Making of the, "Land of Giants," Cover Art.

The latest book, "Land of Giants,"  is finally up and available on Amazon.  I know it has been a long time between drinks when it comes to my novels, but it is worth it, I assure you!

This novel is $2.99US as a Kindle book.  There are 438 pages in the print edition, a very good length of novel, so it is well worth the money.  It is amazing how often I have bought a Kindle book, started reading, and realised that it was more like a short-story length.  Not this one!

As usual for my novels, this book is a story of friendship, love, courage, growth, humour, magic, and of course adventure!   Add in a lot more music, plenty more amazing beasts, and a trip to a new country in that other dimension where Vikings still rule. My first readers tell me it is a very hard book to put down, especially towards the end.    

To do the cover, I really wanted a bit of an action shot, but I didn't want to give away too much of the story either.   I had a couple of ideas at first but soon settled on a scene from early in the book, with Andy and Lem sailing to rescue Lily, Perry and Bu.  

Having decided on the scene I wanted to portray, it was time to do some thumbnails to see if my ideas would work.  My first idea of having Archelon, the giant prehistoric turtle, come up the front side of the boat didn't work because he obscured things too much.

 

 
 So I put him behind the boat and started scribbling to see if it could work that way.

Heh, he looks a bit too happy in that one, but I could see that the idea was possible, so I kept drawing.

  
Until I had a design I could work from for the final piece.

        
So then it was at a stage where I could pull out the watercolour paper and draw it for (hopefully) the last time.

And ink it with indelible ink.

And draw and ink the plush-crested Jay on the back cover.  The Jay makes an appearance in the story a couple of times, and I thought he would be a great addition on the cover.  Don't worry, Bu the cheeky dog is still in the story, but she wasn't on the boat so I couldn't draw her there.    

I'm so sorry, I totally forgot to take stage pics while painting.  Again!  I do get so very involved, I forget. A any rate, here it is, all done.

 
Then it was time to scan the final art and decide how to crop the page for best effect with the text. After that I added in the titles and the blurb on the back, which went really smoothly this time around.  Yay!

What do you think?  Does it make you want to read the book?  I hope so!  It's a stand-alone story so you can certainly read it without having read, "Land of Fire," first, but you very well might want to go back and read the first book when you finish this one.  :D