The third printing of FireDrakes was completely sold out by mid September 2022. I was leaving in October, however, to spend the winter in the Philippines, so I decided to hold off on ordering a new print run. My trip was an opportunity to make a change that had been on my mind for quite some time.
In 2015 the unit cost for the third printing of FireDrakes had gone 50% since the second printing, but I chose to leave the retail price of the book unchanged. Due to inflation, the fourth printing of FireDrakes was going to see a similar increase. In order to remain profitable, it was necessary for me to change the retail price from $16.95 to $19.95, just to compensate for the increase in cost.
Since I had to get a new cover PDF produced anyway, in order to change the price and barcode on the back, I decided it was time to create something new. This image was going be much closer to what I had originally imagined when the book was first published. With that in mind, before heading to the Philippines for winter, I packed my pencils, paints, brushes and a few sheets of watercolour paper.
As luck would have it, during the first six weeks of my stay we had a couple of typhoons, and many rainy days, so I had plenty of time to paint while sitting out on the terrace of our house in Caloocan City. When I got back to Canada in March, I scanned the painting and sent a JPEG to my cover designer. A little over two weeks later I had a proof in hand. Within four I was able to pick up six boxes of books with a covers that I was really happy with. Now I can hardly wait for the summer market to see what kind of response I get.