What lies beneath...

Cover concepts: Phaedor in a half-spin, black Merdanti blade slashing, green eyes alight... Ean standing with Bjorn looming behind him as the Temple of the Vestals crumbles... Trell gazing out over the Sand Sea where the drachwyr fly...

Any of these would be excellent covers for Cephrael's Hand. Unfortunately, I'm not quite important enough to garner a place on Michael Whelan's schedule (his rendition of Anne McCaffrey's The Rowan was the inspiration for Alyneri). I do however have some talented friends who have helped immeasurably in putting a cover concept together. In lieu of hiring a professional graphic artist (and paying professional fees), I'm pretty happy with the cover we came up with.

There's something terribly cruel about book covers. People empirically do judge your book by its cover, even though most covers have more to do with marketing than with the content of the book. It's almost as cruel a truth as the fact that it's easy to get an agent once you have a publisher interested in your book, yet most publishers only accept manuscripts from agented authors. This is a logic that, while circular, is yet incontrovertible.

Artists are always weighing the small adulterations of their work against the price of selling it. Is it more important to have a book cover that truly reflects the material within if, in so doing, the book doesn't sell as many copies? At what point in the process does artistic integrity break? At the other end of the spectrum, you can tweak and nudge and color correct and adjust until you're blue in the face and never actually be happy with the product. That's as true for the cover art as it is for the manuscript contained within. Eventually you have to say, "Enough!" and be happy with the result. Or at least be willing to quit tinkering with it. The rest is out of your hands (and into that expensive marketing team waiting to promote your work onto the NY Times bestseller's list, right?).

Best tea for judging a book by its cover: Egyptian Chamomile