Here’s a preview of the artwork, called “Towers,” that I’ve licensed for use as the cover of my upcoming book, Bitter Days, due to be published in late October. It’s by Martina Stipan, an artist in Croatia that I found on Deviant Art. When I first spotted the picture, I thought it would make a great wraparound cover for a fantasy story about a poor homeless girl growing up on the streets of a gritty port city.
As is often the case with licensed art, it’s not quite a perfect fit for the story, so some alterations will be needed. The most obvious one is the elimination of some electrical wires, since my story is set in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting.
Still, I thought folks would appreciate this preview.
Well, the book is going to finally be published in 2022. This isn’t going to be the cover, but it will be an interior illustration.
Sigh. The book is FINALLY being published in 2022, for lots and lots of reasons too complicated to go into here. I have a different cover for the book, but I actually use this image above, with some alterations, as an internal illustration and also in the marketing materials for the story.