I know I don’t post enough these days; aside from my projects, I’m getting used to the new baby. But I have some good news: The cover art for Dead 2 Rites, the second book of Jake and the Dynamo, is well underway.
My plan is to get both covers completed at once; then I will re-release the first book and offer the second for pre-order. I will hire a logo artist to make the graphics to go over the cover art, but I want to have both covers in hand first so I can offer them to the logo artist to do all at once.
In the image on this post, you can see an initial sketch of Van Halensing, the vampire-hunting rock starlet who features prominently in Dead 2 Rites.
Since I’m new at this, I’m still not comfortable giving a projected release date because I’m unsure how long the logo art will take, or whether there might be some additional delays on the roll-out. But I am still hoping to release Jake and the Dynamo this month and Dead 2 Rites a month later.
In the meanwhile, I am still working on the manuscript of Rags and Muffin, tightening the prose and putting on the final polish before I generate the books. I like the work of my present artist but haven’t decided yet whether to use him for Rags and Muffin or to find someone with a more gritty, and perhaps photorealistic, style, which I think would be more appropriate for this particular book, which is less cartoonish. There are plenty of pro cover designers who would be interesting to work with but also more expensive.
