By George, I think I've got it: a suitable cover for the e-book edition of my 1994 book Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America. I'm aiming for early spring 2012 publication, for there's a lot to do.
I found the photograph of Amtrak's latter-day California Zephyr on a keen web site called railpictures.net, where photographers of all skill levels post their favorite shots. This one of a westbound Zephyr in Colorado's majestic Glenwood Canyon is by Scott McClarrinon, who kindly assented to its use for my purposes.
The font used for the title and byline is aptly called Zephyr Gothic, and it is based on the actual font the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy/Denver & Rio Grande Western/Western Pacific railroads used for the train and car name boards on their original stainless-steel Vista-Domed streamliner California Zephyr in 1949. I found the font on another rail-themed site, railfonts.com.
Coming up with a cover design for a nonfiction e-book is decidedly easier than for a mystery novel. Nonfiction lends itself to the use of photograph illustration much more easily than fiction. The designer doesn't have to struggle so much to be creative. (It helps to have a chum who's adept with Photoshop, and Tina Davidson helped me with a vexing problem. She'll also be doing the route maps for the e-book.)
Now that the original book and its photographs (plus some new shots from my archives and others from railpictures.net) have been scanned into my computer, the next task is to track down all those Amtrak crew members I wrote about 20 years ago and re-interview them for a new Epilogue. I've found some, but quite a few are elusive, for there have been deaths and retirements and changes of career.
Onward, as they say.
