Cover Reveal: Bright Neon Futures
Is it uncouth to start a newsletter with a cover reveal? (Author note: this was originally published on my newsletter, so that opening might seem a bit odd now…) How about starting a story at the ending? Maybe a little bit cliché rather than uncouth, but we can deal with semantics at another time. For now, the cover of Bright Neon Futures!
![](http://paulcarrollwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BrightNeonFuturesWraparoundCover-1024x802.jpeg)
The android on the cover is from my short story, The Emulating Android, which came as a wonderful surprise. I had a lot of fun writing that story, and as it was one of the first pieces of good news to come out of 2020 for me, the tale holds a special place in my heart.
Digital pre-orders for Bright Neon Futures are open now!
In the meantime, the tale of where that little android came from. Our story begins in the spring of 2015. I was in my second semester of a 1-year Masters in Multimedia in DCU, and teaming up with the trio of lads I would eventually go on to complete my Masters thesis with. Our video production assignment was a simple one: make a music video. We had other options, but given that one of our team was a musician, this made sense.
From that came Blivet She, a video that requires some improvisation on my part in the editing chair to take what the others had shot with our to actors and turn it into something resembling the storyboard I’d shown to our lecturer. You can see the finished piece here.
But there you have it, the answer to the question Gary asked me the last time I saw him: “Where did the idea come from?” My friend, it was based on a music video.