Archive for Covers

Wallpapers: CHASING THE MOON by A. Lee Martinez

Here’s another great wallpaper for all your fancy devices, this time for A. Lee Martinez’s CHASING THE MOON, out now in Hardcover.

Will Staehle has been doing fantastic covers for the A. Lee Martinez books. They’re not a series, and the designs all strongly stand alone, but Will’s quirky sensibility sets a tone across all the books that really works for Martinez’s voice. If you haven’t read any yet, you can jump in anywhere…but I think Divine Misfortune is my personal fave. (And it’s a great cover.)

Here’s all the wallpaper download links…if anyone needs a specific dimension made, let me know!

1024 x 768 | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200 | iPhone | iPad

Cover Launch: Kristen Painter’s HOUSE OF COMARRÉ

I am so excited to finally be launching the first three books of Kristen Painter’s House of Comarré series. You saw Blood Rights back in April, and I gave you a sneak peak of the covers for Flesh and Blood and Bad Blood, but we’ve been fine-tuning them for a while, and here they finally are, in all their gothic glory!

As you may know from old posts, I love tattoos, have quite a few, and have a soft spot for tattoos that are creatively worked into fantasy stories (props to Jacqueline Carey and the Kushiel books, of course), and I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say the gold ornament on our cover heroine is not just a pretty design…Kristen Painter  has really created a very inventive world with the kind of interesting visual details that get a designer like me very happy. I hope that shows in the covers!

Nekro, the illustrator of these gorgeous covers, has really outdone himself here. These covers are amazing and I can’t wait to hear what you guys think…after the jump, you can see them full-size and get some teasers for the House of Comarré series…

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New (Eyebending) Wallpaper for Simon Morden’s Trilogy

I know it’s been a little while since we’ve done a fun wallpaper in the house (It was a great wallpaper too – Leviathan Wakes, if you didn’t download it you totally should!). So, I have written before about how much I love how the covers for the Simon Morden books came out, and have taken the opportunity to do a poster, a video, and now…wallpapers! Just in time for the third book to hit shelves. So make sure you go pick up Equations of Life, Theories of Flight, and Degrees of Freedom…

Available for screens of all sizes, now you can carry a mind-warping piece of the Metrozone with you everywhere! I even finally figured out how to make the ipad version work with the vertical/horizontal twist. As usual, if I missed a specific screen size you’d like, leave a comment and I’ll format it for you!

1024 x 768 | 1280 x 800 | 1440 x 900 | 1680 x 1050 | 1920 x 1200 | iPhone | iPad | Netbook (1024×600)

Cover Launch: THE RIYRIA REVELATIONS by Michael J. Sullivan

Bam! Can you say “EPIC”, people? The Riyria Revelations by Michael J. Sullivan are coming this November, December, and January, with more adventure and world-building than you epic fantasy fans will be able to handle. We wanted to give this series a cover style that spoke to fans of empire-building and political intrigue and armies clashing, but I really wanted to highlight the central axis of the books — the team of Royce and Hadrian, a thief and mercenary who get pulled into the plots and machinations of the empire despite their best (or worst) intentions. I think the marriage of the type and icons with the great illustrations by Larry Rostant give you the feel that it’s these two friends back to back against the world, and that is the engine that takes you through these books and across the world of Riyria.

After the jump, a small teaser from Book One: Theft of Swords to get you all excited…..

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Cover Launch: TIMELESS

It is with a mix of joy and sadness that I launch the cover for TIMELESS by Gail Carriger. Joy, because I have loved working on these covers so much, and I happen to be a nerd about things ancient Egyptian, so Alexia Tarabotti + Pyramids = Squee. However, it is sad because this is the final book in the adventures of Alexia Tarabotti!

Of course, that doesn’t mean the end of our Lady Maccon. Did you hear about the Yen Press manga Soulless adaptation being created as we speak? The artwork is amazing! I’ve seen the cover and first chapter, I just can’t wait to see more…Trust me, even if you’ve never thought manga was your thing, you have to keep tabs on this book as it develops. Stunning work, and bravo to our Yen Press brethren.

As usual, we have a fabulous image of The Lady Maccon, portrayed by Donna Ricci, the captain of the steamship we call ClockworkCouture.com. Alexia in her explorer’s gear was shot by Pixie Vision Productions, who was also responsible for documenting the awesome Afternoon Tea that Gail and Donna co-hosted recently in L.A. (There’s a great fan writeup of the event here). I so love collaborating with people active in the world of Steampunk when we’re doing steampunk and victorian titles (hmm, foreshadowing alert for next season perhaps?). Everyone already knows the lingo, they always catch my chronological aberrations, and even better, they always add things to the books that I would never have thought of on my own.

So without further ado, here’s a teaser for Timeless…

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How-To Video: Equations of Life Poster

So I have written before about how I love the Simon Morden trilogy that has started hitting shelves. Samuil Petrovitch is my favorite kind of snarling sarcastic anti-hero, and a genius rocket scientist to boot. My kind of guy. And I especially love Orbit for letting me be a bit daring with the cover design and rock these really graphic optical illusion covers.

So what you don’t know is that the initial design was even crazier. I wanted to hide the cover text IN the optical illusions. Slight legibility problem, I admit, for a teeny book cover…but FABULOUS for a poster. And since I know you guys love these how-to videos, I screen-captured my process so you too can make your own Editable-Text Optical Illusion Poster…and melt the retinas of all your friends. After the jump you can even download the Illustrator file I used, and add your own text. (more…)

The Enterprise of Art

Niklaus Manuel Deutsch is an artist all but forgotten in the modern age. I’m not claiming this is some great travesty, for his work, while quite good, is not necessarily outstanding, nor was he particularly prolific. In fact, Manuel abandoned painting and etching in the last decade of his life to focus on poetry, play writing, and one of the trickiest arts of all, politics. Had he stuck with one or two disciplines perhaps he might have produced a single work that endured through the ages, as opposed to creating many worthy but unexceptional pieces that have been swept away in the great flood of history, occasionally bobbing to the surface in this coffee table book or that academic tome on plays of the Swiss Renaissance.  Of course, that’s simple conjecture–it’s entirely possible that had Manuel lived an extra thirty years and painted every single day of every single one of them he may never have produced anything more memorable than what we already have of his work. It is possible, uncharitable an observation as it is to make about any artist, that the man was simply not a genius, not a savant, that he was as good an artist as he ever could have been. (more…)

Cover Launch: KINGDOMS OF DUST by Amanda Downum

Behold the new artwork for the upcoming Kingdoms of Dust – Amanda Downum’s rich and exotic fantasy adventure featuring necromancer-spy Isyllt Iskaldur.  

Larry Rostant has done us proud yet again with his luxurious imagery, which we feel perfectly suits Amanda’s lush and atmospheric writing style. And the visual sums up the epic setting for this book: think fiery red deserts, swirling sandstorms and ruined cities . . .

It’s the perfect addition to the gorgeous artwork for the rest of the Necromancer Chronicles series (see all the covers together below). And the joy is that, since these books can be read as stand-alones, you can pick up whichever book most appeals to you first . . . A difficult choice indeed! Larry Rostant: we truly heart you. And tons of thanks must also go to our very talented UK designer Peter Cotton, who put all of these covers together.  (more…)

Cover Launch: THE FINAL EVOLUTION by Jeff Somers

I hate to see a good series of covers come to a close, but I can’t be too sad because Avery Cates is finishing with a bang…or, more accurately, with SILVER INK. This is a case where the cover jpeg just doesn’t do the image justice, because there’s just no way to show you the metallic silver hotness this cover will convey in print. Just trust me.

The Final Evolution by Jeff Somers is the 5th Avery Cates book and if you have been enjoying the series so far you certainly won’t be disappointed. If you haven’t been reading the series yet — I understand, there are some readers out there that can’t stand being tortured by open-ended series and will only read series as a set — now is the time to get started!

After the jump, I’ll give you a bit of a teaser and all the covers in the series… (more…)