Chapter 5: Cover
Land of Confusion: Cover
NOTES FROM JASON
Told you the wait wouldn’t be as long.
Granted, it’s been quite a number of months, but we are back with Chapter 5. While you’ll have to wait until next week for the story to officially get going, here is the cover in all its cryptic beauty. As you can see, the mysterious old man who showed up at the end of last chapter is front and center. I hope this means he’ll have a sizable role this go around, and more importantly, we learn just who the hell he is and what interest he has in our characters. And speaking of our characters, they seem to be in an odd place, tightly bound and hanging upside down, dangling from a necklace chain like talismans. Wonder what that means. Could it be that this old man might not have good intentions, perhaps an agent of someone else? Or maybe there’s something else going on here. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things unfold.
The other apparent detail we see on the cover are numerous symbols, which should look familiar to you if you’ve been keeping up with the story. You can find all of them carved into the cell walls of Harker’s cell in the previous chapter. So how does that factor in? Does Harker play a role in all this? He’s still locked up, and last we saw him, he wasn’t faring too well. Could the old man have something to do with him? Well, last chapter we saw him give Harker his signature shades, so yes. But what more do we not yet know? Could it just mean that Harker still casts a heavy shadow over the city, even after he’s been caged? I’m throwing out a lot of questions, but hopefully it’s getting you intrigued enough to want to stick around and find out the answers. And most of these questions I’ve posited do have answers in this chapter. Promise.
Unlike last chapter, this one didn’t go through numerous drafts in the writing stage. There were some changes here and there, that’s to be expected, but nothing on the level of last chapter. I’ll go into the specifics of that process as we go through the chapter. The cover itself went through some different versions, though the central idea of the old man’s prominence and our characters’ apparent peril remained a constant. Randy can tell you more about that, but what we’ve settled on has just the right amounts of eye-catching visuals that evoke the right amounts of intrigue and curiosity that you want in a cover.
So, buckle up, the ride’s about to recommence. If you need to catch up, or refresh your memory on what’s happened previously, now’s your chance. On Tuesday, Randy will be here with the first page. Be there.