SUNSET OASIS CONFIDENTIAL

Jacket Required 

Sunset Oasis Confidential has been in the marketplace for about two weeks. A soft launch. No rapid unscheduled disassembly to report at this stage because nobody’s actually had a chance to read it yet – excepting Ann, my partner in crime and more innocent capers, who patiently reviewed and corrected six drafts. All of the informal feedback I’ve received is kudos for the novel’s striking cover.

I know a guy.

Rene is the principal of a boutique Calgary-based design firm called CreativeWorks. He’s an artist in his own right, three of his works hang on the walls here at the Crooked 9. I met him thirty-five years ago when I turned up for my first shirt-and-tie job in Canada Safeway’s Alberta Division advertising department. I noticed a package of cigarettes in his breast pocket (he’s since quit). Smokers tend to congregate. We liked the same music. I made mix tapes for him. He bought me a rare CD edition of Lou Reed’s Street Hassle while holidaying in London.

Rene and I are friends. I’ve divorced three times. He literally helped me move through two of them. And if there’d been a body, I think Rene would’ve been somewhat okay burying its bits and parts too. If there’s a cosmic ledger, I have taken more from Rene than I have given him. A reciprocity deficit. But we’ve also been freelance partners through the years: “I need some copy!”; “I need some design!” Rene designed the cover and promotional materials for The Garage Sailor and the print ads for Of Course You Did.

Because I don’t reach out to people I merely telephoned Rene. I asked him if he was up for another book jacket. He agreed. I said, “I can send you a draft, but you probably won’t read it.” He agreed. I began, “All right, here’s the short version: imagine guys like us, maybe a decade or two down the road, living in a retirement home…”

A book’s cover is as important as its title. Design is another device to intrigue a casual browser. The challenge is to suggest a book’s content by alluding to some aspect of the story, a visual prompt to read the summary or blurb on the back. Sunset Oasis Confidential. Together we broke down the title; Rene and I love type fonts.

“Sunset Oasis” is squirm-inducing name straight out of a twisted marketing brochure. A resort name in a winter city for seniors in the winter of their lives. Rene’s solution was a warmly coloured sans serif, like what you’d expect to see in a discounted sun vacation print ad. He then took the type and placed it over one of his own winter scenes which in turn echoed the Group of Seven references in the novel. The juxtaposition said everything.

“Confidential” was more problematic. It’s a word associated with detective noir, thrillers and non-fiction exposes. The graphic clichés are typewriter Courier and rubber stamp Stencil, usually red. I was thinking more about Jerry Lee Lewis and Rough Trade, high school. Music. “Stairway to Heaven” shut down every high school dance in my day. I said to Rene, “There are a lot of Led Zeppelin references in the book. Have a look at their wordmark. I’m sure it’s inspired by Arts & Crafts which, I believe, was based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s hand-written blueprint notations. Tell me what you think.”

Before Rene had time to put together a couple of composites, he wrote to tell me he wasn’t “feeling so great” and needed to take a few days off. The health care system here in Alberta (despite the efforts of support staff, nurses and doctors) is similar to its judicial system, best not to be involved if you can help it. I wrote back saying he’d picked a really inopportune time to die or become otherwise incapacitated.

When Rene’s comps did arrive, I was floored. In one of them he’d incorporated pretty much everything we’d discussed, wrestled with, and then overlaid that on a collage of magazine covers. Dated magazine covers. I phoned Rene. “You didn’t even read the manuscript!” The narrator’s best friend at Sunset Oasis subscribes to a slew of magazines. They provide a little backstory, a little flashback colour in their way. “How’d you know?”

“Old folks’ homes are like waiting rooms, there’s always old magazines lying around.”

As Rene shepherded his design toward final art (he reads production specifications, thank God), he had a little fun arranging the magazines’ cover images and their feature headlines. But that’s another story.                 

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is out now in multiple formats. Visit my revitalized companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer*. Of Course You Did is still available.

*Avoid Amazon Canada as the pricing is beyond fucked. I’ve no explanation. Interested Canadian readers should buy directly from FriesenPress.