Progress September 2020

At this time last year, my target was to publish The Long Dark about now. I was coming to the end of a detailed critique cycle and I figured it would take a few months to process the feedback, revise, and complete all the finishing touches for publication.

It ended up not being quite as straightforward as I'd imagined. There were some common comments on a few areas, and I went out to a couple more beta readers after a serious round of edits to see if I was getting close. Now I'm working through those story lines again on what I think will be my final round of edits before detailed proof-reading.

While the story was out with beta readers, I've been working on cover art. Again, this has ended up taking longer than I'd originally intended. You can see regular progress posted her all the way back to May.

One part of the artwork was bugging me, though. The sun wasn't right. It's meant to be a red giant, which will be huge in the sky but nowhere near as bright as our sun. I started off emphasizing the redness, but I've never been really happy with it and never figured out why.  

 

Then – a silver lining to all the smoke in the sky the last two weeks – I was looking up at the sun on my way into work and realized I've been trying to show Big Red as a sphere. I decided that was a mistake, and the disc would likely appear a lot flatter, like our sun at sunset or through a smoke haze.

I'm not quite there yet, but getting close. 

 

All told, I do feel like I'm now in the final stretch, and still aiming to publish before the end of the year.