Two weeks ago, I showed off the cover for my upcoming Star Trek Titan novel Fortune of War. I felt pretty good about it at the time.

And then eagle-eyed fans started to notice that there was something … *off* about the cover.

We had featured the wrong type of starship on the cover. Instead of the Luna-class USS Titan, we had used an Akira-class starship.

The two classes of ship have many similarities. But they are far from interchangeable.

Both Luna– and Akira-class ships have the same style of warp nacelles extended downward and set at angles to their pylons. Both  have structures connecting their saucer sections and secondary hulls. But the similarities end there.

The structures on the undersides of the two ships are very different. The Luna class, designed by Sean Tourangeau, is much larger.

Also, on its dorsal (upper) hull, the Luna class has a superstructure inspired by those of the Miranda-class and Nebula-class starships.

Once the error on the cover was pointed out to us, everyone involved felt embarrassed. All of us — art director, editor, author, licensing team — felt that we should’ve caught the mistake before it reached the public.

We then scrambled to fix it before we missed the printer’s deadline. We weren’t going to just shrug and print a cover we knew was wrong.

Fortunately, VFX artist Darth Mojo (aka Adam Lebowitz) came to our rescue. In record time he made a new-and-improved cover, this time with the right starship.

How did all this happen? We’re not sure. What matters is not how it went wrong, but how quickly the team pulled together to make it right.

Thus I am proud to share with you all, the new-and-improved cover of Star Trek Titan: Fortune of War, coming Tuesday, November 28, 2017.

 

#SFWApro