Back in June, I collected your opinions on potential new book cover designs for Limit of Vision, using part of the existing cover art, created by Sarah Adams.

After deciding on a direction, I then sent the project to graphic designer Emily Irwin to “professionalize” the concept. I’m very pleased with the result, which you can see here:

A new version of the ebook, featuring the new cover, should be available shortly at most ebook vendors. Find links and more information here.

I’m hoping to do a print-on-demand version this fall.

King Kekaulike High School is the public high school that serves all of upcountry Maui. It’s named for Kekaulike, ruler of Maui from 1700 –1736. Since “Kekaulike” (kay-cow-lee-kay) isn’t the easiest name to say, the school is popularly known as “King K.”

Both my daughter and son are graduates of King K. When they attended, the art department included two fantastic teachers, Ms. Melanie Seaton and Mr. O’Conner, whose guidance produced an impressive crop of working artists. Three of those artists have now created book covers for me.

And here they are, the King-K artists:

Sarah Adams did the cover art for both Puzzle Lands books, Skye Object 3270a, and Limit of Vision. Sarah still lives on Maui and does all sorts of art commissions, from graphic design work to digital paintings to oil paintings.

Emily Irwin created the new cover for Memory. Emily now lives in Montreal**, where she continues to work as a graphic artist.

**Update 5/4/2014: Emily is back in the USA now, but still working as a graphic artist.

Dallas Nagata White, my daughter, created the cover for The Red: First Light. Dallas is married to Edward A. White, and lives on Oahu now where she works as a professional photographer, specializing in fashion and art photography. The photo in the magazine spread is hers.

All three graduated from King Kekaulike High School within a three-year span. I feel truly lucky to have benefitted from their talents, and to live in a community where art continues to thrive.

CLICK THE IMAGE TO VIEW A LARGER VERSION

It’s been longer than I’d hoped, but the ebook edition of Hepen the Watcher: Stories of the Puzzle Lands – Book 2 is now out and available at Amazon.com (USA), Amazon UK, and Barnes & Noble. It’ll be out at Book View Café next Tuesday, March 20.

Stories of the Puzzle Lands began with The Dread Hammer and continues with Hepen the Watcher. Here’s the back cover description:

The demon Dismay’s murderous nature has earned him the ire of his beloved wife, who has sent him away in a fit of temper. In his exile he ventures south into the land of Lutawa, drawn there by the prayers of abused and desperate women who beg him to grant them vengeance against the men who cruelly rule their lives–and Dismay is pleased to do it.

Still, murder is hard and dirty work.

When an avid desire for a bath brings him to a fine Lutawan estate, he meets two beautiful young women. Ui and Eleanor are well-acquainted with the whispered tales of the demon Dismay, who slays men but never women, and they’re delighted to entertain their fearsome guest, but they warn him to beware.

Lutawa is ruled by an immortal king, who punishes treason with the terrible weapon of infernal fire. Believing this king to be the same cruel deity known in the north as Hepen the Watcher, Dismay resolves to kill him–and accidentally draws Ui and Eleanor into his schemes.

Those who help Dismay risk a fiery death, those who hinder him risk the demon’s bloody retribution, while Dismay, still yearning for his wife’s forgiveness, discovers that love can be as hazardous as the wrath of Hepen the Watcher.

Read Sample Chapters Here

Digital painting by Sarah Adams
Cover art ©2012 Mythic Island Press LLC

Just had to share this detail illustration from the print cover of Hepen the Watcher. On the front cover, the ax is clutched in the hands of my anti-hero protagonist. I like to include a decorative element on the back cover, and the ax seemed ideal, so I tried to separate the layers in the Photoshop master file, and pull the ax out. That didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, so I went back to the artist, Sarah Adams, and asked if she could pull out the detail of the ax, and isolate it for use on the back cover–which is exactly what she did, and overnight too.

The shame is that I can’t show you the full-resolution image because the file is too big. But trust me, it’s awesome. And if you ever need some illustration work, give Sarah Adams a tweet at @sarahadams23

I’ve got an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) of Hepen the Watcher with a placeholder cover that looks like this:

The final cover art by Sarah Adams is getting closer to completion. Thanks for your patience!

Find a synopsis and sample chapters here on my website.

Back in late November I wrote a post titled Re-Thinking Cover Art: The Dread Hammer with the subtitle:

The option to change your mind is one of the great advantages of indie publishing.

I had changed my mind about both the cover style that I wanted for the book, and the use of a pen name. See the earlier post for my reasoning, but in the meantime, take a look at the new cover, with art by Sarah Adams:

I’m pleased.

The last question remaining before I re-issue the book goes to copyright. Since I originally published under an open pseudonym, I’m trying to understand what to put on the copyright page. I haven’t been able to find any resources on the web or in The Copyright Handbook. The writers I’ve seen who have re-published under a different name tend to do it as “Author Name 1 publishing as Author Name 2,” which I don’t want to do. I have a query in to the US copyright office, and will try again today to call them. But if anyone out there has experienced this or can point me toward a useful resource, I’d appreciate it.

The option to change your mind is one of the great advantages of indie publishing.

Of all the steps involved in turning a polished manuscript into a book, the hardest by far is cover design. The purpose of a cover is to catch the attention of people who might read and enjoy the book. To my mind a cover should convey the “flavor” of the story, along with something of the setting and genre in an intriguing fashion that will draw in readers who might like the book but have never heard of you or it.

The Dread Hammer is a fantasy novel, but it’s hard for me to say what sort of fantasy it is. Despite swords and magic, it’s not like traditional heroic fantasy, or sword & sorcery, or a quest novel, or urban fantasy, or any subgenre that I’m aware of. It’s darkly humorous, unconventional, and, at 65,000 words, it’s very short compared to most fantasy novels. I consider it “quirky,” so I decided to put a quirky cover on it.

The image I had in mind was of the main character in an active pose, done in a style of art commonly seen in computer games. I wanted this style because it was different (for a book cover), and a little campy. I hoped it would communicate the quirky nature of the book while being eye-catching enough to pull in the curious.

I can’t draw to save my soul, but I do know enough Photoshop to be dangerous, so my method of developing a cover concept is to scour the web for relevant images, slap them together in Photoshop, and amend until I’m sort-of happy with the layout. In the case of The Dread Hammer I put together an extremely rough guide for my artist Sarah Adams, and she gave me back an entirely original digital painting that was exactly what I was looking for. Click the image to see a larger version. This is an impressive piece of work.

But now, seven months after publication, I’m reassessing my initial concept. This is the great advantage of indie publishing. The book is mine, and if I want to change my mind and try different things, I can. So I’m making two big changes: the cover, and my name.

A number of people have persuaded me that publishing under a pen name was never a good idea, so I’m going to re-issue the book under my own name—easy enough.

But changing the cover—that’s hard. What’s wrong with the existing cover? There’s nothing at all wrong with the art itself. I think Sarah did a wonderful job. But sales are slow. I’m not reaching my potential audience, so I’ve begun to think of new ways to frame and present the book—especially important because the sequel, Hepen the Watcher, will soon be ready to follow.

So what do I think is not working with the existing cover? I have no hard data at all, not even anecdotal data, except this one thing: several people have mentioned that the book looks YA—as if it’s aimed at the young-adult market. It’s not. It has adult themes involving family dynamics, personal choice, and personal obligation. It’s also got some fairly graphic sex and lots of very graphic violence. As the tagline says, it’s a “fairytale of love, war, murder, marriage, and fate.”

Besides the YA issue, I’ve come to feel the current cover makes it hard to take the book seriously. This is a guess on my part. No one has told me this. And yes, the story is darkly humorous—but I want it to be taken seriously as literature that is worth one’s time to read.

So I’ve gone back to Photoshop and started patching together new cover concepts. My current goals:

1. Emphasizing the idea of a classic “fairytale”
2. Establishing a general genre setting
2. Creating a visual tension through the intrusion of graphic violence in an idyllic setting

This still leaves an abundance of questions! Which character, if any, should go on the cover? What style should be used? And believe it or not, the biggest question so far has been what weapon to display!

Next: the cover concept >>

When I first started re-publishing my backlist of novels, I created new covers myself for all the books. It seemed like the thing to do in those long-ago, pioneering days of winter 2010-2011.

The situation has improved considerably since then. Thanks to Bruce Jensen I was able to re-use the original cover art from The Nanotech Succession books, and Jenn Reese created a new cover for Memory.

Limit of Vision was the last novel to still have a cover by me, but it’s now stepping up in the world. Maui artist Sarah Adams has just finished a digital painting that will soon be on the ebook, and will also appear on the new print version at some future date.

Here it is. Click the image to see a larger version in a new window. And let me know what you think!

Limit of Vision is probably my most obscure science fiction novel, which is too bad. In my admittedly biased opinion, I think it’s a very worthy book.

If you’ve never heard of it and are curious to know more about it (or to see the original Tor cover) visit the Limit of Vision page on my website.

If you’d like to sample the book, you can find it at these vendors:
Amazon.com USA
Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble

For would-be readers outside the USA, UK, or Germany: avoid the hefty international surcharge by buying from Book View Café. Check back here or on twitter/facebook/G+ for an announcement on when Limit of Vision will be available from BVC.