Category: Artwork

I just wanted to show off the final version of the cover art that Jake Bullock completed today.

Here's the blurb…

MAGIC WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING, AND A WIZARD'S GUILD WITH NO MEMBERS.

Young Rush has bent the rules and managed to become an apprentice in wizardry to his uncle, but neither of them is qualified to revive the Torch & Scroll Guild, and there is no one else left. Neglected for generations, the mother house is in ruins, soon to be sold off by the Star Watch, the wizards' council, as the only guild to ever have expired for lack of heirs.

But this clever and deep-thinking young man may have puzzled out some of the fundamental principles underlying all magical practice, and this discovery will change everything, if only Rush can stay alive long enough for his plans to work.

What we're looking at is the servants' quarters behind the decayed guild house of Torch & Scroll. All that's left of the guild is huddled there, in a disgraceful building for an institution that has long fallen out of power.

My cover artist, Jake Bullock, has been very busy running through draft versions of the cover for the first book in the new series, The Affinities of Magic. It's been great fun working through this with him, and I thought you might enjoy an update on the process as he moves on to the final version. My requirements…

• The back covers of the novels will be the front covers for short stories and story collections
• Every story will include a discovery in the study of bio-magic, so every story or book will include a vignette of an animal, plant, whatever, that is the basis for the discovery
• There will be an internal illustration of the critter, plant, whatsis inside each story
• Every novel cover will include the mother house of the Torch & Scroll guild, now fallen on very hard times with its last master. The rise of fortune (or its setback) will be reflected in each new novel.

For Structures of Earth, the vignette shows a burrowing rodent-like critter, the study of which will lead to some amazing insights, rather like Gregor Mendel's experiments with peas.

The cover illustrations in this post are intermediate drafts. The Author font will change to match all of my books, and many painted details will be added to both the background and the Title/Series text.

You can see more of Jake's work here.

Here's the second candidate for cover art for The Affinities of Magic from artist Richard Whyte. He's taken a different approach to the academy building.

Both Jake Bullock and Rich Whyte are British, and I'm amused that, given encouragement to use any period in any region, or to make up something out of whole cloth, they each defaulted to more or less Victorian England. (Apparently you can take the Brit out of England but you can't…)

Is this the influence of steampunk, do you suppose?

I find that the sketch by Jake Bullock seems to capture more of the flavor of “fantasy” and more of the notion of the academy building as a “main character” in its own right, where Rich Whyte's has more of the flavor of a period mystery or of the aforementioned steampunk. Covers are very important for genre fiction — they should immediately suggest the appropriate genre, and I think Jake Bullock's is doing a better job of that.

What do you think?

You can find more of Rich's work here.

I've asked two cover artist candidates to do a preliminary cover sketch for The Affinities of Magic, and a third is considering. I thought my readers would enjoy looking over my shoulder at the process of picking a cover artist for a series, and I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts.

Artist Jake Bullock has just sent me his preliminary sketch and I wanted to share that with you.

The cover for all the novels will feature an old wizard guild house, fallen into bad times along with its clan. Because of one brilliant young student and his systematic discoveries, the guild house will be gradually revived into an academy for a new school of magic. In each new novel you can see visible improvements, both to the building and to its surroundings.

The series background concerns a world that is moving from the biological equivalent of alchemy to chemistry, that is, from a mystical practice to a science-based one. Every story, short or long, will include a natural biological entity that produces an insight into how things really work, and that will be featured in a small vignette on the cover.

For long works, that vignette will be on the back cover. For short works, the back cover scene and its vignette will function as the front cover (short works don't appear in print and only need front covers).

You can find more of Jake's work here.