Saturday, August 25, 2018

Working on New Cover Art for The Shard

Our eldest left for his junior year in college today, and we head out on Monday to take our youngest to start his freshman year. We'll be empty nesters! Sad ones, though, since of course we'll miss our boys.

My epic fantasy novel The Shard rarely sells, despite terrific reviews, so I figured it was time to work on a new cover. I looked around for a while and stumbled across Vietnamese artist Phuoc Quan. I saw some things I really liked and thought he might be able to pull of what I was looking for. He offered a great price and full rights to the completed work, so it was definitely worth trying. Now seeing his first draft of the cover, I'm extremely pleased.
art by Phuoc Quan
It depicts and important scene from the story, where a baby dragon ambushes the party as they were passing through some caverns beneath a mountain. That dragon doesn't look much like a baby, but then the mother is much, much larger! I love what Phuoc did with the wings and how he managed to make a pitch dark cavern view-able, which can't be easy. I've asked if the figures can be moved down a bit and not yet notice the dragon, so that it can be more like the scene in the book, where only Lord Midas spots the dragon and he doesn't have time to warn anyone before it attacks. I think this is going to be a great cover, if only I can work out the typography properly.