#2

I am making this post in order to say that I have updated the cover design for one of my books. I am not much of a designer but I have tried to create an honest, reasonable graphic. Hopefully this will increase the feeling of value that might accompany a purchase.

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I am familiar with cigarettes, and how they are. I no longer smoke them, but it should be acknowledged that this phrasing (and phrases like "I quit" or "yeah, I used to smoke, but not anymore") can only ever mean that I do not habitually smoke them at the moment that I make the claim. Always, there is a background awareness of the nearest gas station, the emergency few dollars in the bank account set aside, the subconscious permission. In smokers, there is an inborn awareness that everything is probably (definitely, eventually, matter of time) going to go to absolute shit sooner or later, and in that moment, the ruined leather jacket is there, to be pulled out of the box stuffed into the top of the closet, the lighter used for lighting birthday candles and nothing else is there to be whisked from the least-opened kitchen drawer, and the clerk is waiting, ready and legally obligated to give you what you ask for in a casual, measured voice.

I am trying to design a new cover for the other book, a book which is heavily informed by cigarettes.  I have nevertheless decided its new cover will not actually feature a stylized cigarette, or even white cylinders of any kind. This decision feels intelligent, and takes a certain weight off my mind.


--JL