A long time between blog posts, I know, but this summer has been hard and busy for Alaskans living in South-Central. We've had to re-adapt to that "Fake News" climate change that, of course, doesn't really exist.
     First, after an unusually warm, nearly snow-free winter,  we get a heat wave that, to us un-airconditioned folks, was decidedly uncomfortable. Anchorage actually reached 90 degrees around the fourth of July-- other areas in the interior were hotter.
      When the heat finally broke (after stores ran out of cooling fans and had more shipped in on an emergency  basis), we looked forward to the  usual cooling weather and rains that come with August. Only, they didn't. Now we are blessed with eternal sunshine and no rain-- and Alaska is on fire. 50 miles north and 50 miles south of Anchorage, scores of people are getting burned out of homes and homesteads.
     Dog mushers are having to rescue and care for  their many dogs as well as other farm animals as fires sweep in over the super-dry black spruce forests that dominate the land.
     Never thought I would long for gray days and cold rains, but I do!

     I'm about 22,000 words into my next book, a continuation of the Ben Hunnicutt series with the working title, "Red Star Down". Centers around the discovery of the wreck of a C-47 transport airplane that was turned over to Russia during the WW2 Lend-Lease program.
     Untouched for 30 years, the plane entombs the bodies of its crew, including that of a courier carrying a briefcase containing information which is still of  enormous value to whichever side in the Cold War can retrieve it. Naturally, Ben gets caught up in the struggle to recover the briefcase from its grave deep in Alaska's wilderness before Russian agents can beat him to it. We'll just have to see who wins and how.

This one wasn't so easy.  The story begins when an important personage is bushwhacked while hunting in the Talkeetna Mountains of Alaska. A picture of a man sitting on a bluff, scanning a valley, served as the basis.  A telescopic sight crosshair is superimposed on the back of his head, and gains immediate attention.
The high point (no pun intended) comes on a bridge over a deep gorge at Hurricane, Alaska.   The bridge being somewhat of a tourist attraction, it was not difficult to locate an appropriate image for the back cover.  No buxom blondes in bikinis, but a bit of an attention getter.

     Getting an image suitable for Warhead wasn't too difficult-- I was actually able to find a US Army photo of a Nike missile being launched from the very Nike site that I chose for the plot of the book. Little doubt about its being appropriate for the subject matter. The only problem, the Army image was in black and white and the covers of my books were in color. I had the cover designer do the missile picture in a light sepia tone to give it a hint of color, and the result was quite satisfactory.
     One of the critical scenes involved a shoot-out, one of the characters armed with a modern precision rifle, the other with an antique Sharps buffalo gun. Having an example of each, I photographed them for the back cover. So far, I was reasonably successful in keeping the covers in tune with the content.

     In the case of "Washtub Gold", gold was definitely a factor in the plot.  In working up to the finale, specific firearms were described as used by the good and the bad guy.  Being a gun person, I wanted to accurately picture these weapons, and to add a bit of atmosphere.  I borrowed the appropriate arms from a friend and found a convenient moss covered rock in my front yard.  A sprinkle of fired cartridge cases (the correct caliber, of course) implied action, and a small poke of  gold dust hinted at the underlying cause of the struggle.
     As part of the action takes place on a glacier, I included a shot of the face of a beautiful glacier on the back cover.  Turning the images and my druthers over to the cover artist produced the cover which was used, and which certainly reflects the content of "Washtub Gold" more accurately than would a buxom blonde in a bikini.  (Which is not to say, you understand, that the blonde might not appear somewhere amongst the chapters.)
​     I'll try to get the images (without graphics) on my next post.  I'm still trying to learn how to use this darn blog thing.