"Buffalito Contingency" by Rachael Mayo

This is the cover art for Lawrence Schoen's new book, Buffalito Contingency. It picks up after Buffalito Destiny and features the adventures of The Amazing Conroy and Reggie, his pet buffalo dog (commonly called a Buffalito). The new book will be available officially in May, though we're going to debut it at New York's Lunacon at the end of March.

I don't know a whole lot about the content of this book as yet. I worked from the first chapter, where we dive right into disaster as Reggie gets stuck in an alien toddler toilet. From there, it just gets weirder. I mean, this is Lawrence Schoen we're talking about. I put this man on par with Harlan Ellison for sheer "where the hell did you come UP with this stuff?!" level of writing genius. Only Lawrence isn't quite as angry in his writing.

This is actually the third version of the cover. I had a LOT of trouble getting this one pulled together. My reading of the chapter-of-inspiration produced a very different image in my head than Lawrence had in mind, and for a while there I was really put off of the project because I couldn't consolidate the variant image he was thinking about for the cover and what he had actually written in the story.

The Reggie in the story is in a full-blown panic, and his fur is plastered to his body because he's soaking wet, so his muscles and bones are really visible. I drew that image and managed to send *Lawrence* into a panic. It was not a cute Reggie at all, and that's actually what he wanted me to somehow intuit. I clearly do NOT have an illustrator's mind; I'm way, way too literal when it comes to story illustration.

What's here is much closer to what Lawrence wanted. Reggie is cute and bedraggled, but mostly cute. Cute sells. I keep having to be reminded of this. *snerk*

Prismacolor pencils over watercolor.