Hello all and welcome to the cover reveal for The Alchemy of Sorrow Anthology! I am so excited to be participating in the reveal today alongside a bunch of other fantastic bookish folk! Be sure to check out some of the content from the other people participating around the interwebs!
This anthology has stories from some of my absolute favorite indie authors and I can’t wait to get ahold of a copy and have my heart absolutely ripped from my chest! It’s gonna be a great time, I just know it. Alright. Less of me and more of the reveal, got it! Let’s go!
Book Information
The Alchemy of Sorrow
Editors: Sarah Chorn & Virginia McClain
Authors: M.L. Wang, K.S. Villoso, Intisar Khanani, Sonya M. Black, Angela Boord, Levi Jacobs, Krystle Matar, Virginia McClain, Quenby Olson, Carol A. Park, Madolyn Rogers, Rachel Emma Shaw & Clayton Snyder
Release Date: November 1, 2022
Publisher: Crimson Fox Publishing
Blurb:
Here be dragons and sorcery, time travel and sorrow.
Vicious garden gnomes. A grounded phoenix rider. A new mother consumed with vengeance. A dying god. Soul magic.
These stories wrestle with the experience of loss—of loved ones, of relationships, of a sense of self, of health—and forge a path to hope as characters fight their way forward.
From bestsellers and SPFBO finalists to rising voices, 13 exceptionally talented authors explore the many facets of grief and healing through the lens of fantasy and sci-fi.
Book Links:
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/AoS
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60284739-the-alchemy-of-sorrow
The Alchemy of Sorrow is available to pre-order now in ebook format, with physical and audiobook pre-orders opening soon!
About the Cover Illustration:
“For the cover of The Alchemy of Sorrow, we wanted to create an image that was evocative of all the stories contained within its pages, without being specific to any single one of them.
Since most of our stories have female protagonists, we chose to center the image on a grieving woman. We wanted her to be a woman of color, to celebrate the diversity of our stories and authors, and to represent the majority of the world’s population. We asked the artist to portray her standing among ruins, with her grief transmuting into light, which in turn begins to transform her surroundings.
We also took inspiration from the Japanese practice of kintsugi – in which a fractured piece of pottery is restored using precious metals mixed into the lacquer so that the item’s cracks become a beautiful feature of the piece rather than a flaw to be hidden away – and we asked if the woman’s skin could feature cracks lined with gold.
From those sketchy details, Zoe Badini conceived of this stunning image of a woman standing before a broken stained-glass window, with light coming from the cracks in her skin. The light forms swallows, a symbol of rebirth, and renews the dying jasmine around her.
After receiving Zoe’s gorgeous artwork, the task then went to Virginia to design a text layout that didn’t detract from it. She did her best to convey all the information necessary and make it legible without obscuring too much of the artwork.“
Ugh…. isn’t it so beautiful! The thing I think I am most impressed about with this cover is how much emotion is practically seeping from the image itself. There’s also something hauntingly beautiful about the imagery of death and destruction represented by the wilted flowers and vines and broken jug juxtaposed alongside the repaired cracks in the woman’s skin and glowing birds that appear to breathe life back into the flowers.
Okay, folks! There it is in all it’s glory and isn’t she stunning! I really hope you all grab a copy when you can because I know the stories within are going to wreak havoc on our emotional states and I really want that for you.
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