Book Cover: Felan's Fables

Last year, I designed a book, inside and out, for Jamie Yourdon, author of Froelich's Ladder. The book, Swanya, was a limited edition novel (only 100 copies made) based on the story of Snow White. I wrote about the process here.

This year, Jamie's got a new project, and I'm in love with it. It's called Felan's Fables and is a collection of 60 short, charming, weird, fascinating fables that take place in a world of Jamie's creation. They don't all revolve around the eponymous Felan, but Felan is there, and important, and as you read, the world grows up around you in a wonderful way.

I was excited to get to design this book inside and out as with Swanya—and as with Swanya, Jamie gifted me with some gorgeous artwork to work with.

Look at this!

This is Felan. Commissioned from artist Graham Francoise whose art you can check out here. I love his style and I absolutely love the image of Felan that he created. It was such a joy to work on this cover because throughout the process, there was Felan for me to feast my eyes on.

Look at that nose and freckles!

Along with the Felan image, Graham created a patchwork quilt of tiny images each representing a fable. That was to be the background, and also the main imagery for the back cover. (I also used each little square to head its fable on the inside.) Graham gave this to me in layers, and Jamie said I could position Felan any way I wished.

I chose, of course, to put Felan front and center, and then I looked for fonts that felt right for the subject. The challenge for this cover was to get the balance between Felan and text right, and also to ensure that the elements didn't get overwhelmed by the detail of the patchwork background. To make sure the title stood out, I added a subtle wash of color across the top half of the cover. For text color, I stuck mostly with reds and greens to integrate the words into the artwork, adding in some cream and black as well, as I experimented. Sometimes the text wants to stand off of a cover. For Felan's Fables, I wanted it to nestle inside.

At first, I tried also adding a little bit of extra ornamentation because we had included some in the Swanya cover and it had worked well.

But it felt extraneous to both Jamie and me. One element too many. Sometimes the best design is something subtle, that allows the artwork to be the star completely.

I did some experimenting....

And of course sent samples to Jamie to choose from. One thing that happened in the process of this book is that we found out late in the game that the printer couldn't accommodate Jamie's chosen trim size. That meant that after all of my experimenting, we needed to reformat the cover to a shape that was a little taller and thinner. I think, in the end, that served Felan well.

Felan's Fables will be out March 10, 2026. Jamie will be launching a Kickstarter campaign in January. You can have a sneak peek here. For more information on Jamie and all his books, go here. To feast your eyes on more of Graham's work, go here. And here's a taste of one of Jamie's fabulous fables:

Once there was a boy whose bones were made of wicker. His father was a scarecrow and his mother was not.

The boy’s limbs were sturdy as a wicker chair. His ribs were like a picnic basket, with all his organs neatly tucked away. His heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys were all normal. It was only his bones that made him different.

“You must never tell anyone,” his mother had cautioned him, “or people will cut you open to see your insides.”

So the wicker boy had kept his secret safe.

One day the wicker boy chanced upon two brothers by a lake. The brothers had been arguing, but they fell silent when they saw him approaching. Though one brother was clearly older, both were larger than the wicker boy and both had a menacing disposition.

Their faces turned from scowls to smiles.

a moment in the day: visitation

I've popped downstairs to warm the two sips of coffee at the bottom of my cup. Pulling it from the microwave, closing the little door, I turn and, as my eyes glance across the kitchen, bringing into my periphery the big window to the back yard, my brain blinks to Nicholas. As it sometimes does when I look outside. All the times I would take him out, stand with him as he paced and paced the grass in those final dog years.

Now my eyes turn to look at the window full on, and for just a quarter second: there he is. Right there in the window 

A dark shape against the gray of the rainy yard.

It's the neighbors' cat Tiger. Sitting on the little table just outside the window. 

He pays me no mind. Sniffs around at the edge of the glass. Then hops down and away.

a moment in the day: waiting for the water to boil

I stand in the kitchen making morning coffee. Try to push the background hum of existential dread out of the ears of my mind. 

I wonder if it’s buzzing in there so loudly this morning because of my loved ones who are sick or hurting, or my Monday-morning dentist appointment, or the world or the world or the world. 

I glance at the clock to see how old I am.

An Influence on my Novel: Murder My Sweet

It's getting around to holiday card season again. Yes, we still do holiday cards in this little two-person family, and my ritual for some reason is to spread all the cards and envelopes and stamps and my list out around me on the bed and put a film noir on the TV, one that I know so well that it doesn't distract me, just runs in the background like some cozy accompaniment as I address my envelopes and write out my notes.

It's sort of like my version of Christmas music.

Sometimes I go with Scarlet Street, sometimes Too Late for Tears. I think this year, in honor of my book that just came out, I'll switch on Murder, My Sweet. 

I set out to write a novel through the lens of old-time radio detective shows, and I did, but I couldn't help but be influenced by film noir as well—and Murder, My Sweet in particular. It's based on the novel Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, and Chandler was the master of the campy noir language that my favorite old-time radio detective shows are full of—and which I based my own novel's narrative voice on. 

It's also one of the few classic detective noirs out there. Most people, when they think of film noir, picture a detective alone in his office at night, a neon sign blinking in the window behind him, maybe a bottle of whisky in his top desk drawer. The door opens and in walks a seductive femme fatale.

There are actually very few film noirs that center around the classic detective scenario. But Murder, My Sweet is one. It even has one of those late-night office scenes with the neon light in the window and everything. Although the person who enters is no femme. 

Detective Philip Marlowe (played by Dick Powell) is hired by hulking hood "Moose" Malloy (played by Mike Mazurki) to track down his girl Velma, who disappeared while he was away on a stint in the big house. There are other subplots as well. The film is complicated and convoluted and zany and I love it. For too many reasons to go into now. What I came here to do was talk a little bit about how Murder, My Sweet influenced my novel, and to share a few easter eggs I put in there to celebrate one of my favorite films.

I should mention that my novel Who Killed One the Gun? is not just a classic old-time detective story. My detective, One the Gun, also happens to live in a world where people have numbers for names (Two the True Blue, Three the Goatee...), and he also happens to be stuck in a time loop and trying to solve his own murder. Which might give you an idea why I am in love with a movie that I call complicated and convoluted and zany. 

As I said, Murder, My Sweet was a big influence, because of its classic gumshoe vibe and the terrific Raymond Chandler language: the mid-century slang, the world-weary tone, the colorful metaphors:

She was a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud. I gave her a drink. She was a gal who'd take a drink. If she had to knock you down to get the bottle.

Alright, this example isn't kind to its subject, and is pretty flippant about alcoholism, but I couldn't help but quote it, if only so that I could mention the great character turn of Jessie Florian, played by the fabulous Esther Howard. But it's also a good example of the language style I'm talking about.

But beyond the broader ways in which the film influenced the book, there are a few much more specific ways.

#1
Moose.

At a recent reading event, I was asked by someone in the audience who I thought would play my detective One the Gun in the theoretical movie of my book. I had to say that honestly I didn't know, but that I did know who would play one of my main suspects, the hulking doorman Four the Door.

When I wrote the part of Four the Door, I was thinking of two people, a radio actor named Tony Barrett, and, from Murder, My Sweet, Moose Malloy, played by Mike Mazurki.

The name's Moose. On account of I'm large.

You can't help but be drawn to the character of Moose Malloy. Huge, powerful, but childlike. There's an innocence to his demeanor—and then just as quickly as a child can turn from teddy bear to tantrum, Moose Malloy can get violent.

Four the Door's initial description in my novel:

Six and a half feet tall if he’s a day, a moose of a man who’s built more like a bouncer than a doorman. Even sitting down he’s a towering hulk, all chest and shoulders, but something in his face, some puppy-dog slant in the way he looks at you, makes it seem like he doesn’t at all notice his advantage.

One the Gun, who's drawn to using nicknames on people, calls Four the Door the moose throughout the book in an outright nod to the film.

#2
Language.

Alright, I already brought up language, but there are two places in the book where I use language that specifically references the movie.

For the first instance, we'll stick with the moose for a second. To set this up, in my book, my detective One the Gun is on the murder case of a dive owner named Five the No Longer Alive. (It's One the Gun's investigation of this case that leads to Gun's own murder, which naturally he would also like to solve.) Because Gun is in a time loop, every night at the same time, he goes to the dive, and there he's greeted at the entrance by the doorman Four the Door:

“Business good tonight?” he asks.

“Sure, sure,” Four the Door says, “folks been coming by to make with the respects. Look at all them flowers there in the corner.”

“Very nice,” One the Gun says.

“Prettier than pink ballerinas!” Four the Door says.

Fans of film noir may already know what I'm getting at with that last line. It's a twist on one of the most beloved lines in Murder, My Sweet. From Moose's description of his lost lady Velma.

She was cute as lace pants.

The second piece of dialogue that I reference from Murder, My Sweet, is longer. In my book, there's a detective radio show that comes on every Friday night (and since Gun is in a time loop, it comes on every night), called Who Is the Villain?. When I wrote the narration for that radio show, I slipped in an allusion to my personal favorite line in Murder, My Sweet. Here's the quotation from the film:

I'd been out peeking under old Sunday sections for a barber named Dominick whose wife wanted him back—I forget why. Only reason I took the job was because my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck.

And my own version, with more numbers and fewer names:

I’d just returned to the office after a day snooping under old garbage can lids for some zero named Fourteen who’d been eighty-sixed by his wife, who now suddenly wanted him back. Who could say why? It was a worthless job for a worthless client, but it was better than shining up the vacancy sign in my wallet.

I was proud of all the number-play I piled into that paragraph, but I'm well aware of the fact that nothing, but nothing, will ever be a better landing than the word duck.

#3
Philip Marlowe's shirt.

As a book designer, I was very lucky to be given the chance to design my own book cover. It also gave me the chance to hide one more Murder, My Sweet easter egg in my book.

Now, go with me on this one. It's a bit of a stretch. Or. It's not a stretch, but you have to use your imagination a little.

I devised a cover that would reference old pulp novels and film noir movie posters. At the center of it would be One the Gun lying dead (well, about to be dead—in that moment before the time loop takes him back to the beginning of his day) against a swirling clock. To build the figure in the position I wanted, I found images of bodies and started to piece them together to form one.

For the middle of the body, on impulse, I jumped onto YouTube and put on a scene from Murder, My Sweet, stopping and starting the scene and taking screen shots of Dick Powell's Philip Marlowe in spots where I thought the angle would work.

This is in a scene in which Marlowe has been abducted, taken to a sanatorium, and pumped full of drugs. His clothes are disheveled, perfect for my fallen, newly just-about-murdered detective. I took the screen shot I liked best and maneuvered it into place...

Then added Marlowe's shirt to my body-in-progress. There were more pieces and steps than this as I assembled my One the Gun, but you can see that as he came together, Marlowe's shirt came with him.

There are definitely references to other favorite noirs and radio shows in and on my book, but I'll leave it there. If you haven't seen it, seek out and watch Murder, My Sweet. It's a great film packed full of snappy dialogue, colorful characters, and terrific black and white chiaroscuro cinematography. It's well worth watching, whether you're addressing holiday cards or not.

a moment in the day: list

Just home from an event called Conversing with the Dead at a local bookstore, I put my new books on the top of the chest of drawers in the dining room, then the pretty polished river rock I took from the little basket of rocks they had out with a little card. "Rocks represent strength, stability, and endurance. Please take one home to enjoy!" Stephen puts his rock next to mine and we compare. 

At that same table at the bookstore with the rocks were little cards and pens, and we were encouraged to write notes for loved ones we've lost. Stephen brings his out of his pocket. It's a lovely message for a recently lost friend. He asks to see mine and I bring it out, explaining that I didn't so much make a message as a list. In the moment, at the bookstore, I hadn't known who to pick. There are too many. Especially from the last five years. 

I smooth my list out against my palm. It starts:

Dad
[a little heart]
Kat
[a little heart]
Mara

[a little heart]

Stephen says, "You even have a dog on there."

"Three," I say, and point them out and say their names.

I realize with a little jolt that I missed someone. Well I couldn't have included everyone, of course, especially with dogs in the mix, but this was a special someone. 

How could I have missed them?

It hurts my heart.

There are just too many.

a moment in the day: halloween

The first knock on my door. Halloween night, streets full of rain through my window, and I've been hovering here waiting and wondering if we'd get anyone at all. I grab the candy bowl from the chair and go to the door, pull it open. 

A little devil in red, and, even smaller, a... what is she? All in white, her head and limbs sticking out of a big plush puff. A marshmallow? A round angel? They call "trick or treat" and ask how many they can take as they reach into the bowl. There are waves and thank yous all around as they and their costumed parents head down the porch steps into the rain. No umbrellas.

They turn to head to the next house. Mom says, "We’re going to go to the end of the block and then we’ll go home, okay?"

I linger on the porch. Scan up and down looking for children.

A man dressed as a taco and wielding a baby carriage trucks by, not stopping. 

I call out, "You're a taco."

No umbrella. He turns his head and smiles and nods and continues on.

Coming the other way, passing him, is another man. No costume. No umbrella. Just walking by.

I call out, "You're not a taco."

Book Cake: a photoplay

A couple weeks in the life of the lovely surprise book cake Stephen got me for the pre-event party my good friend Liz Scott threw before my book launch at the beginning of this month. 

The cake was huge. There was no way it was going to get close to being completely eaten during that party. In the whirlwind of all of us heading over to Powell's for the event, the leftover cake got left, in full, to Stephen and me. I shouldn't have continued eating as much of that cake as I did in the days that followed, but it felt too special. 

I don't remember what piece I got at the party.

This is the piece I had at the end of the night to celebrate the book launch.

Eating the moon.

Remnants. If you look close, you'll see the sign of the beast in there. Yipe.

A last little piece before I bit the bullet (pun intended) and put the last of it out for the squirrels to pick over.