dborys

We have started playing with front cover ideas for Painted Black, available soon. We have three basic ideas we need to fine tune, based on the concepts below. While the publisher, New Libri, will have the last say as to which gets chosen, they do give serious consideration to my opinion, so I need everyone’s help.

Which of the following ideas would catch your eye at a book store, or on Amazon.com? Keep in mind the following brief synopsis:

A homeless man in a glass coffin, that’s all Jo Sullivan was looking for, some new material for her column in Winds of Change, a weekly rag willing to dust the dirt off the seamier side of Chicago. But after she nearly turns a graffiti artist into a hood ornament, the tip dropped by a fifteen year old prostitute starts to look more like a front page two inch headline .

When the young girl disappears, her friend Chris hints of a room filled with corpses like a display at a wax museum, and Jo and Chris team up to uncover the truth behind Sloan and Whiteside’s funeral home.

Here are the ideas to choose from.

Please comment below or email me at

deb@debra-r-borys.com.

Montana is a very wide state. Driving across it after getting little sleep the night before, it seemed twice as long as it actually is. Thank God for NPR and smart phones that hold mega bytes of music.

The song below is one that came up in the shuffle. I was first introduced to Loreena McKennit’s music when I went to the Novels In Progress Workshop writer’s conference in Louisville. NIPW wasn’t the first conference I’d ever been to, but it remains the best. It’s where I first began fine tuning Painted Black. I always chose to room in the late night dorm where we stayed up till all hours getting high on life and lack of sleep. (And one time, tequila!)

One night, someone brought in their Loreena McKennit CDs around three a.m. and her music was so haunting and beautiful it was like a spiritual experience. (And no, this wasn’t the night I learned how to drink tequila.)

Balulalow is from one of her very first albums, To Drive the Cold Winter Away. I don’t know if the beauty of it will be that evident from your computer speakers, but I hope you can at least get an idea of why I like it so much.