I’ve received a lot of nice responses from people since announcing the debut of my upcoming crime novel, All Debts, Public and Private.

Thank you to those who’ve expressed interest either by pre-ordering it or simply sending along encouraging words.

I’ve also gotten some nice compliments on the cover art. Thank you for that too.

Honestly, full credit for the cool cover goes to my friend Max Kunakhovich. He designed the cover for my ebook.

This is the second cover he’s designed for me (he also did the cover for Getaway), and working with Max just proves two things my grandmother always told me…

1) “Working with people you like is more important than whatever it is you’re working on”

…and…

2) “Not all those fucking Russians are bad.”

(Grandma had a mouth on her, but only so’s you knew she meant what she said. Seemingly she also had a desire to start international incidents, but that’s a whole other blog post….)

Grandma’s generalizations about the Russian people aside, she was right about the importance of working with people you like. It’s a lesson I’ve learned both ways.

There is The Hard Way. That’s that thing where you work with assholes (talented or not, you assholes know who you are).

And then there is The Easy Way.

That’s when you work with fun, funny, creative people who have a motor to get the job done without being too much of an asshole about it.

Working with Max is definitely The Easy Way.

As I mentioned, is cover for ADPP is the second we’ve done together. I was always blown away by his talent and enjoyed being around him when we worked together at a tech start up in the “real” world. So when it came time to find someone to design ebook covers for me, I immediately thought of Max.

Because we have some history working together, we’re able to more quickly get to the point where we’re both heading in the same creative direction while each brings something to the design (Max more than me).

For instance, here’s the first cover mock up that Max created based on my initial creative direction:

After spending some time with it and “getting” where Max was heading with it, I was able to give him some slight direction (i.e. please put a naked lady in there like you did in the last cover; that’s called”selling the sizzle.” Feel free to use that yourself).

Max then took my feedback and, using his kung fu, interpreted it into the super-cool kick-ass design you see today:

So a very public thank you to Max and his mad kung fu when it comes to designing cover art for my stories.

If you want, you can connect with Max at his web site or on Instagram at Max.Zeldol.

Just one more reason why it pays to hang out with good people.

Hope all is well!

-Mr Chad