All of you have seen my book’s cover, and if you’ve read the interior, the cover’s spiral of space toiletries may have come full circle, revealing the answer to the imagery. I hope the whimsical picture depicting toilet paper and panties made you laugh. I created it to be curiously eye-catching to potential readers. One reviewer said my cover was dazzling, and I’ve held onto those words like water in a desert of criticism.
And speaking of deserts, the idea for The Levitation Game began in the red rock desert of Sedona, Arizona, and my new novel, Chorus of Crows, travels to Sedona, too. I’m writing to you from the desert of Moab, Utah. Moab is a magical place, filled with muffin-top canyons and spires awash in Martian colors and soaring, dripping, and dissolving rock patterns that defy gravity because some rocks titter on the brink of a needle-like precipice. Moab is a place of petrified fire. It’s also a place where Native American petroglyphs and pictographs depict energy spirals. When I think of energy spirals, I think of space portals and alien visitation. Vortices. There are more UFO sightings in Moab than anywhere else in the USA.
Those spirals inspired my cover, and if you scroll before you roll, you’ll see a photo collage to help you visualize my concept. I’ve seen energy spirals in Panama etched on humble rocks, and I’ve seen them on Mayan art, too. The petroglyphs of the southwest are especially intriguing because other human-like images actually look like aliens with weird, floating bodies and large bug-eyed heads. Some wear helmets. Did Native Americans interact with aliens? As they say on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens program, “Some say yes.”
Creating my alien characters, Rigel, Dob-Dec, and Sula, was fun (They’re all named after stars, which shine bright over the dark skies of Moab), and I hope to revisit my aliens from planet Pleione to explain what happened to Dob’s parents someday. Hint: It involves the deserts of the Southwest. These days, desert travel is my muse. You must add Moab to your bucket list, and I hope you’ve added The Levitation Game to your want-to-read list!
You can read my article, Be Like Samwise and Frodo and Help a Writer Out at Orange Blossom Publishing. Click here. My book traveled to the Bologna Book Fair! Yay! See below.
Drop by Sharon Wagner Books
