Looking Back at Creating Lishka

LISHKA is now (mostly) out in the world (pending hard cover and digital versions which are oh-so-close), so I thought it would be fun to look back at the various iterations over the years it took to get the final, beautiful version. Afterall, the end of the year is a perfect time for looking back.

The Cover

One thing that gives me motivation when in the writing and editing slog is creating my own little cover, where I start dreaming about what my cover could look like. These homemade covers are pretty rough, but it still feels a little bit magical to start ideating on what the finished project might look like.

One of the first covers.

I cannot even remember when I made this cover. The file properties say 2018, but that could have just been from importing over into a newer computer. I want to say LISHKA had not even been finished when I made this mock up using Microsoft Word (my go-to for all my little cover ideas). At some point, my idea of the cover shifted away from the blade to the mage’s mark, but when I created this cover I had no idea what the mage’s mark even looked like (that came much later when an editor asked me about this symbol and thus pushed me to put some thought into it).

A little closer…

This cover starts to get a little closer to what the final would be. This mockup was actually created by my sister. We had been emailing back and forth while at work talking about LISHKA, and she sent me back this mockup. This made me super excited, because she laid it out like a real book, spine and everything!

The Blurb

The back blurb is always so tough to write. I probably had several iterations of the book blurb. I found this blurb when I went digging for the older covers; it must have been one I used around the time I created the sword cover.

“
For centuries, Lishka has lived at the edge of the civilized world, resolutely outside of the politics that rule her vampiric kind. When she accidentally turns a strange man without the approval of her Coven, she is thrust into the power struggle between the two Great Covens. Fighting diverging loyalties, one she wants and one that is forced, she must take her newly turned charge and go into the wilderness to seek support from creatures of the Old World. There, she is forced to confront the truth about herself and her companion, and in doing so discover the prophecy and legend that binds them together.
”

The Mage’s Mark

When I first started to think about what the mage’s mark looked like, LISHKA had already gone through several draft versions. I knew that it was round, with some straight lines potentially sticking out of the circle. I sent a few sketches to my sister, who said they looked like a basket ball (she wasn’t wrong). So one weekend when she was staying with me, I gave her a sketch pad and asked her to draw me the mage’s mark.

The mage’s mark came to life in a sketch pad.

She drew a page full of ideas lying on the floor in our TV den, while our husbands played video games. Mixed in with various circle/line sketches, the mage’s mark emerged. Pictured here is the very first drawing ever of the mage’s mark. As soon as I saw it, I realized that it perfectly matched what I had vaguely imagined when writing the book.

The Book Itself

One thing I just love to do when I finish a book is to print it out in formatting that somewhat mimics a real, published book. Once I had self-edited LISHKA and was ready to share it, I printed out the book in a two page per 8.5x11 layout, then painstakingly cut each page. I even bought a three whole punch so that I could ‘bind’ the book into a small 5x7 binder. The first binder I bought, a cool fake-leather bound one, was way too small so I ended up finding a thick black binder. My cover, the first page, was the version with the sword pictured above.

My sister read the first hard copy on the NYC Subway.

I gave the bound book to my sister, who read it on her then-commute on the New York City subway. One of the best praises I’ve received is when she almost missed her subway stop because she was so engrossed in the book.

After awhile, half of the binder broke off. I’m pretty sure my sister still has this copy somewhere, the last version before I worked with editors to further enhance and polish it.

It’s fun to dig back through the archives and find all the pieces and ideas that helped make writing and creating LISHKA so much fun, and to see how far the novel has come to being it’s final, best version.