You might recognize this image from my very first book published, The Promise Remains. This is the original art that I bought from the artist. It’s probably about 8″ by 10″ and still in great shape. One of these days I’m going to frame it. 
This is a snapshot of a bookshelf in my closet. These are some of those stories I’ve referred to as being in my closet. They really are in my closet and here’s proof. 
Here’s a picture of one of the final covers being considered for Gun Lake. Kinda cool to see. I like the one we went with, but this one has a darker, brooding feel about it. 
Finally here are two mock covers that I asked Julie Chen, a designer at the publisher we used to both work for, to work on. I wrote the first novel, If I Loved You, and I had an idea for a sequel entitled Answer With A Kiss. The stories were romantic comedy and pretty average (and if you wonder what happened to it, look at snapshot #2 above). I had always wanted to pitch this to a publisher with these mock covers. Never did, but I kept the mockups.
Lately I’ve been sorting through my office in order to make the move to a new one a few minutes away from the house. It’s been fun to uncover a variety of things related to my writing. I thought I’d show some of them on my blog.
Julie has gone one to become a fabulous freelance designer, working on NY Times bestsellers (Every Breath You Take) as well as little-read novels (Bringing Up Girls). Er–I might have gotten those two titles mixed up, but nevertheless she does great work.
It's always fun to see what a writer's office looks like. Be sure to post some pics of your new pad! Not iPad. We know you don't have enough money for one of those. Stop telling yourself that you do.
Yeah, but in my flash sideways world, I'm wealthy and really big in Japan! You mean that doesn't count??
Oh, that totally counts. In my flash sideways, publishers are killing each other to publish my books, and eating Olive Garden every day is good for me.
You can have the iPad from your flash sideways, problem is, all of the text is in Japanese.
Very clever. You must be a writer. In your spare time, which exists in your flash sideways universe. Right??
I have all sorts of time! I've just given up on sleeping.
I'm trying to get my future flash sideways self to email me some completed manuscripts, but he's being a pain about it. You ever have this problem?
I'm trying to go into the future to know what my editors will say about my completed manuscripts so I can work on the problems before writing it. 🙂
Some might call us lazy geniuses, but they would only be half correct!
Sorry to interrupt, but all this flash sideways talk is making me wonder if the single remaining Sharpie in your closet is some sort of hidden clue. It's green, yet located on the far right. Hmmm…
SAM,
Good catch! Travis was supposed to use that green Sharpie to autograph my ARC of Broken. It will likely come back to haunt him.