Motes Played/cover ideas

Motes Played is a novella written in the style of a fairy tale/chapter book coming out in August, written collaboratively by myself and my partner. It follows a little (both in the sense that she looks like a kid and also that she is an adult who engages with the world as a kid) skunk named Motes (natch) as she comes into conflict with those around her over her Identity. There is a synopsis here, and you can read the draft here.

The setting is a place where people can make copies of themselves who can go on and live their own lives or merge back down to share their memories. It's a bit more complex than that, but that's the only relevant part. As such, most of the characters are all long diverged forks of the same personality.

Some basics

Motes is a skunk looking to be maybe in the 7-10 range most of the time. She tends to dress the part in overalls or corduroys with brightly colored T-shirts. As a painter (both of paintings and of theatre sets), she's almost always got paint splotches on her clothes, and occasionally her fur. She's a pudgy sort, despite her high energy and constant zipping around. Some references are available here (though I will note that those thick-ass thighs are an artifact of the VR avatar and probably not canon :P ).

One motif that is common for her to dream about is a giant ultrablack square or rectangle in the middle distance that seems to hungrily devour all light. It's so common an occurrence that it usually shows up in her otherwise prosaic landscape paintings. I don't know how well this would work as an element on the cover, but it's worth keeping in mind.

Another common motif is dandelions in the flower state, rather than the puffball state. She and those around her are a bit obsessed with them.

Here are a few options, though if something else catches your eye from the synopsis, that's cool, too.

Requirements

The dimensions of the covers are 5.625x8.75" including bleed, and the spine is 0.485", leading to a full spread of 11.735x8.75". The resolution required is 300dpi. There should be a spot free of interesting stuff on the bottom of the back cover 1.5x3" for a barcode, but no need to make a rectangle; the printer adds their own.

I am happy to do the cover design once the art is done, but if you would like to do it, the full title is Motes Played and the authors are Madison Rye Progress and Fireheart (Progress / Fireheart for the spine). The internal fonts are Gentium Book Plus and Gotu, but no need to stick with those. The back copy is:

Motes played.
She played because she was play. She played because that was her role in life, because that is just who she was. She played with color, played with life, played with death.
She played with fire.
Motes played, because how could she not?

I have perhaps $700 to play with for this, but I can see about more if need be.

Ideas

Chalking the sidewalk

While it doesn't appear in the book, I've been thinking a lot about a scene of her crouched down while doodling on the sidewalk with chalk in a pretty standard spread-out neighborhood. The closest that appears in the book is a scene of a trick of the setting that allows chalk lines to follow her feet as she walks:

She had chalked up all of the sidewalks — Warmth had conspired with A Finger Pointing and Serene, the sim’s designers, so that colored chalk lines flowered behind her automatically as she walked when she so desired — and she so desired — only to fade some hours later. One could always tell where Motes had come and gone.
Thus, when, still sleepy, she trudged out of the ranch-style home she shared with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, colored lines of flowering vines trailed after her bare paws. She guided those vines with her steps or, relishing in a secret pleasure, pretended like they were propelling her forward, pretending that she was a being of growth — that she was a seed, a being of potential — that she was a giant at the head of some toppled beanstalk.
The vines or her feet carried her down through the neighborhood at a contemplative pace, giving her time to think of the conversation she wanted to have before she actually had it.

And later:

Rather than turning left, off toward home, she turned right to the other arm of the ‘U’ that made up the neighborhood and started wandering through the grass until she hit sidewalk. There, vines in chalk blossomed lazily behind her footsteps, and in the night, in the light of the stars and the moon and the streetlamps, they seemed to glow in pale oranges and whites and blues. She played with them by taking wobbling, drunken steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, pirouetting clumsily to make them tie themselves into knots. Even so, she continued down around the slow curve of the neighborhood’s main street, not bothering to venture into any of the cul-de-sacs. The chalk lines were fun, a little trail describing where the little skunk had wandered, but she was tired.

On the playground

There's a playground in the neighborhood complete with swing set she is quite fond of. This could go either joyous with her swinging or going down the slide and happy, or pensive with her sitting on the swings or the structure and poking around in the gravel with her toes.

In her studio

There are a few scenes in Motes's painting studio. One involves her sitting on a stool, painting something on an easel, and the other involves her crying after having received a nastygram in the middle of playing. The alert for such caused her to fall, leaving her scraped up with a bloody nose. Probably not quite the vibe for the cover, though.

Painting

She sat atop her stool, one of her feet perched up there with her so that she could rest her chin somewhere while she painted. A palette sat on an infinitely positionable nothing beside her. A canvas sat on an easel, rickety and well-loved, before her. A brush sat in her paw, and paint sat on the brush. A thin, black rectangle sat on that canvas, as did a mountainous landscape. Music sat in her ears, chirpy and glitchy to offset the serenity of the scene in a new way. She hummed, her tail fwipped this way, flopped that, and she painted until the painting was finished — there was no guarantee of when that would be: the painting would be finished when it was finished, as it now was, and when it was finished, she stopped.

Struggling

Her muscles clenched and bunched and tensed and pulled her down into a ball so that her feet were flat on the ground and her butt hovered some inches above and her face was buried in her arms where they crossed over her knees and in her ears was the rushing of so much blood and her vision was black and red and full of phosphenes and all she felt was the pain of her skinned paws and bloodied nose echoed in repeating waves radiating throughout her body.
“Oh, Dot,” she heard above the din, Beholden’s anxious and aching voice barely audible. “How long have you been here, my dear? You never came to dinner and– oh shit, are you okay, Motes?”
She felt, muffled by those waves of stinging and soreness, the pair of paws that had helped to gently unfold her now touching gingerly around her snout, blood all dried. She saw Beholden’s face as though it was one she herself might bear in some thirty years, and that anxiety ratcheted up several notches. Any hope she had of staving off that overflow was now long, long gone. I am an adult, I should put away childish things, I am an adult…
“Whoa, whoa! Hey, come here,” Beholden murmured, and Motes realized from some few feet above herself that she had started to thrash and wail. She looked down with distant concern.
She should stop that.
She watched her body slowly relax, watched her face screw up and the tears once more start to flow.
Interesting, she thought dispassionately. Yet I acted like a child when I was a child. I am an adult…
Her sense of self lagged behind — an idea of a mote of a Motes tethered like a helium balloon — as Beholden carefully lifted her unsouled-yet-still-living body and hoisted her up to carry her from her studio — the lights, she left the lights on — to her bedroom. A place of soft things. A soft mattress, a too-thick duvet, stuffed animals and yet more stuffed animals. I should put away childish things, I am…

Motes's dream

Motes dreams that she is sitting on a field speckled with dandelions, and the day is so nice she starts rolling around in the grass, but just in the distance above her is one of those hyper-black rectangles.

Motes dreamed.
She dreamed and dreamed and dreamed, her mind wandering over her past, there in the dark, there alone, after A Finger Pointing left, there in her extra soft bed with her overstuffed duvet and all of her stuffed animals.
At some point, hours or days or minutes later, she slept and dreamed true. She dreamed that she was sitting in a field of well-tended grass that was nonetheless dotted liberally with dandelions, speckled with bumblebees. She dreamed that she had all the wonder of a child and that the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it, and just above, just in the distance, a hyperblack rectangle, a hole in the world that hungrily devoured all of the light that it could, lingered, and it was neither good nor bad, and even with its insatiable hunger, the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it.
And then she awoke.

Potential for sketches

Given the nature of the story being presented as a mid-grade chapter book, there is the option of having sketches or ink doodles throughout, in the vibe of, like...Pinocchio or whatever. Perfectly happy to pay for as few or as many, within the budget constraints.

Totally optional, of course! If you're interested, though, they should fit within 4x4" at 100dpi.

The synopsis has more information, but here is a brief summary of scenes chapter by chapter, any of which might also be a candidate for the cover:

1

Motes starts out in her studio, painting while sitting on a stool. Once she finishes painting, she puts everything away, forking (creating copies of herself, basically) to do so: one to put away the easel, one to put away the stool, one to wash palette and brushes, one to fool around by trying to do a handstand, while the original sits cross-legged on the floor and watches.

After, she sits on the couch with her adopted parents (Beholden is a skunk like her and A Finger Pointing is a human (ref)) and talks about the problems being little has caused.

Finally, after her parents leave, she invites over her aunt of sorts, Dry Grass, (ref) to cook a dinner and paint nails/claws.

2

Motes goes out to a rave in big-mode (looking rather like her human mom above but with a very flower-child vibe, complete with flower crown of marigolds) and gets taken home by an otter for the night.

Returning to the community theatre she works at sometimes, she meets up with another of her cocladists, Sasha, a mocha-colored skunk, and returns to little-mode to talk. They sit on the stage while Sasha marks up script pages, but when Motes gets distraught, she lays down with her head in Sasha's lap.

3

Motes and her cocladist, Warmth, play a sprawling game of tag in a forest, chasing after each other. Warmth is another little skunk, though it is more cartoon-little (kid vibes rather than actual kid).

After getting tired, they flop out in the grass and talk. Eventually, Warmth makes a dish for them to try which basically turns out to be the world's worst ice cream sundae.

4

Motes has a nightmare where, while playing, she gets caught by a ghostly version of her root instance, the one from whom she was forked, who mocks her and then forces her to stab herself in the neck.

After waking up crying, she goes to sleep in her parents' bed with them. In the morning, they have their coffee in bed and talk about the nightmare, eventually laughing and joking about better memories.

She walks to visit another of her cocladists, Slow Hours, to talk about her dream. They sit out in a prairie on a picnic blanket to talk, crying about the dream and then finding ways to feel better.

5

While out playing tag on a playground with a bunch of other littles, she gets a message from an abusive cocladist, Hammered Silver. The notification shocks her enough that she falls and bonks her snout against a geodesic dome-shaped jungle gym and getting a nosebleed.

She returns to her studio to read the note, which basically just calls her an awful person for leaning into childhood. It leads to a panic attack that sends her just about into catatonia, huddling on the floor with her face buried in her arms crossed over her knees.

Beholden finds her and carries her off to her bedroom, getting her cleaned up and dressed in pajamas so that she can at least be comfortable in bed while she is down and out.

6

In a dreamy haze, Motes remembers the process of leaning into little space through a series of vignettes mixed with memories of her childhood:

When Michelle was a child in kindergarten, she sat in a patch of red paint and her teacher yelled at her until she cried. When her mom came to pick her up, she reassured her she loved her
When she was a grown up and newly Motes, she sat in a patch of red paint while working on the stage and decided to lean into that memory, doodling on the stage itself.
After she leaned into the kid form, she picked up jump-roping with a friend, before eventually falling out with her after losing interest.
When her cocladists decide to protect her from weirdos and creeps, she finds herself having a hard time making friends when in Big Motes mode. She catches up with Slow Hours to talk about this.
Motes and Michelle used to spend time together at least once a year, making flower crowns or painting nails or finding shapes in clouds, just hanging out and talking.

Finally, she has one of her dreams, where she is sitting on a field speckled with dandelions, and the day is so nice she starts rolling around in the grass, but just in the distance is one of those hyper-black rectangles.

7

While Motes is stuck in bed, A Finger Pointing goes into damage control mode. Hammered Silver sent several people letters, including her. Dry Grass was kicked out of her house, so she puts her up in an empty spot in her neighborhood. They meet in a kitchen with Sasha to discuss whether there's any threat beyond just these letters, Sasha reassuring them that there isn't.

Later, A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Dry Grass meet in a library with Hammered Silver's husband to discuss options. Beholden gets quite upset and yells at him a bit before A Finger Pointing gets overwhelmed and asks to go back home. There, she settles down and eventually replies to Hammered standing out on the patio before returning inside to go lay down with Motes and tell her she loves her.

8

Beholden, on finding Motes in her studio all beat up and nearly catatonic, holds it together long enough to carry her to her room, where she gets her changed and into bed. After, she returns to her music studio and throws a destructive tantrum. When she calms herself, she meets back up with A Finger Pointing.

She goes on a walk with Dry Grass and sits on the playground swings to talk about about the fact that Dry Grass got kicked out of her home for spending time with Motes.

Finally, she returns home to comfort A Finger Pointing while they sit on the couch.

9

Motes wakes up after her three-day long panic attack. Feeling gross from how much Hammered Silver seems to hate her, she goes big mode and cooks breakfast burritos to eat by herself on the couch, then shares mimosas with A Finger Pointing and Beholden when they return home to find her awake.

After, she goes out to the playground to sit on the swings and talk with her therapist, Sarah Genet. She starts mopey, but ends joyous, swinging happily.

10

Motes, back in little-mode, plays with her friend Alexei (a boy about her age, 7-10, with sandy blond hair) on a playground called Rock Park, which includes a large mount of stacked flagstone, placed so that there are tunnels winding through it (inspiration from when I was growing up). They wind up sitting on top in the sun and talking about the problems with being little in a place that requires you to be at least 18 to join, yet which offers the freedom to do so.

After, she returns home to a picnic and cookout, plenty of grilling and everything. She runs around and pesters all the adults, getting hugs and play.

She ends up on a beanbag in a community space with Dry Grass, talking about the events of the past few weeks.

As she walks home at the end of the night, she spots the playground, races up to the top of the slide and goes down, landing in a bit of a heap and laughing about being back in her comfort zone.