Cover revealed: Silence the Living

This book release is feeling more real every day. Here’s the cover for "Silence the Living".

My idea was to show our cursed hero Moni Williams in the New Mexico desert at night, staring at an army of glowing purple eyes from beasts that are threatening her.

Initially, I tried to find a photographer with great shots of the New Mexico desert at night. I was really impressed by some photographers in the Southwest, but they didn’t have book cover experience. It was clear that it would take a skilled graphic artist to add the purple-eyed beasts to the cover. Landscape photography and book cover design are different things.

The covers for my first two novels were fantastic photographs, with some design work added. I felt this idea would work better as an illustration.

Taking suggestion of my publisher, I looked over the cover art used by other writers from Silver Leaf Books. I loved the cover for “Day of Vengeance” by Martin Berman-Gorvine. The author recommended that I contact the cover artist, Christian Bentulan.

I was blown away by the dozens of amazing covers on his website, coversbychristian.com. A resident of the Philippines, Christian was persistent in designing the cover just how I wanted it. Yeah, Moni's in a tough spot.

Look for “Silence the Living” to be released by Silver Leaf Books this summer. If it doesn’t scare the hell out of you, you don’t have a pulse.

Mute jumps off the page as artistic audio

Book trailers, ah yes, they have been done before. It would have been fun to see some actors try to play out a scene in Mute, but that’s not what I’m really offering to readers. You can’t download a Mute movie, so I’m not going to tease people with one. I wanted to make a video that showcased what is available: A dramatic novel. So I enlisted the help of some friends.

And now, here is the “artistic audio” presentation of Chapter 24 from Mute.

(If that didn't play for you, just see it on YouTube.)

This started when Celia Coulombe, who formerly worked at the Business Journal with me, told me how much she loved audio books and wanted to be a reader. So I sent her one of my favorite chapters and asked her to give it a shot. Celia did a tremendous job.

I realized that it would be hard for me to post the audio online by itself, but I could make it into a video. First, I enlisted the help of El Cesana, who took the cover photo for Mute. She told me I could select some photos from her gallery. What a treasure trove indeed.

I’ll have more to say about El Ces later, as this Australian photographer has an amazing story.

The presentation needed a depth of emotion that could only be captured by amazing artwork, and Hilda Vazquez certainly provided that. The Fort Lauderdale artist (and Business Journal graphic artist) let me use some images from her Facebook fan page.

I also used FreeDigitalPhotos.net to grab some stock photos, such as the fire, the gun and the binoculars. 

There you have it. Four creative souls collaborated to give everyone a sample of what Mute’s all about. If you want to read the rest of the story, you know where to go.

What I would make Miami Art Museum do for $35M

What’s with all the bellyaching over Related Group’s Jorge Perez asking the Miami Art Museum to take on his name in exchange for a $35 million donation? A recent CBS4/Miami Herald poll found that 54 percent of local residents said it was a bad idea. I don’t think the new name, the Jorge M. Perez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County, is all that outrageous considering the amount of money he’s giving them. Is a little name change really too much to ask in exchange for a small fortune? 

Now if that was my donation, we’d be talking some major changes over there.

Not like I have $35 million to throw around, but if I did, the art museum would have to consent to my list of demands to get my cash. I’d insist on it being named The BRIAN BANDELL Museum of Super-Awesomeness (and art) of Miami. Yes, my name in all caps is part of the contract, thank you.

Now about those exhibits. If this museum is truly to reflect my monumental donation, then I want no less than 20 percent of the exhibits to be Bandell family portraits and pictures of me posing as scifi movie characters. And I’m not talking about the exhibits hidden behind the trash cans. I want prime wall real estate, with bullet proof glass, 24/7 security and eternal spotlights. 

Got a problem with that? Thirty-five million dollars.

What else does that buy? How about the right to make this museum truly super-awesome? I plan to turn over to the curator the following list of must-buy items that my donation shall procure:

-          The toy car that the late Ryan Dunn lodged in his anus in the movie Jackass.

-          The glass mirror that Lindsay Lohan snorted cocaine off of.

-          The stained Monica Lewinski dress.

-          Vials of fat liposuctioned from celebrities, with labels ie: Heidi Montag’s thighs.

-          The microphone Rick Perry used when he made his inspiring “I can’t remember” speech.

-          The blue speedo UFC fighter Dennis Hallman wore into the cage before getting his ass kicked.

-          A wax sculpture of Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf.

-          The rubber hand that wresting legend Mae Young “gave birth” to on WWE television after getting “impregnated” by Mark Henry.

-          A wall-spanning photo essay on the training regimen of Major League Eating’s superstars.

-          An entire wing dedicated to the passionate lovemaking of humpback whales.  

Now that’s a museum I would visit! It would be worth every penny, yes, all 3.5 billion of them. 

Compared to my list (albeit imaginary), I don’t think Perez is asking the museum for too much. After all, this is South Florida, where entire universities and hospitals are named after their biggest donors. 

On second thought, maybe I should donate my pretend $35 million to a university instead. Does the BRIAN BANDELL School of Sheer Genius have a nice ring to it?