Cover Reveal!
It's everyone's favorite part of the book reading process. The one you have all been waiting for! It's time for the cover reveal for Book 5: Wyoming Bones and the Founder's Blade! Here it is! Gaze in awe of its brilliance. See the subtle elegance. The fine attention to detail. The carefully adjusted color balance.
Ok, the more observant of you might have noticed that this cover looks like it was just something I made in Minecraft. If you guessed that to be the case, give yourself a gold star!
Because that is exactly how I made this cover. This won't be the cover the book will ship with, don't worry, but I did print a couple of copies with this cover.
Why I made this cover... Now that is a bit of a story.
Cover Artist Lost
So, if you open up to the copy right page of any of your copies of Wyoming Bones 1, 2, 3, or 4, you will see that the cover images for those books were made by a guy named "slert". When we first started working on Wyoming Bones and the Potion of Everlife, we went through about three different artists, ordered covers from each, and went with the one we liked the most.
The artist we went with was slert, and we liked his work quite a bit. We loved how alive he made our little skeleton adventure feel. We went on to order covers for Books 2, 3, and 4 from him as well.
And then, when we reached out a few months ago about book 5... He didn't respond. He still hasn't.
Need for a Cover
But books need covers, and this one had a bit of a deadline. When you read the dedication for Book 5, you'll see I dedicated it to the fans who keep asking for new books. In the case of one special fan, a friend of the family, That was quite literal.
Like every time I saw her. "How's book 5 coming?" "Can I read book 5?" "When can I have book 5?"
And all of that was over the course of an hour. It was great, and I loved it, but also I had the problem of not having a cover for the book. I couldn't give the book to my fan without a cover.
And then, a few weeks ago, everything came to a head when the fan invited our family to her birthday party, and asked for just one thing: Book 5.
I'd already started reaching out to new creators to find a different cover artist (more on that next time!), but I knew they wouldn't get the covers to me in time to get a book printed for my fan's birthday party.
And thus Operation Desperate Cover Art was born.
Finley's Cover
I dove into Minecraft, modeled up a bell tower, put on my favorite Indiana Jones skin, posed for the camera, and then put it all into the template I have for the cover. (We'll use our real cover designer for the official cover!)
Then, because this was the only time I would be using this cover, I decided to label it for the fan- That is why I labeled the cover "Finley's Edition".
The party was Saturday, Finley's parent's just told me she has finished the book. Considering this is my longest book yet, at 45k words, that's a pretty quick read through!
She loved it, which made all the extra work worthwhile. Now I just need to get the real cover ready for all of you. I'm shooting for a January release- Sorry its not ready to go under your Christmas tree! But, still, Books 1-4 make pretty great gifts still, even if I do say so myself!