Approaching Humanity Article III: The Cover

One of the many things that make Approaching Humanity special is the cover of the book drawn and designed by Mary Bolling. The cover to this book was actuallywhy I went to her for a cover to Wretched Scars

As arrogant as this may sound I knew early on the material I was writing for this book was some of my best material and I wanted everything for this book to be better than anything else I've done. I also knew that instead of doing a cover that I was only partially satisfied with, I'd get someone to do the artwork for my cover this time around.

Shortly after I made this decision to myself and at this time I was the only person who knew I was going to hire an artist, I got a notification on here that Mary tagged me in a note on facebook. She was working on her final for a class and needed to do an art piece for someone. I knew right away to respond. I messaged her shortly and asked her about possibly doing a book cover for my sixth poetry book. I told her two quick things though a custom cover for the company who publishes my work is front AND back cover and second, my sixth book of poetry was at least a year away from release (this convo happened in March 2012). She told me she assumed as much regarding the cover and the release window for my book was ok for her project.

I simply told her the title, the theme, and two poems from More than a Million Words would be making an appearance in this book ("Porcelain" and "The Only One"). With this light amount of info Mary had three sketches for potential covers in a week. As incredible as each sketch was, I knew which sketch would best fit the theme of the book. At the end of April Mary emailed me the cover to my sixth book of poetry and this cover makes Approaching Humanity the best looking book of my books that are out. The cover alone provided inspiration for several of the poems I have written for this book.

The cover to this book was so astounding that I asked Mary to do the cover for the book Ray and I released last year titled Wretched Scars and the follow up to Approaching Humanity because lately I write too much. The cover is in the bowels of my pics and I will do an Official unveiling of the cover later this month.

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