~ FOR THE COVER CONSCIOUS GETS THE INSIDE SCOOP FROM STEVEN NOVAK! ~

So Steven, you’re a freelance graphic designer, an illustrator, a cover artist, and an author. What do you do in your spare time? Ha. That is an amazing amount of talent in a number of different areas. With all of these freelance gigs, do you have time for what we authors call a “day job?”

Actually, graphic design is my “day job.” Besides book covers, I do a lot of work for social media professionals, web graphics, and I’ve done a little product design in the past. It keeps the food on the table long enough for me to stuff it down my gullet, extract the nutrients and process the waste.

Biology!

Ah! Colorful answer! I would expect nothing less. Your bio says you’re from Chicago but now you live in Southern California. What took you out there? Do you like it in sunny California?

I was actually at school in Ohio when I met my wife online. We maintained a long distance relationship for a year or so and met a couple times in person. The day I graduated I informed my mother that I was moving in with her, and that she lived in California. I also let my mother know that she was ten years older and had a son that was only seven years younger than me.

So that went over well.

Actually, believe it or not, she was completely cool with it.

I think she was just happy I’d met someone. I was a bit of a weirdo growing up, a loner. I can count the friends I had in high school on zero hands.

That was almost fifteen years ago.

See? I knew exactly what I was doing.



I was the same way growing up, Steven. They

say geniuses are often ostracized, so that would explain our problem. When did you first become interested in art?

I can’t honestly say I remember an exact time. I’ve always loved drawing. It’s really the only thing I was ever any good at growing up. I had an “unusual” childhood. Sometimes it was good and sometimes it was really, really, really bad. I loved books, and comic books, and writing, but drawing was my friend. I could always count on it and it was always there. Still is.


It's always good to have a way to escape our cares. You have art, I have writing, and I hope many of our readers have reading! According to your website you’ve written seven books and three picture books. Your Breadcrumbs for the Nasties series is about a post- apocalyptic wasteland. Tell us more about that and your other writing.

Yeah, I’ve written a lot of stuff. None of it has ever sold very well, but honestly, I haven’t bothered to do a whole lot of promotion, and that’s probably not why I wrote any of it in the first place. Unlike graphic design, writing isn’t putting any food in my belly.

Unless you count that one Subway sandwich I had that one time.

It might have paid for that.

Breadcrumbs is a project I started about a year and a half ago. It’s told from the perspective of a ten year-old girl who is left alone in a world filled with monsters and human beings that are a heck of a lot worse than monsters. She meets a mystery man who barely talks, but seems to have her best interests in mind for some unknown reason. There’s a lot of action, a couple comments on humanity, and some overly descriptive grossness.

The goal of the project, and the reason I got excited about writing it, was to spin every genre trope on its head over the course of the series. The people you want to live probably won’t live. The people you want to die probably won’t die. The story isn’t what you want it to be about, and by the time the series end you’ll probably want to punch me in the face.

If that doesn’t make you want to buy it, nothing will.

Since you’re my favorite (and only) cover

artist, I want to ask you a few questions about that. On the average, how many prospective covers do you create before you and the author settle on a final product?

Awww shucks… * blushes *

It depends. Every cover is different. Every author is really different. Honestly, most of the time the process is pretty smooth. On average, most covers tend to take about three-to-four days to finish. I pride myself in being exceptionally fast and flexible.

I’m also pretty cheap. As an indie author myself, I’m well aware of budgetary constrictions and price my work accordingly.

If you’re an indie author looking for a quality cover at a quality price drop me a line at: novakillustration@gmail.com

Seems I’m far better at promoting my design services than my writing. Go figure.



I can vouch for all of that. Steven is fast, professional, patient, and inexpensive. How often do you have an author take your first design without requesting any changes? (My cover for Taken by Storm I loved right from the start and asked for no changes.)

That’s pretty rare. There’s usually something they

want tweaked, even if it’s something really little. There have been a handful of occasions when the first version was signed off on though.

I love those occasions.

I really do.



Describe your most frustrating experience when creating a cover.


Eh, I don’t know that I can think of something specific. I’ve been doing book covers for indie authors for a little over two years and only twice have I had to tell an author that it just wasn’t working. I’m not a quitter. My job is to find a way to give an author exactly what they’re looking for and sometimes that takes a little back and forth. On the couple occasions when I couldn’t make it work with an author it was a mutual parting of ways. You can tell when it’s not working and it’s not really anyone’s fault. Not every designer is right for every project. It happens.



Is a difficult when an author asks you to change what you feel is a perfect cover and make it into something you don’t personally like?

(Steven also does great teasers like above.)

Nope. Not at all. Not even a teeny, tiny bit. It’s not my cover. It’s not my baby and it’s not my vision. If I’m not especially fond of a cover I do for someone I never have to look at it again. If they don’t like it, that really sucks for them. It’s the face of their words and they’ll have to see it every day. My job as a cover designer is to bring someone else’s vision to life, not mine. I can make Steven-specific art on my own time. And I do.








I'm very proud of my Steven Novak cover

art and have some of it framed and use it as my desktop wallpaper. Love it! What is the oddest thing that’s happened to you during the course of you career?

Hm. There was a period of time around 2009 when the economy tanked, and I couldn’t find work, and I ended up vacuuming the local Best Buy at 4:00 in the morning just to make ends meet. By the time 4:30 rolled around I was scrubbing the toilets in the ladies bathroom.

Three years later I had the most financially successful year of my adult life.

So that was pretty “odd.”



Finally, who is your favorite client? (bats eyelashes) Just kidding, you don’t have to answer that. It’s been great having you on.

Of course it’s you.

Then me. I love the covers I do for myself.

I’m very agreeable.