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I'm still tweaking the cover for my upcoming release. I'm hoping this is the final revision...I'd especially value comments from anyone with experience creating covers.  Latest revision does the following: Moved the sky up a bit so the glowing nebula is further away from the word "escape." Lightened the sky to make the running guys stand out better. Added a glow at the horizon line. Changed spacing, color, and outline of font in the author byline. Many thanks to Schnujo passed! WHEW!   who suggested several of these changes. |
| I'd still like you to fiddle with your name's readability as I scrolled by, but I like this one a lot better. I especially love what you did with swapping the guys and changing their background some. Great choices! |
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| Schnujo passed! WHEW! - OK. I bolded the font and fiddled with the glow. To be consistent, I bolded the other places this font appears (in the subtitle and in the "a novel by"). Is that better? (You might have to refresh your screen to see the changes) |
Reply| Schnujo passed! WHEW! - Oh, and I also added a slight glow to the planet, and put the wind effect behind the word "escape" instead of in front of it, and added a faint glow to the word "escape" in the main title. |
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| I've redone the cover for my forthcoming novel, making the title bigger and using a different picture. Since it's about two young men fleeing the planet, I used a photo of two men running away. They're an inter-racial couple, and the photo is supposed to show that. The effect on "Escape" is supposed to suggest motion. I hope this is a somewhat better cover. The teaser is In the midst of a planet-wide evacuation, gay runaways Taggart and Kendi are hiding from a mysterious secret agent who has been chasing them. Their situation heats up when they find the beheaded corpse of their pursuer. Desperate, they go into hiding. Meantime, the murder investigation Is turned over to a world-weary Marine MP and his rookie partner. Their investigation ranges over the entire planet and uncovers a wide-ranging plot that involves corruption at the highest levels. Set in the year 2462, the events of novel occur 500 years before those of the related story in Murder on Cabot's Landing. The plot combines gay romance, a love story between the detective and his transwoman partner, and action adventure elements as the gay lovers, the investigators, and their allies come together to batlle the corrupt forces arrayed against them. |
Chucky  - Good points all, but this is a blurb. The plot is that they are alone, are running away from the bad guy secret agent, and they happen to be gay. "Gay runaway" kind of describes that, no? One of them is also leaving an ultra-conservative religious commune on the planet, so he kind of qualifies as a runaway in another sense, although he's on a rumspringa-type leave. That seems too complex to stick in a blurb--most won't even know what a rumspringa is. "Gay runaways" gives both subtexts without being overly complex. On the second point, a love story does evolve between the detective and his partner, and she happens to be trans. He doesn't think twice about it, and neither does anyone else. No one cares. The religious types are too thick for it to occur to them to notice. How else would I get that fact into a marketing blurb other than just saying it? Finally, it would be awesome if prejudice like this didn't exist in 500 years. It's hard for me to believe that's possible. I can believe that it might be rare and mostly restricted to small, fanatical groups. Like, say, the commune in my novel. But even that feels like an overly optimistic dream to me. |
| Nice cover. I just have 2 suggestions. As always, do with them as you wish. lol 1. Move the celestial body away from the last E in "Escape." Either move "Escape" down a tad (I know there's not a ton of room), the light up, or both. 2. Move your name down and maybe make it a tad bigger...okay that's sort of 3 suggestions.  But I'm going for readability here. Granted, some sci-fi writers have pretty small author/pen names, but others have their names pretty big. Remember that readers may be scrolling by quite fast. Definitely (IMO) move your name down to the darker area, though even if you don't opt to make it bigger. Putting a small black outline around the letters might help, too? IDK, but aside from moving it to a darker area, it does seem oddly high to me. Again, some of the sci-fi authors had theirs kind of high compared to other authors, but many had it lower like a typical author. All-in-all, looks very nice. I wish you all the best! |
| Schnujo passed! WHEW! - I made your suggested changes. I also brightened up the running guys a bit, and gave them a slight glow. The position of the nebula had bothered me, too, but I was too lazy to change it. Thanks for motivating me fix it. I think I might still need to tweak my name some as it's not as legible as it should be. |
Cover reveal on a new book coming out October 1. You can read the first three chapters at "Escape From Cabot's Landing"  |
In response to Sung'manitu  's recent post, here's a word search using the names of College football teams.
I've also included the obligatory nod to ⱲєbⱲitϚћ WDC's 25  , the first to get a nifty new merit badge for word searches. |
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