Posts Tagged ‘cover art’

A Tale of Two Covers

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.

The wrong cover, featuring an Akira-class starship.

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.

The new-and-improved cover — this time featuring the right ship.

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

Star Trek: Seekers #3 – Cover Revealed!

Check out the piping-hot cover for Star Trek: Seekers #3 – Long Shot, coming July 28 from Pocket Books:

As with the first two books of the series, the art is by digital illustrator and accidental muse Rob Caswell.

Pre-order your copy from your favorite online retailer today:

S&S: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Seekers-Long-Shot/David-Mack/Star-Trek/9781476753096

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1476753091?tag=simonsayscom

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/star-trek-david-mack/1120678879?ean=9781476753096&itm=1&usri=9781476753096&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-PwUJvmDcu1U-_-10:1&r=1,%201

BAM: http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9781476753096

IndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781476753096

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P434AQI?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B00P434AQI&linkCode=xm2&tag=simonsayscom

iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/seekers-long-shot/id936189589?mt=11

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/star-trek-david-mack/1120678879?ean=9781476753140&itm=1&usri=9781476753140&r=1

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=9781476753140&c=books&PAffiliateID=110l3H

Behind the Art of Star Trek: Seekers

The Trek Collective has posted a Q&A with Rob Caswell, the illustrator who crafted the covers for the new Star Trek: Seekers novels.

seekers2roughs

They get Rob’s perspective on learning that his work had spawned a new officially licensed Star Trek novel series, and then he offers a look behind the scenes at the creative development process behind the cover art for the first two Seekers novels — which are now both on sale: Book 1 | Book 2.

It’s appropriate that Trek Collective should bring readers this exclusive peek behind the curtain. It was their articles — the first featuring Rob’s brilliant Blish Book Covers Remastered, and the second featuring his Lou Feck-inspired covers for the fictitious adaptations of an imaginary Star Trek spinoff series called The Seekers — that made me, Dayton Ward, and Kevin Dilmore aware of Rob’s outstanding work, and set the wheels turning in our cycle of inspiration, culminating in the new Star Trek: Seekers book series.

So, a tip of the hat to The Trek Collective!

 

Cover revealed for Section: 31 – Disavowed

I’ve been champing at the bit to share this bit of beauty! Masterful veteran illustrator Tim Bradstreet has created the original art for the cover of my upcoming novel Star Trek: Section 31 – Disavowed. Gaze upon its ineffable coolness:

ST.Section.31.Disavowed.Cvr

Keen observers might note details from Doctor Julian Bashir’s personnel file, as well as ghosted graphics from Geoffrey Mandel’s influential volume, Star Trek Star Charts.

In all seriousness, this is one of my favorites of all the covers that have ever graced one of my books. Now I just hope that my story lives up to the tremendous awesomeness of the work that Tim, the S&S art department, and editor Ed Schlesinger put into its cover.

I guess we’ll find out in October.

Classic covers & Star Trek: Seekers ( #SFWApro )

In my previous post, I discussed the inspiration for the cover aesthetic in use on the new Star Trek: Seekers novel series. I also put out a call for more such side-by-side images from anyone who had the classic Bantam anthologies as well as book one of the new series. I am delighted to present four new images, courtesy of fan Eric Cone:

seekers1_blish8 seekers1_blish11 seekers1_blish12 seekers1_stnv2

These remind me of why Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, and I decided to create this series — which started out as just a whim of inspiration by illustrator Rob Caswell. So if anyone out there has more of these, I’d love to see them.

#SFWApro

 

Seekers & Classic Trek, side by side — #SFWApro

As I have written about before, the inspiration for the new Star Trek: Seekers series of novels was a run of faux book covers that illustrator Rob Caswell created and posted on his DeviantArt blog.

Rob used the Archer-class starship designed by Vanguard conceptual artist Masao Okazaki as the “star” of his new imaginary Star Trek sequel series, which he called simply The Seekers. His inspiration for the retro look and feel of his faux covers was the anthologies of classic Star Trek episode adaptations penned by SF master James Blish and published by Bantam Books back in the 1970s.

Now that book one, Second Nature, is out on shelves, my friend (and one of the co-developers of the new Star Trek: Seekers series) Dayton Ward photographed his copy of the novel beside one of his copies of the classic Blish tomes:

seekers1_blish4

This inspired a couple of fans to do likewise.

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seekers1_blish10

These results please me, so I’m inviting anyone who owns copies of the classic Blish anthologies as well as the new Seekers books to photograph them side by side and send the pictures to me. I’d love to see more of these old-and-new pairings.

#SFWApro