![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/CREATIVEFIREfinalart.jpg\")
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Here you go \u2014 for the first time anywhere \u2014 this is my full final cover art for Brenda Cooper<\/a>\u2018s forthcoming Pyr<\/a> novel, THE CREATIVE FIRE: BOOK ONE OF RUBY\u2019S SONG<\/a>. You\u2019ll notice that this has been improved from the catalog version previewed on Amazon and elsewhere in recent weeks. (The final cover of the book will feature this art and not the previous.)<\/p>\n A few thoughts to pass along for those that enjoy peeking behind the curtain:<\/p>\n When you\u2019re an illustrator creating a cover for a book, you\u2019re working to connect a story with its audience. You\u2019re trying to help books land in homes and hands (both traditional and virtual) where they will be adored and appreciated. But every once in a while, an artist is fortunate to have the opportunity to possibly connect a story with not just an audience, but a moment in time.<\/p>\n When I was illustrating this cover, I wanted to bring Brenda\u2019s heroine Ruby to life, but there was an opportunity to push beyond just a character portrait.<\/p>\n Our news and social feeds record the weekly (sometimes daily) attacks on womens\u2019 rights \u2014 upon the issues of reproductive rights, access to health care, equal pay and support in situations of domestic abuse. This stuff isn\u2019t speculative fiction. It\u2019s the world we live in, and I think, especially in America, we\u2019re in a very fragile time regarding all of our fundamental rights, not just for womens\u2019 rights but for all civil liberties \u2014 whether you be man, woman, or child.<\/p>\n The answers for most cover art questions are often right there in the manuscript, but sometimes a manuscript intersects with the world in which it\u2019s birthed, and a character has the chance to transcend the bounds of the pages. THE CREATIVE FIRE will be marketed to an adult sf\/f audience, but there\u2019s a part of me that wonders what happens when teenage girls read this, and if the book might influence them even more because of their formative age. I look forward to both adult and teenage audiences finding this one.<\/p>\n So this cover is dedicated not just to mothers and daughters, but freedom fighters with tomorrow in their hands.<\/p>\n I see Ruby as a futuristic Rosie the Riveter, but this time, she\u2019s not waiting until the men come home. I see her as Diana of war, and the birth of Venus.<\/p>\n She\u2019s a call-to-arms to be strong and vigilant. She\u2019s a revolution-in-the-making. She\u2019s more than meets the eye.<\/p>\n In short, she\u2019s probably not what you think she is on first glance \u2014 she\u2019s a girl with a microphone.<\/p>\n Today is July 4th \u2014 our American day of celebrating independence and revolution \u2014 a day in 2012 when our rights to live freely are, frankly, in a dangerous place. My hope though, is that our world is full of Rubys.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here you go \u2014 for the first time anywhere \u2014 this is my full final cover art for Brenda Cooper\u2018s forthcoming Pyr novel, THE CREATIVE FIRE: BOOK ONE OF RUBY\u2019S SONG. You\u2019ll notice that this has been improved from the catalog version previewed on Amazon and elsewhere in recent weeks. (The final cover of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conventions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/CREATIVEFIREfinalart.jpg?fit=504%2C720","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5te7x-1e","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}