Tag: cover art

Cover reveal – Pendragon

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So I finally got my act together and made the final tweaks on the cover for my upcoming release, Pendragon.

Not to say that the cover is finished. No doubt I’ll fiddle with a few small things when I get to the formatting and publishing stage, but this is what it’s going to look like.

The eye motif of Logres 2 has consumed the white space around the New Moral symbol, and has evolved into the form of a dragon (Pendragon), which is wrapping around the New National eye-cross and consuming the space around it in a storm-like fashion. (Plenty of clues what’s coming up in Pendragon in that alone.)

Every time I think I’m going to do a redesign of my book covers (or pay someone more talented than myself to do it for me) I come right back around to loving them – the simplicity stands out, and is separated from any current book-cover-art trends. I’m not delusional, however – the covers do work better in paperback than on the screen, as the white space is often lost in the white space of the internet, but never mind.

In other news I’m trying to figure out if my (sudden) desire to go and study cosmology is enough to pull me through going back to university to do a physics degree. Plan A, make enough money from writing The Future King series to do it for a living; Plan B, continue it as a hobby and work to pay the bills. The thought of continuing to coast through admin role after admin role for the rest of my working life, however, is no longer so appealing. I saw a MA in cosmology at the KU Leuven which looks AMAZING, and if I’m going to have to work on something other than TFK, then I’d rather it be something related to that. But to do THAT I need a degree in physics, so…

Twenty hours a week around a full time job, children, writing, (and I’d also like to learn to play the piano) sounds a little unachievable. But then I’m already a workaholic for TFK anyway. The idea of learning something completely new to give my arts-and-humanities-leaning brain a workout also sounds appealing to me. (I feel I should mention however that I just about scraped a C in my GCSE maths.)

This week I finally finished editing my first draft of Pendragon, which left me sitting at about 320,000 words. Too fat to publish, and I wasn’t planning to split this volume into two. I’m now butchering it in Pages and slicing whole scenes – last word count was 309,000. I think I can get it to just under 300,000, and then it’ll be another paper edit, and more slicing and streamlining. Whether or not I’ll get Pendragon out later this year, or early next year, is not yet decided. Did I mention I created the cover for Pendragon in a 20-year old version of photoshop on a broken laptop with no keyboard and a dodgy mousepad? Can you tell?

I already know what the cover will look like for the next book in The Future King series, Excalibur (three guesses? It involves a sword).

Thank you to everyone who’s following my writing journey – I hope to have Pendragon released for you soon!

Cover reveal for The Future King: Logres, vol. 1 book 2.

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The cover itself is an evolution from Logres 1, and features the eye-cross of ruling party New National’s anti-extremism cell, the New Moral Army.

The gripping second book in The Future King series. King Arthur meets high-school drama in this near-future dystopian depiction of the Arthurian legends.

The ruling party, New National, is expanding its power. Their new anti-extremism cell, The New Moral Army, threatens all who stand in opposition to the regime. Under the guidance of Marvin, self-proclaimed Merlin, after-school club The Round Table is about to fight back. The year is 2053, and Britain begins to darken.

Teenager Gwenhwyfar must discover why The New Moral Army has taken her parents and what she can do to save them. Meanwhile, rival Morgan struggles to find her place among her peers. With Bedivere’s life hanging in the balance, a conflicted Arthur does what he can to keep the The Round Table alive.

Knowing that her only chance to save her parents is to discover more about the terrorist cell Free Countries, Gwenhwyfar searches for their leader. She must also navigate new dynamics: her wish for Arthur and Lancelot to make amends may soon one she regrets. With the New Nationals infringing on rights and a general election fast approaching, this is the thrilling second book to volume one of The Future King series.

As you know, I had to push back the release date of Logres 2 more than once, but am pleased to announce that it will be released on May 05 2020. After four years of writing, editing, formatting, and proofreading, it’s finally there!

For those of you who haven’t read Logres 1, there’s still time to catch up before Logres 2 comes out. I’ve even added a ‘sneak peek’ of Logres 2 in the Kindle file of Logres 1 (click here for Amazon UK & here for Amazon US) to give you a taste of what’s to come.

Logres 2 will also be available for pre-order – I’ll be putting up the links to the Amazon pages on the homepage soon.

I know it’s natural to be excited about one’s own projects, but I’m extremely pleased with how this book has turned out, and can’t wait to see how it fares once it’s released into the wild!

10 things I have learned whilst making a book cover

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  1. Pre-existing book covers are your friend. Look at them, examine them and focus on studying books in your genre, but don’t be too disappointed if your self-publishing platform doesn’t support the trim size you inevitably fall in love with as a result (five by seven, five by seven!).
  2. Make sure the cover correlates with the interior feel of the actual novel (and then dance about celebrating your own brilliance when you think of something that looks really cool).
  3. Having twenty layers live at once in Photoshop will destroy your computer. No, really. The fan on mine has just… died, or something.
  4. After spending four hours trying to align font at the bottom of your page to font at the top of your page, your eyes will go funny and everything will look wonky anyway.
  5. The longer you stare at the block colour red, the more it begins to look like some whacky gradient.
  6. Apparently due to variations in book binding the artwork for the cover will sometimes end up on the spine, and spine on the cover. You will be advised to avoid sharp lines and complex patterns, so naturally use them anyway.
  7. You should (and probably will) print out your book cover and wrap it around some other less important novel just to see what it looks like on a bookshelf (mighty good, I tell you).
  8. An actual, real life plastic ruler can be very helpful when determining layout spacing on your screen for the less technically gifted of us.
  9. Asking (non-graphic designery) people their opinion on your artwork can be confusing. Just focus on the things they agree on, and ignore anything they don’t.
  10. Making a book on a template before you have your final page count is just asking for trouble. You think you’re finished, then a last-minute cut adds or subtracts a page or two. New spine thickness, new document! Yeah!