Designing Cover Art
For those of you closely following my blog, you know I don’t often write about cover art design. It’s not that I try to hide this content out of some sort of secrecy. Cover art design is just not my specialty. While I do dabble in the art from time to time, I always outsource the project to others for my own books.
Currently I have two cover art projects being worked on right now. I have chosen two different artists to help work on two different books, both within the same series. Typically this is something you would want to avoid. Using the same artist provides visual consistency across a series. However, I want Cassidy, the upcoming spin-off novel, to have a very different feel about it. So for that reason, I have chosen to use a different artist.
I thought that you, my beloved readers, would want to know how the cover art design is going for my various projects.
The first project, of course, being Kholvaria, the upcoming sequel to Iris. The book is currently on track to release later this summer – more updates on that when the time comes. For this project, I am using the same artist who worked on Iris. This artist knows what I’m looking for. Using her again will provide a level of visual consistency across the series. Expect a brighter color scheme here, signifying the crew’s ascent to the surface (out of darkness, into light, so to speak). The cover will also feature glimpses of the surface including trees and sky.
The back cover will read as follows:
The ancient ones called it America.
The survivors call it the New World.
Others know it only as Kholvaria.
It is a desperate time for the Federation. The Atlantic Station, the last known city on Earth, has been destroyed. Humankind is on the brink of extinction.
Nine survivors flee the crumbling city in a dire effort to survive. Their destination: the planet’s surface, a poisonous landscape untouched for generations.
Plagued by danger, disease, hunger, and mystery, they do whatever they must to stay alive.
But they are not alone. Other eyes, above and below the sea, watch the survivors with great interest.
For the first time in generations, humanity is coming home, but it may not be to the home they expect.
I owe a degree of thanks to my fans for assisting me in coming up with the blurb contents. As I mentioned several weeks ago, the wording of the blurb requires a lot of input from you guys. I take your suggestions very seriously.
To give you perspective, this is what Iris‘s cover looked like, including the spine and back:
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As you can see, we have a very dark color scheme here. It’s mostly black and blue. Expect Kholvaria‘s cover to be much brighter than this. It will still heavily feature the color blue, but paired with green.
A preview should be coming soon in the next few days.
Also in the works – the cover for Cassidy, the upcoming spinoff novel. As I mentioned last week, I do not expect Cassidy to be released until later next year. My plan is to release it AFTER the release of book 3 in the Color of Water and Sky series, which will be called Veznek. That being said, I figured it would behoove me to get a head start on the project early on, especially since the cover art I plan to use will double as a promotional piece for the series as a whole.
What do I mean by that?
For Cassidy, I plan to use a wrap-around cover, rather than a separate image for cover, spine and back. Without text added in, this image will create a nice piece of promo-art. I can use this for advertisements and banners on my social media pages. I can even do this well ahead of Cassidy‘s release.
As you may recall, I took some time to design some concept pieces for what the Cassidy cover may look like. I have since abandoned those ideas. The new cover will look completely different from the concepts I conceived earlier (shown below:)
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For this project, except another dark, ominous image, more along the lines of what Iris‘s cover featured. I have hired an artist with a strong background in this type of design. He has worked on other famous science-fiction projects in the past. You can see an example of his work below:
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For those of you expecting to see some new images today, I apologize. Everything will be revealed in due time. Expect the Kholvaria cover soon, along with more information about the book as we come closer to the summer.
As always, keep checking this site to stay up-to-date on what’s happening with the Color of Water and Sky series.
