It's Ash's first birthday, a bare chin is revealed... (and so are the next three Robert McGinnis covers)

It was Ash's birthday on the 16th of September, and his mother and I went back to the place he was born to celebrate and to get away from cellphones and the world.

He's a delight and I've never loved him more. His favourite books are Goodnight Moon and a book called Chu's Day (I've never been prouder). His eyes really are that blue.

I'm now off writing, and I won't see them for another ten days. I'm loving the writing, loving the exercising and the quiet and the words, and missing them both, especially Ash, I miss singing to him, miss waking up early and going off and reading with him or walking with him (he can nearly walk). Miss feeding him.

Today I shaved off my beard. I also got a FedEx package containing a proof "Advance Reading Copy" of NORSE MYTHOLOGY (it'll be published on the 7th of February) and an early reading copy of Colleen Doran's beautiful graphic novel adaptation of TROLL BRIDGE (out on October 18th).

Here is a photograph of all these things at once. (Well, not the act of shaving.)

...

So, this is a very book-covery day,  because I'm going to do something fun.

For the last few months, I've been showing people I've been talking to or talking about books with or just wind up sitting next to on a plane the Robert E. McGinnis covers for Stardust, Neverwhere and Anansi Boys.

This is because I am so proud of them, and the work Todd Klein did with the lettering and the design for the books.

The American Gods cover (it already came out) is, in my head, a 1968 SF cover. (I wrote about it here: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2016/07/robert-e-mcginnis-and-secret-of-new.html. Todd Klein shows all the design work that led to it on his blog http://kleinletters.com/Blog/title-and-cover-design-for-neil-gaimans-american-gods/.)

Would you like to see the next three?

Really?

You don't have to see them. You can wait until you are in some little Indie Bookshop over the next few months, and be surprised...

I love them. The Stardust cover is an early 70s book, and is funny, like the covers I delighted in for books like William Goldman's The Princess Bride -- the lettering style was inspired by the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Line, and  the whole is intended to be sort of heartwarming.

Anansi Boys is done as a late 50s or early 60s paperback – one of those goofy comedies, with an illustration of a scene from the first chapter. (Also glad to finally get Mr Nancy on the cover of his book.) I think this one is Robert E McGinnis's masterpiece, and Todd's as well. 

 Neverwhere – when Robert McGinnis sent over this haunting cover I sent it over to Todd Klein and told him that I thought it was a 1970s gothic romance cover. He looked at the kind of covers I'd suggested, told me that they often have elegant and swirly titles and heavily serifed type, and he produced something as beautiful and haunting as the cover had been.

Ready...?

Oh, hell. Here you go. And I've just gone to Amazon to find out the publication dates so will put the links in...

(And I checked Indiebound and the books are now up there too, so Indiebound links as well.)

Anansi Boys (http://bit.ly/AnansiPulp) comes out on October 25th...  (I loved this one so much I bought the painting from Mr McGinnis.)

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062564337

Neverwhere (http://bit.ly/NeverwherePulp) is published on November 29th. I love the rats in the shadows...

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062476371

Stardust (http://bit.ly/StardustPulp) is the next one to come out -- it will be out in just six days from now on September 27th...

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062564344

Labels: anansi boys, Ash, beards, birthdays, colleen doran, Neverwhere, Norse Mythology, Robert E McGinnis, Stardust, Todd Klein, Troll Bridge

Robert E McGinnis and the Secret of The New Cover

I've loved Robert McGinnis's covers for a very long time. I remember the first one I was aware of (it was the cover of Ian Fleming's  James Bond book DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, when I was about 9. They put the film poster on the book cover, which puzzled me a bit because the plot of the book isn't the plot of the film.) And I assumed that he had retired a long, long time ago.

About a year ago, Jennifer Brehl and I were talking. Jennifer is my editor at William Morrow, and is one of the best, most sensible and wisest people in my life. I am lucky to have her. We were talking about paperbacks, and how publishers put less effort into them these days. I went off about how paperback covers used to be beautiful, and were painted, and told you so much. And how much I missed the covers of the '50s and '60s and '70s, the  ones I'd collected and bought back in the dawn of time.

And somehow the conversation wound up with me asking if Harper Collins would publish a set of mass market paperbacks of my books with gloriously retro covers and Jennifer saying that yes, they would.

A few days later I was in DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis. I noticed a particularly gorgeous cover on an old book on a shelf. "Who did that?" I asked Greg Ketter.

"Robert McGinnis," said Greg. "Actually we have a whole book of McGinnis artwork." He showed it to me. The Art of Robert E. McGinnis. It's gorgeous. Here's the cover:

I was surprised at how recent the book was. It had been published a few months earlier. "Oh yes," said Greg. "Bob's still painting. Must be almost 90."

(He was 90 in February 2016.)

I sent a note to Jennifer asking if there was even the slightest possibility that Mr McGinnis would be interested in painting the covers for the paperback set we wanted to do. He said yes.

I say that so blithely. But he has retired, pretty much, and he doesn't have email, and it was only because the Morrow art director had worked with him, and he was intrigued by the commission... and ROBERT MCGINNIS SAID YES.

He sent in the first painting, the one for American Gods. It was perfect. Now we needed to make everything that wasn't the cover  feel right.

Todd Klein, the finest letterer in comics, came in to create each book's logo and to help design it and pick the fonts, to make each book feel like it came from a certain age.

Each painting from McGinnis was better than the one before. Each Logo and layout from Todd Klein was more assured and more accurate. These things are glorious.

Now... we were planning to announce these in an much more planned and orderly way. I'm not going to tell you what books we're doing, or to show you any covers but the one.

And that's because the upcoming 2017 Starz American Gods TV series has created a huge demand for copies of American Gods. People who have never read it have started buying it to find out what the fuss is about. People who read it long ago and gave away their copy bought new ones to reread it.

The publishers ran out of books to sell.

So they've rushed back to press with the new paperback edition, which wasn't meant to be coming out for some months (and the text is the text of the Author's Preferred edition in case you were wondering).

And that means the version of the paperback with the new cover is going to be coming out a lot sooner than we thought. And tomorrow it will probably up on Amazon.

And I wanted you to hear it from me first.  You aren't going to see the rest of the Robert E McGinnis covers for a little while (and each of them looks like a different kind of book from a different era). But this is the first of them.

In my head, and Todd's, it's probably from about 1971...

Are you ready?
















Okay....




Here goes...

...and wait until you see the rest of them.

Labels: American Gods, paperbacks, Pulp Covers, Robert E McGinnis, Todd Klein