The Bitch by Les Edgerton
The Bitch explores the dark choices that Jake, as a two-time offender faces to save both his life and his soul--life imprisonment if caught for the third time under the federal ha-bitch-ual criminal law--known to outlaws as "The Bitch." Choices that may cost him everything and everyone he loves. What are the limits of loyalty? What is the spiritual process by which a savvy hair designer deteriorates into a mass murderer? A work in the cold existentialist tradition of Sartre and Camus, and the transgressive fiction of Celine, The Bitch struggles for answers and, on finding them, a way out.
The author, Les Edgerton, is an ex-con who spent two years in prison for burglary at the Pendleton Reformatory in Indiana. Since his release, he has earned a B.A. from Indiana University and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. This will be the thirteenth book he has published, with several more forthcoming later this year and next, including a short story collection, an existential noir novel, a new black comedy novel, and his memoir. His career for many years as an outlaw and criminal lend an air of rare verisimilitude to his crime novels.
The book cover was designed by Butterflies & Hurricanes in Prague. The novel was edited by Eddie Vega for Bare Knuckles Press.
The author, Les Edgerton, is an ex-con who spent two years in prison for burglary at the Pendleton Reformatory in Indiana. Since his release, he has earned a B.A. from Indiana University and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. This will be the thirteenth book he has published, with several more forthcoming later this year and next, including a short story collection, an existential noir novel, a new black comedy novel, and his memoir. His career for many years as an outlaw and criminal lend an air of rare verisimilitude to his crime novels.
The book cover was designed by Butterflies & Hurricanes in Prague. The novel was edited by Eddie Vega for Bare Knuckles Press.
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3 comments:
Great cover, Les!
Thanks, Sally, but credit has to go to Eddie Vega and the artists at Butterflies and Hurricanes in Prague. They're fantastic!
Eddie has spent a ton of money and time on the design.Bare Knuckles is fastidious about their books. They spend as much time on the editing and proofing and all that as any legacy publisher. They even go so far as to have at least three proofings after the conversion to ebook so they can ferret out conversion errors. They don't want those errors to take people out of the read. I've worked with some of the best publishers in the world, including Random House, Thompson Publishing, Taylor Publishing and others, and Bare Knuckles Press spends as much time and effort on their books to insure their quality as any of those. I'm really proud of how they're handling my work.
Here's some data to help understand the particulars of The Bitch, and in turn our other books. The Bitch included well over 50 graphic files. The typical ebook has less than three. Where most legacy publishers use the three-star key stroke *** to show a division, we created a theme-related division graphic, three bullet shells. All of these extra files have to be handled gingerly in XHTML. Ebook editors—the human ones, not the software program editors like Sigil—have to have coding skills. And fixing a goofy paragrapn break is not as easy as simply hitting a delete button in the right place, though in the end that really is all it is. First, you have to find it in the code. And sometimes deep in the code. I think in coming years, legacy publishers who want to remain competitive in the eBook market will have to have editors on staff who are as good at reading XTML code as they are at scanning Shakespearean sonnets. This has been the direction of journalism for several years (not the sonnet part). Today many news organizations require cub reporters to have basic coding skills. It's becoming very commonplace. Even this blog allows posters to use HTML tags. So I can do THIS...
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