Philip Palmer’s Red Claw was one of the first covers I designed when I joined the Orbit team, and it’s still one of my faves. I love working on these covers, they’re so much fun, because his writing has this fabulous pulp scifi feel to it, and you can get that feel with the photo shoots. That’s one of the fun things about establishing a really strong author look, it anchors a book, and let’s you get crazy within that framework. It’s kind of like a mullet—business up front, party in the back! (Yes, I really just compared Book Cover Design to Mullets, call the graphic design police, it’s been a rough week.)

Photographer Laura Hanifin was my partner-in-crime for this cover, which we shot at the same time we shot for Hell Ship and the new e-book cover for Debatable Space. It was an exhausting (and smelly!) shoot, but we got three fantastic cover images out of the day, and you don’t get 3-cover-days very often, trust me!

After the jump, see the whole series of covers together, as well as a teaser!

Artemis McIvor is a thief, a con-artist, and a stone cold killer. And she’s been on a crime-spree for, well, years. The galactic government has collapsed and the universe was hers for the taking.

But when the cops finally catch up with her, they give Artemis a choice. Suffer in prison for the rest of her very long life, or join a crew of criminals, murderers, and traitors on a desperate mission to save humanity against an all-consuming threat.

Now, Artemis has to figure out how to be a good guy without forgetting who she really is.

 Debatable Space, Hell Ship, & Artemis photo by Laura Hanifin

Version 43 photo by Eric Westpheling

Red Claw image by Veer