Original artists: Owlette (illustration), RKTDWG (lettering)

This is the official cover for my novel, The Afflicted, whose submission page is here. You can read a summary, read the first three chapters, and, if you like them, find links to purchase the full version. Please? :)

This cover was quite difficult to commission, just from a design standpoint. Owlette is super competent and knows exactly what she's doing, but I as the commissioner had a lot of trouble coming up with the design, and figuring out exactly what I even wanted her to draw. This novel took over four years to write and edit; how do you condense everything about it into one image? Fortunately, once I had an idea, she ran with it and made a stunningly beautiful illustration that captured everything I wanted and more.

I asked for the main eight characters gathered on a mountain, overlooking the domed city in an otherwise uninterrupted vast wilderness. With the sun setting and the characters themselves zoomed out and very small compared to the scenery, I wanted the wilderness itself to be an imposing figure in this scene. I wanted to convey the notion that these characters are against the world, and to convey just how vast said world is, and therefore, the scope of what faces them. And Owlette did it, beautifully.

That was one part of the battle, of course. Next, I needed to add the title and author text, and I suddenly realized that this is a really important thing on something like a book cover, yet I had zero talent or experience with it. I didn't want to take such a beautiful painting, and then mess up the whole impression the cover was trying to convey by adding a hackish amateur text job. If I wanted people browsing the new ebooks out there to see this cover and think "this person looks like he actually knows what he's doing! Maybe I should check this book out", I needed the text to be professional, too.

The design services of RKTDWG proved to be the answer to that problem. Once again, I struggled with indecision since even the best artists need the client to have some sort of clue what they actually want. However, he took my general concept and turned it into this, and I really love how it turned out. The text looks professional, and when it sits over Owlette's image, it makes a truly stunning finished product.

In conclusion, I am totally okay with my book being judged by this cover.