And then I might think, what small adjustments might be made to nudge this into more crowd-pleasing territory? And then, how much time and effort do I want to put into that? Often followed by, geez, why don't you just trust your instincts?
This was one of those occasions. Much as I wanted to use the target shape to replace the missing letter "O", I was kinda concerned that the word didn't instantly read as a word, as it ought to. The shape was there, sure, but it was the difference in color and contrast that created doubt in my mind, and like a juror instructed to not to consider stricken testimony in court, you can't "un-see" something. (Not really.) Out of concern that this might doom the entire concept, I did an alternate version, mostly for myself — that's it on the right, the version with the target shape filled with a clean version of the sand texture in the background. (You're probably not seeing that texture on screen — I think it's been mostly lost to the JPEG compression, though I hope will be a bit more obvious in print.).While I was wondering over which I ought to submit, my nine-year-old son saw the original version (that's it on the left), and read the title out loud with a moment's hesitation, but without prompting. I guess if a nine-year-old can make sense of this, I shouldn't be too terribly concerned.
Oh, and here's the quick sketch I did before I started working on this. I had been asked to design a cover based on the cover of the screenplay, but there really wasn't anything there to draw on for a formal book cover (and I wanted to do something in keeping with the other books in the series). But I did use the silhouetted figure.
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