KRK Covers!!!

This is it. I am so excited. The covers for books 2 and 3 have arrived.

First of all a BIG thank you is in order to the team at Solaris for selecting Clint Langley as the artist. I am so impressed with what he's done!

I love the look of all three and I love the way they work as a design when you put the three together.

Would you pick up these books if you saw them on the shelf?

One step closer!

Here's the cover of book one of the Chronicles of King Rolen's Kin. My editor tells me the next cover will be delivered soon, maybe in a week. Clint Langley is the artists and I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does with the next book cover.

Meanwhile, my editor at Solaris has sent me book two 'The Uncrowned King' for editing. I would like nothing more than to immerse myself totally in the book, tidying up the little glitches that he has discovered, but life gets in the way.

!Whinge Warning!

This weekend I have to mark assignments for work (I'm an associate lecturer). I have to take child number 6 to the dentist. And I'm involved in organising a national workshop, for which there was a competition to enter. This is the weekend that I have to prepare the contact emails to the 51 entrants to let them know if they have been selected to be offered a place at the workshop.

I'd be flat out, without the editing of book two. Meanwhile, we've decided to sell our house, so I should be cleaning, sorting and throwing out, and painting the walls where the kids have stratched them, or stuck up posters and pulled off the paint, etc.

Why can't I just run away from life and do nothing but write? Sigh.

Does life get in the way for you? How do you find time to write?

Writers get excited about Covers!

And can you blame us?

Here is the cover (without text) for Book One of King Rolen's Kin. Many thanks to Clint Langley, who has worked on various comic strips such as Judge Dredd, Darkblade and Sinister Dexter as well as games such as Games Workshop, White Wolf and Urban Mamoth, plus he's done covers for Warhammer, Black Library and Battletech, and collectible cards for WoW, Sabretooth Games and many more. This is one busy guy so I'm delighted he's had the time to do the covers for my trilogy.

Here's what SOLARIS have to say about the cover.

I'm looking forward to what Clint does with the covers of books two and three.

Book covers are terribly important.

Look at the furore over the cover of Justine Larbalestier's book Liar, back in June 2009. The reaction caused the publishers to re-release the book with a new cover. In this case the cover illustration was a direct contradiction of the main character's appearance as described in the book and because the character was black and the girl they used on the cover was white, you can imagine the reaction.

It certainly didn't hurt the book, since it aroused a lot of reaction and got people talking about the book.

Over at Femmes Fatales, Kris Neri talks about her experience with her first book cover and the reaction of readers to other covers in her book shop.

Since there are so many books out there competing for the readers' attention, covers are important and writers invest so much in their books, naturally they get emotionally involved with the book covers.

There's a discussion thread at SF Chronicles on the topic of book covers. I even did a survey of the VISION list (dedicated writers and readers of the genre) and put together a post at Mad Genius Club about why they buy books. How important is the cover? What about reviews?

I must confess, that I have bought books simply because I loved the cover, but then I have a background as an illustrator.

When you walk into a book store, are you searching for a specific author or title? Do you browse and pick up books with interesting covers? Do you do all your book buying online? Do you read on Kindle and if so, do the covers matter?

Years of Wine and Roses

Things are going well for the RORees. Why, you ask? Well, it is a combination of things.

For me, it has been hard work and persistence.

My fantasy trilogy King Rolen's Kin (Book one The Bastard Son was critiqued at a ROR back in 2003), will be released in July, August, September. The month apart release plan is a good idea for readers. They get to read the books a month apart, no waiting. Not so good from a writer's point of view. It takes me about a year to write a 100K book. To see them all launched off in three months, leaves me wondering how I will get another three books ready in time when the next contract comes up.

But I have been writing solidly since the Last T'En series came out. I have the first book of three other series with my agent and am 120 pages into the first book of a fourth series. That's five series I have been writing concurrently, while waiting to see what gets picked up. So, yes, selling is nice, but the work has to be there, ready to go. I just wish I knew what series SOLARIS is going to buy next!




Marianne has a new YA Dark Urban Fantasy, Burn Bright, coming out. This is one the ultra cool kids will love, all about partying and saving the world Then there's the second book of her Tara Sharp series. More fun and frolics with the girl who can read body language. And, for the more cerebral readers, there's another Sentients of Orion book coming out. So Marianne has been writing consistently and trying out different genres.

Richard is sweeping all before him with Worldshaker, a YA steampunk book. Rollicking good fun on a quasi Victorian world where monstrous ... no I mustn't, read it and see. Worldshaker cover froms out from Simon and Schuster, (with this front cover for the hardback), in the US in May, 2010, then in the UK in June, France and Germany.







Tansy has her Chicklit mystery coming out with Pulp Fiction Press. Cafe La Femme is set in Hobart and promises to be a delightful read. Her Dark Urban Fantasy, Siren Beat, has just been released. Again set in Hobart, but a very different Hobart from the one we know, where the preternatural is kept at bay only by daring and dedication. And, drum roll, Please .... books one and two of her exciting Creature Court trilogy will be coming out in 2010. Pardon my gushing fan girl moment. This is w whole new take on Dark Urban Fantasy and I really enjoyed it.

Margo is taking a rest from trotting around the world after the success of Tender Morsels.

Dirk is masterfully minding three children while working on a top secret project which has an expression of interest from a publisher.

Maxine is deep in a new project, an historical time slip novel that is in the exciting halfway-through-first-draft stage, being written (kind of) concurrently with another space opera. "Concurrently" is hard when you're working full time as well as writing--it tends to turn into three months on one project, then a couple of months on the other, as each gets bogged/comes off the boil a bit. Her YA fantasy set in medieval Japan is under consideration by a publisher, and there's a children's fantasy out there as well.

And Trent has the first book of his Death Works series, Death Most Definite, a quirky Dark Urban Fantasy due out in 2010. This is one the fans of Jim Butcher and Simon R Green will like. And this is another refreshingly different take on the Dark Urban Fantasy genre.

All of us have families, work and commitments. But writing is what spins our wheels so, somehow, we fit it in. We're always working on new books, spreading our selves across genres. If one thing doesn't get picked up, something else will. The publishing industry is in a state of flux, more so than ever before. All we writers can do is grab the tiger by the tale and hang on. (Deliberate pun there!).