Hope and Wild Panic Cover Reveal
and a reading in Chicago
If you’re in the Chicago area (one of the best areas to be, in my opinion), check out LJ Pemberton and Zach Kocanda in conversation at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 27, at Women and Children First.
In other news, we are pleased to share the final cover for Hope and Wild Panic, a collection of stories by Sean Ennis, which comes out in August. If you follow us on Twitter you may have seen the cover, but we’re still calling this a cover reveal.
I try to let authors pick a designer for their covers, and if they don’t have anyone in mind already a lot of the time they end up looking at some of our other covers and end up wanting to work with Angelo Maneage. Angelo has designed a bunch of covers for us at this point, including Your Favorite Poet, Thumbsucker, Still Alive, and Thunder from a Clear Blue Sky. That was the case with Sean. I don’t remember which covers stuck out to him, but he mentioned more than one Angelo cover and we were able to secure Angelo for the cover, which is getting harder to do because more people are recognizing his talent.
In addition to reading the manuscript himself (which I greatly appreciate and find really amazing each time), Angelo asked Sean for some feelings or key words or images that stuck out to him, that he felt conveyed something about or encapsulated some element from the book, and here’s what Sean came up with:
There’s a few images that come to mind in terms of their relationship to hope/panic:
> a number of the stories describe the narrator using a Ouija board (sometimes secretly with his son)
> there’s a story that makes mention of a hot air balloon. It’s not pivotal to the book, but the prospect of riding in one does elicit the feelings of hope and panic in me
> the piece “Jewelers Row” describes the narrator’s mother carrying diamonds in her pocket when she worked on Jewelers Row in Philadelphia. Maybe there’s an interesting image there?
Angelo went on to provide four different drafts for us to choose from, with a written explanation for each one. By the way if you’re in need of a cover designer here’s Angelo’s website.
Option 1
1 - I picture this to be a sort of fantasy of the speaker's. What really stuck out in this book was this idea of wife-worship, this kind of idea where the world of our speaker revolves around his love for Grace, or his family. The betta fish's nature is fighting for life, for territory, for winning; I kind of think our speaker relates to one of these creatures. Depicted as a man-fish carrying his Grace (who is holding an emerald, their treasure together) up through the sky (or water? perhaps the book is some sort of fish tank?). This is my personal favorite.
Option 2
2 - This one kind of points to the observation of- whatever it may be. Gazing from afar, but also up close. There are a ton of insects sprinkled throughout, and in those instances a lot are bees or wasps. They feel symbolic to a bagage of sorts, or a larger thing that is unaffecting. These colors give me anxiety in a good way.
Option 3
3 - Trophy husband. Trophy dad. Trophy man. Trophy collegiate football player tutor. There is a brief mention of a participation trophy, and there is an overarching feeling of just "participating" in life, but contentedly. There are many times when the speaker really puts his whole heart into his loved ones and you can feel it; this trophy plays on standard generic trophies. Bright blue Sonic slurpee background*.
*This small detail was a reminder that Angelo really takes the time to read the whole book.
Option 4
4 - That passage where nobody goes on the hot air balloon; the plan of doing something, the thought of surprise, the unstoppable fury of nature stopping it. I wondered if they had gone on and were attacked by the wasps that are haunting this book. I feel this one has a particularly resonating play on the phrase "hope and wild panic".
Sean and I both liked the first option the best, although I also liked option 4. However, Sean asked to see the fish with just the fish’s face. I liked it with the guy’s face, but I wasn’t going to advocate for it because I also showed to my wife and she kind of vehemently disagreed with me. I shared both man-faced fish and fish-faced fish in the Malarkey writers group chat and there was no consensus. There was strong support for man-faced fish but equally strong support for fish-face. So here we are, the final cover for Hope and Wild Panic:
I also want to say that I could not be more happy with this book. I think it’s sublime and joyful and wonderful. Sean overhauled drastically from the original version I had accepted, which I guess could have led to disaster, but of course Sean is immensely skilled and I was never worried. Signed copies are available for preorder now, and while it’s already on sale we do have a code to get an extra 25% off, and that code is BEACHREADS.
I will be sending out digital ARCs of the book soon, hopefully this week if I can get around to it. If you’d like to get digital ARCs of our titles emailed to you, sign up here.
Malarkey may be independent of corporate overlords, but it is dependent on reader support. Below are a few ways to support our press: