Posts Tagged ‘Covers’

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…)

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…)

Cover Launch: GERMLINE by T. C. McCarthy

Here’s a fresh new cover launch for everyone this gloomy Monday. For your viewing pleasure, I give you GERMLINE by T. C. McCarthy. It’s a story about a journalist in the vein of Hunter S. Thompson who is embedded with a group of US soldiers in a near-future war. It’s a fabulous look at what a war in the future could be like, but the perspective of the character we see it all thru keeps it really grounded and human. It reminded me simultaneously of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, and the Transmetropolitan comics written by Warren Ellis. The author has experience in the CIA and works in biotechnology, so the books are amazingly well-informed, and plausible.

What’s also cool is we just finished the cover for Book 2 (no, I can’t show you yet) and the story is awesome. This is definitely going to be a series to keep up with. Each book is going to be told from the perspective of a different person in the war.

Anyway, back to the art! Steve Stone did the photoillustration and I just love the tone and texture. It definitely says military, definitely says future-but-not-too-far, and it really captures that there’s more going on under the surface here. I love the textures Steve worked in.

Here’s a little teaser: (more…)

Cover Launch: HEARTLESS by Gail Carriger!

Well, as you can tell from the infrequency of the postings from the Art Dept since the holidays, it’s been craaaaaazy busy here. Our Fall/Winter 2012 covers are due in 3 weeks, and we’re killing ourselves bringing you the coolest artists and designs we can. We also have a couple new features in the pipeline which we’ll be talking more about after the evil 2/18 deadline, so hang with us. Meanwhile, we are going to finish posting the rest of the Spring/Summer 2011 Covers for your viewing pleasure, starting with one of my fave series…

Here you go folks, Heartless, the fourth Alexia Tarabotti/Soulless book by Gair Carriger. I love this series, and I am really digging the covers too – who wouldn’t, when I get to work with such fun material as the photos Steampunk icon Donna Ricci keeps sending me? The photographer this round was Pixie Vision Productions.

I tried to find a good British castle as a stand-in for the pack headquarters, and I think the cool heavy stonework here does the job – I can totally picture Alexia going up and down those steps to visit with the werewolves camped out on the back lawn…and whipping some military discipline into them!

After the jump is a teaser, and I’ve tried to take out as many spoilers as I could, but still, if you haven’t read the previous books (Soulless, Changeless, and Blameless) then BE WARNED, SPOILER ALERT. (more…)

Cover Launch: Mystery Cover Revealed!

Hey remember this picture? Way back in August I was working on a photo shoot with photographer Laura Hanifin for a cover, and I had to share a picture of one of the crazy props we were using that day. Yes, it was a real live—well, actually, dead—octopus, which Laura had dyed with food coloring in a ziplock bag in her fridge. Yes, I am the one holding it, and yes, it was really really slimy.

I got a lot of questions about it, especially after I made the shot my facebook profile pic, but I just couldn’t tell you guys what the images were for until we were ready to launch the cover, just in case it didn’t work out. But luckily it worked out even better than we had hoped, and launch day is finally here, and I actually have not one but two covers to show you. The shoot went so well that we’ve already used photos on two covers, and we’ve still got more good images left. I’m hoping that will make it up to Laura that her apartment stunk like dead fish for at least a month afterwards. (Sorry!)

A few people DID guess that the octopus was standing in for some kind of intergalactic space creature, and I can finally say that you are correct…and the mind that thought up that creature is none other than Philip Palmer, author of Debatable Space, Red Claw, Version 43, and now…Hell Ship! (more…)

Cover Launch: DEEP STATE

Cyberpunk is not really my cup of tea, so I was surprised when I got into This is Not a Game as much as much as I did. It’s all about connectivity, and how fast information and communication flies around the world now. There was of course also a cool thriller plotline along with it. Deep State is the next book by Walter Jon Williams, and picks up with the heroine & story of This is Not a Game. If you like William Gibson and Snow Crash-era Neal Stephenson, then you should check out these books. (more…)

Cover Launch: LIGHTBORN

Tricia Sullivan is the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of an impressive body of work, including Maul, Double Vision and Sound Mind.  Here’s just a sample of the praise that has been heaped upon her work:

‘A challenging, disturbing, often compulsive read’ Time Out

‘Tricia Sullivan returns to science fiction not a second too soon . . . I haven’t enjoyed a book so much in a long time’ Guardian

‘Painfully gripping throughout – read it if you dare’ The Times

‘Maul confirms an increasingly badly-kept secret – Sullivan is one of the best and most ambitious SF writers around’ Dreamwatch

‘Intelligent, sensitive and engrossing . . . You’ll be thinking about it long after you’ve finished reading’  SFX

‘Tricia Sullivan is why I refuse to give up on science fiction’ Pat Cadigan, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author

 
I think it’s clear from the above that Tricia is almost universally regarded as an audacious and original voice in modern science fiction. And what better way to signal that to the reader than with an audacious and original cover. Ladies and gentlemen (and other forms of life – we’re not speciesist at Orbit!), we give you Lightborn:

Lightborn is a revolutionary new technology that has transformed the modern world.

Better known as ‘shine’, it is the ultimate in education, self-improvement and entertainment – beamed directly into the mind of anyone who can meet the asking price.

But what do you do if the shine in question has a mind of its own . . . ?

 

Lightborn will be published in October. Design by Nathan Burton Design. Art direction by Duncan Spilling – LBBG.

Cover Launch: THE HAMMER

K.J. Parker’s critically acclaimed Engineer trilogy featured  three great covers by Keith Hayes. Since then, Parker has been writing  stand-alone novels, and any one of them is a great place to jump in without any series-long commitment. Of course, I’m sure you’ll be back at the bookstore buying the Engineer books as soon as you finish any of these books, but you can start slow if you don’t believe me…

The Company was really an ensemble story, so we wanted to show the characters on the cover, but for The Folding Knife and The Hammer, I really wanted to continue the “artifact” look of The Engineer Trilogy.

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