When you go to college, you go to get a degree, to pursue your dreams, to get a serious job when you graduate. I did all of these things. And then some days I have the non-serious job.

I was stoked to design the complete series omnibus for Ben Wolf’s insane Santa Saves Christmas series. It was a bit of a challenge, largely because I had to combine elements from all three books into a single design to Ben’s specifications He wanted puffins flying everywhere, and they all needed to be viciously branding weapons of mass destruction.

Can I do that? Sure, thing.

Luckily the original cover artist for the trilogy (Kirk DouPonce) happily shared his assets he created for the covers, including puffins, weapons, and fonts. In this case, all I had to do was lay out Kirk’s art in a way that worked.

I did, however, get to add one mark of my own: the “murder snowflake” that appears on the back cover and spine. The tentacles are still Kirk’s, but the rest is mine, and I can’t help but be oddly proud of it.

There is so much chaos.

I also can’t post this cover without sharing some of the feedback I received from a Facebook friend, because it might be one of my favorite comments of the month: