The Girl in the City really took on a life of its own last year.
When I started writing the story, I wasn’t even sure I was going to release it. But as I wrote the first draft, I grew to like Leah and her story more and more. By the time I’d finished I was convinced I had a story that was good enough to publish. I can’t say that about all the stories I write, I’ve got a folder called Abandoned for a reason, but I could see Leah (as it was known then) had a lot of potential.
For the first time, I sent an early draft off to some beta readers and got some very positive feedback. That feedback reinforced the feeling that I should release the book.
I always use editors for my indie books but I also sent Leah to Joe Nassise for a development edit. I revised the story based on his feedback and then used Red Adept Editing for copy editing and proofreading passes. The end result is a story I’m really proud of.
But while all that editing was going on, I had another idea.
Michael Bunker commissioned illustrations for Pennsylvania from Ben Adams, a very talented artist that had previously worked with Hugh Howey on illustrations for his Sand novel. Fan fiction author, Chris Pourteau, continued the tradition by including Ben’s work in both Gettysburg and Susquehanna. With The Girl in the City coming together so well, I felt it deserved the same level of treatment.
I reached out to Ben to check his availability, and a few days later he was working on the first of three illustrations for the book.
This is the one that opens the story.
Great stuff.
I’m incredibly pleased with how the illustrations turned out, and they add a lot to the book.
The Girl in the City will be released on Kindle on February 2nd, 2015 but you can pre-order it now from Amazon for the ridiculously low price of 99c (or the equivalent in non-US stores).
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[The Art of The Girl in the City by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 26th January 2015]