Deceit Book Cover Final Version

December 29th, 2020

After a long (but thrilling) process, I’ve settled on a final cover for Deceit. But before we get to all the fun, let me walk you through some of the preliminaries. Let’s start with all the things that live in the pages of the D-Evolution books. If you’ve spied any of the novel descriptions, you’ll see a blurb that compares the novels to Star Wars, mixed with LOTR, sprinkled with the grit of Joe Abercrombie. Now, at the risk of sounding like a pompous douche (and I realize it’s too late at this point), that statement isn’t just pure marketing—I really do believe those elements exist in these books.

On the one hand, that makes things a lot of fun, at least, from the writing standpoint, but from the marketing side, it cooks up a bit of wonky stew. The problem when it comes to covers is painting a picture of the book’s story while still highlighting things an audience might expect visually. These books, and especially Deceit, have strong space opera roots, as well as magic, guns, swords, and advanced alien tech. Whew.

In the end, I decided on a design that uses a somewhat generalized symbol to try and capture the spirit of the book. The main element is a banner, with sigils representing the major players in the plot. For Deceit, we have the kranos signifying Dezmara and the sigil of the Dissension Army. I ripped the idea from none other than George R.R. Martin himself and a version of his A Song of Ice and Fire series, the ones with the everyday, medieval-looking bits on their fronts. Beyond the banners, there’s a galactic background for all you space lovers out there, glowing runes coming to bat for the magical side of things, and a font that I picked for no other reason than I fucking liked it.

I know, I know…enough foreplay. So, here’s the cover for Deceit. Enjoy!

-Sean