The Wretched is my new novel, published by Burning Bulb Publications – and it debuted just under a week ago. And it has sold millions of copies.
Okay, maybe not millions – but at least a few dozen! Yeah, that sounds about right – a few dozen copies in both its electronic and paperback format. As a babe in the literary world, I know the Wretched has a long mountain to climb if its going to be a success for both myself and my publisher, who is probably wondering if taking a chance on this particular novel was a good idea or not.
And so it goes.
I say it was a wonderful idea, brilliant – one they will not live to regret.
They are saying, “Well, let us wait and see.”
The reason I’m writing this blog is to give a little background about the cover. It was designed by a good friend of mine, an incredibly awesome artist, named Charles Shane Stanley. If you like it and want him to work on your novel or art project, check him out, because the dude is brilliant. Anyway, when my novel was accepted by my publisher, they sent me a mockup cover for the Wretched. It was okay, but it didn’t really capture the tone of the book, so I reached out to my friend Shane. And like the insane wizard he no doubt is, he created the cover perfectly.
I wanted to do make a parody of the Satanic Bible. On the cover, you have the Satanic pentagram, famous for showing the inverted five-pointed star with the goat head in the middle, surrounded by rings and a few runes. My idea was to replace the runes with everyday, mundane items like a beer, coffee, hot dogs, donut, and my personal favorite – a purple dildo.
When my wife saw the dick, she asked me, “Is that a dick?”
“No. It’s a dildo.”
“Why do you have a dildo?”
“Why do you have a dildo?” I asked.
“I don’t have one.”
“But if you did it’d probably be purple, right?”
“I can’t show that to my friends now.”
“Show them later then,” I said.
There is no real reason to have it there except I think its hilarious. And for my readers, I wanted them to know right off the back that this book, though it deals with serious themes, is first and foremost a comedy. Be it a black one.
And since the novel follows the redemption of Lucifer, I wanted the symbol of the goat to be dead on the cover of the book, because its symbolic of the central characters metamorphosis from his old, archaic image to something different. And the only way to do that is to kill what he was and what he used to represent on his path to enlightenment and possibly forgiveness.
So there is a method to my madness and a reason for the cover to be the way it is. I love it. I think it encapsulates everything about the book absolutely perfectly!
So that’s a bit on the cover.
In a nutshell.
Thanks for reading.
Here is a link to my book, the WRETCHED.
Hall of the King 