First draft of the cover on the left, final version on the right. Click on the image to see Ashton’s Instagram reveal.

 

November Update

New cover

Ashton’s first draft of the cover is on the left, and the final version is on the right.

Click on the image to see Ashton’s lovely reveal video on Instagram. I saw her working to have her designs reach a wider audience, and asked her if she’d be interested in doing ‘Serpent Princess’ for me and she nailed it.

Things to notice – the ‘glowing orbs in the sword’ thing really didn’t work so we took them out. I asked her to make the swords more narrow and deadly-looking, and she really nailed that! She chose the fonts because the S’s look like snakes (genius). The snake has moved up in the second version so its head is clear of my name, and the background colour is lighter so that we can see the ‘coral reef’ backdrop more clearly. (There’s a marine turtle on the back cover because of course there is).

She’s done a full hardcover version with a sprayed edge design as well, and the yellow parts will be foiled in a special edition. Did I mention that I’m delighted? I’m delighted.

Editing

The novel itself is with my editor, who is providing terrific feedback – as she hasn’t read the rest of the series. So far she doesn’t appear to have any issues with following along, which is a relief.

We are running smack into some cultural issues, such as the below comment:

This is more an issue with capitalisation of his name than anything. She’s nearly done, and when she is, I can give Ashton the final page count and the blurb (I think the tagline will be ‘She saved the world. Now what?’) and I can have a good idea about a release date. I will keep you updated!