Because I was ever-bored, I became an avid reader of Spanish comic books and anything in English. Then I moved onto Steinbeck and Stephen King and now read international authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Atwood, and Roque Dalton. I also read a lot of coming of age fiction.

I have been writing stories in both Spanish and English since I was six years old. My fiction and poetry focus on working class issues, primarily about laborers in the Southwest. I also write non-serious fiction, like zombie fiction (I was into it before it got popular with the Walking Dead series, which I love) and dabble in magical realism with a fusion of cuentos and folklore.

I have a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Washington State University, a Masters Degree in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Arts from Northern Arizona University. I have also taught creative writing, and will do so, summer 2018. Currently, I live in Chicago and teach full-time at Harold Washington College to an amazing student population.

More about me. I am happily married, been so for almost ten years, and have a fabulous eight-year-old who makes my life phenomenal: He too is starting to write short stories. I had a second baby, Simona (3), which put a temporary set-back on the publication of my first book, but made my life infinitely more wonderful. My husband is also incredibly supportive, and I have enlisted him to market whatever I do that is worth marketing. He also books my readings.

That damned itch just won't let me be, so I'm back to my original love of words. Puro Amor!