AARGH, the cover artist is WAY OUT IN FRONT. This book so far exists just as a few pages of notes and a deep desire to get to it.
I’ve only just started working on SILVER CIRCLE! And LOOK at this lovely cover!
It says Book Nine because I’m probably going to do the Sinowa / Marag prequel first. I bet I’ll get that cover in a few weeks or a month and I will just have to file it, along with this cover, because it’s going to be AGES before I’ve got a draft and can put the book up for preorder.
In the meantime, here, you can all now look forward to a book with this cover.
I asked for a cat on this cover quite a while ago, before my own kittens turned up, but now that decision amuses me a little. You know, I’ve watched innumerable puppies grow up, and they’re baby carnivores and you can tell they have carnivore instincts. Of course they do. But spaniel behavior is so modified that what draws attention is the natural retrieve and the attraction to people and so on. Baby cats? Are pure little carnivores. It’s so deeply entertaining to watch these teensy little predators tackle each other with their teensy little fangs and claws. They’re quite gentle, actually. I haven’t even bothered to trim their claws yet.
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That is a stunning composition. The sunset (sunrise?), the cat’s eyes, the birds, the town, the palette. It all comes together beautifully.
I do wonder if the buildings would be illuminated in the front that way if the sun is behind them. Two suns?
Well, Robert, I haven’t explicitly declared where this town is, so sure, it’s hereby at the edge of the southern borderlands and there you go, two suns.
Excellent!
Wow, that’s a lovely cover! (And hurrah for more books in the Tuyo world!)
Ooh lovely. Is this the book I’ve been thinking of as “Stab stab stab”? Really hoping for that one.
That is indeed a most beautiful cover – as are all of them. Looking forward to it for whenever it gets written!
That’s a lovely cover!
And I can see the observation about the cats hunting instincts being even stronger, though I’ve only had cats in my homes. For dogs I think the group/family pack or troop behaviour is really the strongest, and then the hunting instinct; but for cats it’s all about the hunting (and conserving energy in between).
Even my mostly indoor cats who have never learned to hunt to kill have that need to pounce and sprint after things for a bit, and to focus patiently on anything that rustles and moves, before pouncing and maybe wrestling.
Kristi, yep, this is the Stab Stab Stab story!
I would pay for a high quality signed (by artist and you?) print of this. I’d have it mounted and framed on my wall. Hint hint. Actually of some of the other Tuyo book covers too. Does the artist have a website?
Nanette, they do, but I don’t see any of mine in their portfolio right now. It’s
https://trifbookdesign.com/
And I guess I should ask them about prints!
trifbookdesign really should include your covers. The stuff they have up is great, but it would never enter my head, from their portfolio, to do covers like yours.
Nanette, I agree! When I actually asked them for the first TUYO cover, it’s because they had great landscape in some other cover. All their covers now look like UF or something. I don’t know if they rotate through the covers they’ve done or whether a ton more people are interested in just UF style covers or what, but yes, I do agree!
That’s gorgeous. I agree: they should make prints available of your covers.
Out of curiosity, what did you tell them you wanted? Have they read any of the Tuyo series, or are all the covers just based on your instructions and feedback?
I sent them a picture of a town and said I’d like a town kind of like that plus an Abyssinian cat. They know I like plenty of scenery and sky. As far as I know, they’ve never read anything; it’s all based on feedback while working on the first book cover, the one on TUYO. They do whatever they want that fits the style of the series and then sometimes I ask for changes. You may remember, for TANO, I asked for a pony that looked more like a primitive type, less pretty, than the horse they put on the first version of the cover.
In this case, I didn’t say “turn everything gold!” — they chose how to do it. For the first time, I didn’t ask for any changes at all. I really liked the first draft.
For MARAG, which I expect probably to write before RIHASI, I asked for a forest and a full moon. That will be like the cover for SUELEN, where the sun took the place of an animal. And I asked quite a while ago, by the way, because they stack up way in advance these days.
Great cover!
You know, maybe they are secretly reading the series? That gold cover with cat design is just perfect. They have all been great for conveying atmosphere.