F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Waterfalls

Kirschner Cover Art: In Pinelight, by Thomas Rayfiel

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In Pinelight, by Thomas Rayfiel, Triquarterly (Publisher), 2013
In Pinelight, by Thomas Rayfiel, Triquarterly (Publisher), 2013

When I first saw this cover, I was stunned—stopped in my tracks, much like The Grievers.

I loved this cover!

Much like my discussion of Grace, this cover also brings me back to my life in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. The North Country. If you haven’t guessed it yet, I had a great upbringing. I loved where and when I grew up. Love the wild lands…the brooding mysteries of the dark waters and woods. I spent so much time roaming the woods on my own…hanging out at the lake across the road from our house. Soaking in this cover really brought it all back. Now, the story itself…it’s method of delivery…did not work for me. I wanted it to…because of the cover…because of the subject matter (an upstate NY town that was flooded out)…but simply couldn’t. It simply didn’t work for me.

But…back to the cover…I love the feeling of foreboding…the mystery…the darkness. I love the trees and all their shadows…how trees and shadows and mist-over-water lends toward an implied deep, dark mystery…implied goings-on that are hidden in either-or-both the water and the woods. Again, since I had not finished reading this novel, I can only guess…but it all implies some dark dealings going on in some dark woods…and/or water. Back country secrets….

I can feel the crisp coldness of the water…the resilient bounce of the humus-carpeted forest floor…inhale the heavy scent of the pines. Feel myself weaving in and out between the trees…moving deeper into the mystery forest and snapping off dead branches as I go. Holding the stiff, dead branches in my hands as I trek ever farther into the woods…listening to the distant woodpeckers and the wind….

Yet above it all is the sky with rising ground fog.

Whatever darkness lies below…there is “a light at the end of the tunnel”—or, in this case, “above the trees.”

But in the woods there be secrets.

“Book covers are visceral,” Lon says it best on his book-cover-dedicated website, lonkirschner.com. “A good cover grabs you in an unexpected way,” he goes on to say, and In Pinelight had done just that…much like Grace had also done for me. Some covers you “just like”…they’re eye candy, they’re cute, they’re whatever (in a good way)…and some just immediately get under your skin and into your marrow. And that’s what’s happened in In Pinelight. Lon’s work has a “heart” to it…and maybe it’s because he reads every manuscript for which he creates a cover. Maybe he’s just good.

No “maybe’s” about it!

So, yes, I think In Pinelight has become one of my favorite covers.

What went through Lon’s mind as he worked this cover?

Here are his words:

“Yes, you are correct. This was a difficult book to read because it uses no punctuation or paragraphs. It is the ramblings of a thought process put to words. As you know, I make a commitment to read every book so I can (hopefully) get it right. The author gave me a warning about the quirky style of this book so I was prepared. It was a slow start, you had to get into the rhythm of it. I found myself enjoying it because it was like I was uncovering a mystery. Sometimes you had no clear idea what was going on but then out of nowhere you made a connection. You are the listener to this man’s oral history of his life. It was a strange life with many twists and turns but the constant was the lake and the trees. You would feel their presence on almost every page, it was the natural way to go. The problem was to find an image that had the right sense of place and mystery. I came across an image that felt good but there were things that just were not right. Fortunately we are able to make corrections with the tools we have available to us. The shape of the tree line wasn’t quite right. There were a few disturbing branches and several tall trees sticking too far up above the rest. The trees had to look a little other worldly. This was fixed by pushing the color toward the almost unnatural green. The final element was to enhance the mist coming off the water. These were all relatively simple to do but combined to change a rather ordinary photo into the type of image that can stir up all sorts of emotions and memories as it did with you.

“The final element was the font choice for the title and author. I felt strongly that this had to be extremely simple so it would not compete with the image, the real star of the show. A clean sans serif font solved that problem.

“This publisher had requested to see several concepts. When I did this one I knew the job was done but did the others and submitted all together. To say I was not surprised when the Art Director emailed me with the news that this was the choice is an understatement. One, it made me feel like I really did know what I was doing and two, I knew the Art Director was smart!

“It is actually harder to do a book like this because it is really a mood piece. So much of the work I do is compositing and creating original art that piece together a book in a visual way. This type of cover is much more visceral and relies on pure emotion to get the concept across. Another interesting fact is that you were drawn to the book and wanted to read it but in the end, your enjoyment of it came from the cover and not the text.”

Ha—I like how Lon points out that my enjoyment of the book came from the cover and not the text! This is quite ironic for a writer, because so many authors complain about their covers because they feel the traditional publishing houses have “slapped on” some trite, awful cover to their manuscripts…covers (these authors lament) that have little to do with actual story…or are just plain heinous, with little thought or effort having gone into them….

Thank you, Lon, for your insight! Maybe some later day I’ll again attempt to complete reading this novel…and I’ll definitely check out his other, Time Among The Dead.

Thomas Rayfiel doesn’t appear to have his own website, but here’s his Amazon page.

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Lon Kirschner may be contacted at:

Phone: 518/392-3823

E-mail: info@kirschnercaroff.com

Site: http://www.kirschnercaroff.com

Book Cover Site: http://www.lonkirschner.com/

 

Related Articles:

Kirschner Cover Art: Grace, by Howard Owen (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)

Cover Artist Lon Kirschner Interview (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)

High Falls Park, Chateaugay, New York

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High Falls on the Chateaugay River, Chateaugay, New York, July 16, 2015
High Falls on the Chateaugay River, Chateaugay, New York, July 16, 2015

I never realized how close to my folk’s place a beautiful set of waterfalls existed! On July 16th of my upstate New York vacation, my stepmother and I visited High Falls Park, where the High Falls on Chateaugay River roars. It’s 120 feet high, and is defined as a “ribbon falls,” which means a waterfall whose height is notably higher than the crest width. I.e. (let’s get mathematical here), the height divided by 2 is equal or greater than the crest width. Note that there is no international standard in defining waterfalls, but the definition I took was developed by members of the Western New York Waterfall Survey of 1994, which is based on visual appearances. I found this definition in the book, Waterfalls of New York State, published by Firefly Books, which is a beautiful book!

High Falls' 200+ Steps Down
High Falls’ 200+ Steps Down

To get here, first you have to be in up-upstate New York. Then you drive to High Falls Park (click here for directions), go inside the camp store, pay your $2 (yes, it’s just $2 for adults, $1 for students and seniors), and proceed through the building and out into the back, where the trail begins. The trial is open 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., summer hours. The park is open May 1st through October 15th.

The trail is a well-maintained dirt path, where the last 350 feet is, well, um, near straight down over 200 wooden (and some stone) steps through thick New York vegetation. It’s quite the cool hike, as my pictures show!

The Chateaugay River is one of the smaller, and most northerly rivers in upstate NY. Its source is just a few miles upstream, in Clinton County, but the Waterfalls of New York State says the river officially begins in Franklin Country, where the waterfall resides. The river heads north after the falls and enters Quebec, where it is known as the Rivière Châteauguay. I love that name: “Chât-eau-guay“! This waterfall is the closest NYS waterfall to Canada.

Dragonfly on My Hand, High Falls Park Trail, NY, July 16, 2015
Dragonfly on My Hand, High Falls Park Trail, NY, July 16, 2015

My stepmom and I made our way down the 200+ steps and came out at the base of the falls, which was a rocky shore that also boasted a park bench atop one of its boulders. Out in the water of the falls (and visible in some of the pictures) was a guy fishing. As I explored the shore, I found tons of minnows in the shallows (I know “minnow” refers to a specific fish type…but I saw tons of “small fish” in the water, is my point). We spent some time there enjoying the view.

On the way out, one could proceed back up the steps, but my stepmom said there was another trail that looped back, and most likely wasn’t as steep. She’d been here before, years ago, and didn’t remember those steps we came down on…but did remember the trail we took back, which was more level—except for the last so-many yards. We did have to return to the top of the chasm! On our way there, along the Chateaugay, a dragonfly lit upon my hand. How cool! I love dragonflies!

If your knees and legs are up to it, this is a great short hike to see some spectacular North Country waterfalls! For such a stunning view, you just can’t go wrong at $2 a head!

 

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A Trip Through Time

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Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cover ©1977
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cover ©1977

Schlachthof-fünf

Ho Hum

Siggie

Great Lakes

Ann-Tique Anny

Waterfalls

Cemeteries

Chateaugay

Corner Stone

Wild Walk

McCadam

So it goes

In no particular order, the above are elements of my upstate NY trip from last week. I left Colorado early in the morning on July 11th and arrived in Vermont early in the afternoon of the same day (that seems to have to be stated these days). Seeing the familiar greenery and terrain of the Northeast was like salve to my soul. My folks (dad and stepmom) picked me up and we headed to New York.  I spent a week there. I left New York and Vermont July 18th. And again, the day after that. Air travel was severely backed up on the 18th, which delayed lots of flights. My flight. I stayed at a crappy hotel run by nice people (the Ho-Hum Motel) with no air-conditioning. In the upper 80s, muggy. I stayed on the second floor in the building behind the pool. I stayed with one table fan, two dead and (half-inch-sized) unidentifiable bugs shaped like those kernels of candy corn, a disgustingly dirty mattress and pillow with unidentifiable stains and black hairs under the bed sheet, and one live (and Daddy-Longlegs large) spider that went off somewhere I know not where and is surely still having the run of the place. My flight out the next day was again delayed. Due to “a mechanical” (nose gear failure). We left about 45 minutes late. I got to O’Hare. The short story of my flight out of O’Hare went something like this: three gate changes, three plane changes, 2+ hours of a “quest for a plane.” Through all of this, I’d been re-reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. I began reading it in an airport in Colorado, and I finished reading it in the air over New York State, just minutes before crossing Lake Ontario. I was reading the 1977 paperback I’d read in high school. My Fight Attendant out of Vermont was a blonde German-sounding woman, named “Siggie.” But she could have been Norwegian.

So it goes.

I will write a handful of posts about my trip, whereupon I visited a couple of cemeteries, a waterfall, and took in a “wild walk” through the Adirondack woods. I also visited a bookstore (Corner Stone) and explored a small community (Chateaugay), which included a cheese factory (McCadam) and antique store (Ann-Tique Anny).

I’d decided to re-read Slaughterhouse Five because I loved that book and its cool time traveling shit and I wanted to see how Mr. Vonnegut handled writing about his funky time-traveling shit. See if I could employ any of his techniques. I think I can, said the train.

I’ve tried to read some late-model novels (car people say “late model,” so I thought I’d try it with books) over the past couple years, and across the whole I have to say I’ve been roundly disappointed. Sometimes it was the writing, sometimes the story. Many times both. I’d even tried to read some other science fiction novels I’d absolutely loved when I was a kid…and had again found myself severely disappointed. And these were great names, on the order of (because I don’t point fingers, I am giving the kinds of names these authors I’d read were, and am NOT saying these were authors whose work was terrible) Pohl or Zelazny. When I’d reread some of the above, I was positively stunned at how poorly written I’d found them to be as an adult and as a writer. Perhaps what I’d read was early in their careers. I hope so. But, wow, Slaughterhouse Five, which I’d read in high school, however, did not disappoint. In Slaughterhouse Five I’d found an incredibly well-written novel that eschewed traditional structure and incorporated “author intrusion” to its benefit. And Vonnegut’d employed “small words.” Amazingly so. Slaughterhouse Five impressed the shit out of me. Made me interested in reading fiction again. That’s why the classics are so-labeled, I guess. Maybe that’s what I should start [re]reading. The classics.

And so it goes.

I’d written the longhand draft of this post over Lake Ontario, Canada, Michigan, and Indiana, I imagine. If you get right down to it, over the clouds over these places, really. And I’m finishing it over the carpet in my writing office. As I’m currently inputting these inked words into the electronic, I feel curiously displaced, much like Billy Pilgrim. I feel myself still in the air…yet in my office. Tripping through time. I like flying. I like writing. I like tripping through time, Tralfamadorians be damned. I came out East (as I usually do) to visit my folks, my dad and stepmom, and another set of characters, the Adirondacks. I haven’t been to many places outside this country, but I have traveled up and down, left to right across this country, and the Adirondacks is where my heart is…perhaps to my Colorado wife’s dismay—though she does enjoy visiting with me. I went alone on this trip. Wife’s schedules. So it goes.

I was also a tad stressed when I left July 11th. From writing. Working on Voice and trying to meet my self-imposed deadline that was already shot because of other schedules…as well as some other, non-writing-related issues (as I wrote this section on the plane, we passed an interesting cumulus cloud that resembled a lamb lying upright…its head the shape of that alien monster from Alien; this singular cloud rode atop all the lower, horizontally lying clouds), like just trying to get a fare on a certain airline that “awards” frequent flyer mileage for loyalty…then gives out only the suckiest of pairings.

But…I got there…am here…was heading home.

There’s more to come.

I felt the plane descending into O’Hare.

So it goes.