Official Website of A. S. Peterson

artwork

Fiddler's Green - Wordle

Sep - 14 - 2010

Everyone knows what Wordle is, right?

It’s a fun little website that creates a word cloud out of whatever text you feed into it, making words that occur the most often the largest. I thought it would be fun to feed it the entire manuscript of Fiddler’s Green. So I did. Read the entire post

Tags: artwork

New Book, New Site, New Artwork

Sep - 05 - 2010

Now that there’s a new book on the way, I thought it was only fitting (and necessary) to revamp the website. Take a look around and be sure to check out the Fiddler’s Green page where you’ll find the newly unveiled synopsis of the book.

The manuscript itself is going through its third round of edits and an early review draft has been sent out to a chosen few for feedback and the option of providing endorsements for marketing purposes.

In other news, Evie Coates and I have been meeting for the past couple of weeks to talk up the new cover design and the work she’s done so far is fantastic (see the end of this post for a peek.) She’s finished most of the border that frames the cover (like the first book) and it’s almost as if she reached right into my brian and pulled out exactly what I’d been imagining. . .Read the entire post

Tags: Writing, Promotional, Publishing, artwork

Cover: Finished

Oct - 26 - 2009

After an uncountable number of hours agonizing over details, the cover for The Fiddler's Gun is finished. I printed up laser proofs and sent the files off to the printer earlier this afternoon. Thanks to Evie for the gorgeous artwork and to Brannon McAllister of Portland Studios for putting the final tweaks on the design. The result is pretty awesome.

Check out the Artwork Page for a better look.

Tags: artwork, Publishing

Cover Evolution

Sep - 22 - 2009

I had another great meeting with Evie Coates last week to talk about the cover design. She had just spent a weekend alone, in a secluded mountaintop cabin, with her mind set to the task of creating the art for The Fiddler’s Gun. I like to imagine that she was a sort of female Moses, gnarled staff in hand, solemnly ascending to the Sinai summit to contend with the Almighty and return white-haired and shiny-faced with a divinely etched book cover that would wow readers the world over. I was careful to steer clear of any golden calves while she was gone because I didn’t want her to throw the artwork at me when she came down. Also, I generally dislike being swallowed up by the earth.

This analogy is ridiculous.

So return she did, and I’ll venture to guess that...Read the entire post

Tags: artwork, design

Developing the Cover

Sep - 10 - 2009

Yesterday I sat down in Hillsboro Village with a couple of Fat Tires and the highly sought-after visual artist Evie Coates to discuss cover design. I commissioned the art from Evie a few months ago but since then both she and I have been so busy with other things that we’ve scarcely been able to talk, much less sit down and hash out the design in proper fashion. So one of the first things on my to-do list once I got home to Nashville was to find time to get together with her and to make sure we were on the same page artistically.

Our meeting went swimmingly (no, I’d never use that word in conversation but it’s too much fun to say no to right now). We discussed colors and composition and ...Read the entire post

Tags: artwork, design

Bookmarks

Jun - 02 - 2009

One of the challenges of independent publishing is that I don’t have the benefit of a promotional team to help generate interest in the book. It’s all up to me, or me and anyone I manage to talk into helping. So I spend a lot of time wracking my brain for ways to put the word out. The result of one such brain-wracking session was to print bookmarks.

Using the character artwork that Chris Koelle did a few years ago I put together a simple 2x6 graphic and a short pitch for the...Read the entire post

Tags: Publishing, Marketing, artwork

Cover Inspiration

May - 19 - 2009

I had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with Evie Coates, who is designing the cover, to talk about what direction we wanted to go with the look of the book. I wanted to be sure I was able to communicate clearly what kind of design style I envision for The Fiddler’s Gun so I had some preparation to do. Before the meeting I took a walk through a couple of bookstores looking solely at cover art and noting which ones made me want to pick up a book without regard for who wrote it, what genre it was, or anything else other than ‘the look’. Here are a few covers that really jumped out at meRead the entire post

Tags: artwork, Publishing

Cover Artist: Evie Coates

May - 06 - 2009

I’m happy to announce that Nashville artist Evie Coates will be designing the cover of The Fiddler’s Gun as well as working in a creative advisor capacity to help guide the overall look and design of the book. If you’ve never seen any of her work then get thee to clicking and go visit this link to check some of it out. While you’re at it check out her blog as well, she’s a wonderful writer (eviecoates.blogspot.com).

Evie’s primary field is the creation of assemblages and I’ve posted pictures of a few of my favorites for you. Aside from assemblage though...Read the entire post

Tags: artwork, Publishing