As we posted earlier, we spend a significant amount of time & effort making sure we have the best cover possible for each book we release.

We gave the extremely talented Holly Knevelbaard a sneak peak at the manuscript* and asked her to work up some ideas.

You’ve already seen one, her airplane concept.  Here’s another try:

Holly called this one “Pray” and it depicts a scene that takes place shortly after the girls manage to reach the island.

Better than the airplane idea, but not quite there yet.  The girls are too small in the image, and there’s no sense of the story itself, what they’re doing there or how they arrived in such a predicament.

So Holly took another swing at a cover idea…

*  She loves it, BTW, and says she would even if we weren’t paying her!  ;)

…it’s been a month…

Quite a month…

We’re back now, posting afresh.  This time we’ll try to avoid collisions on the Hollywood Freeway.  Hopefully that can keep us on schedule…

We’re closing in on the publication of Savage Angels, our new YA adventure novel.  Part of the process is deciding on appropriate cover art.

There’s a couple of three or four ways to go.

Solid color, with big text…

…meh.

Generic landscape photo…

…better, but still not good.

Classic pulp adventure…

…uh…yeah…right.

 I’m looking for something a little less visceral.  Savage Angels is going to be a fast paced adventure story, but I want a cover with a little more artistic sensitivity, something like…this:

Fortunately, I know an artist who can work in that style:  Holly Knevelbaard

I sent Holly an early draft of the novel after I edited the dinosaurs out.*

She started churning out ideas immediately.

Here’s one of her first roughs, based on the scene where the girls’ airplane is shot down.

I passed on this one.

Why?

Mostly technical reasons — the interior is far too modern looking & does not match what a real DC-3 cabin looks like — but a crucial point is that the story takes place mostly on a desert island, not inside an airliner.

So she took another swing at it…

…which we’ll go into in a future post.

Holly will be at San Diego Comic Con this year. 
Be sure to swing by the Christian Comic Arts Society table
and ask her about painting Harry Potter’s shorts.

*  That’s a JOKE, people…

…it’s just that sometimes we feel like this guy.