Cover for No Way to Start a War

I’ve settled into a general approach to cover art for the TCOTU series.  In a nutshell, my goal for each cover is simply to:

  1. Choose a text color to use everywhere the book is promoted.
  2. Choose an image that conveys the emotion or elements of the book.
  3. Have a title, a tagline, my name, and the Book # in the series.

For This Corner of the Universe (see the cover over on the Series page), I think the image has a certain isolated feel, and green of the text and image has the abstract meaning of being new or inexperienced.  That applied both to Garrett Heskan and to me I suppose.  Contrast this to the cover of No Way to Start a War:

Cover Reveal

Cover Reveal

It is turbulent, chaotic and multi-colored.  As I’ve said elsewhere, Book 2 has a very different feel than Book 1, and the cover art reflects the change in tone.  There is a lot of turmoil in the second book, among warring parties and within the Brevic fleet.

As for an update on the book itself, my wife just did her final continuity check.  This week I’ll be re-reading the manuscript for the second to last time, trying to catch any final errors.  Then Karen puts it into Kindle format, we side-load it onto our devices, and test the formatting and yes, give it a final read.  Nook formatting is easy once the Kindle format is done.

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Marketing Copy for No Way to Start a War

September will be a busy month, with the majority of my time spent on the final sprint to complete No Way to Start a War for its October release.  I have all of the comments and typo catches back from my beta readers, and this week I’ve started my final edits on the manuscript based on their feedback.  I truly am lucky to have the team that I do; they are making the final result of each book so much better.

We’ve also started thinking about the marketing side of things. This past weekend my wife updated the marketing blurb for This Corner of the Universe on Amazon, and we’ve written the draft for No Way to Start a War as well.  Without further ado, here’s what NWTSAW is about:

Garrett Heskan isn’t sure which is worse… going to war against the Hollarans while commanding an untested starship, or reporting to Lt. Commander Durmont.

Lieutenant Heskan knows his destroyer escort, BRS Kite, must protect the fleet carriers assigned to Durmont’s escort squadron, but with his ill-prepared ship, the squadron’s arrogant commander and the fledgling nature of stellar aviation, Heskan’s work is cut out for him.  What starts out as a simple Brevic attack into the Hollaran Commonwealth soon becomes a fight for survival in a series of battles that could alter the balance of power in the known universe.  Conflicts abound in No Way to Start a War, between fleets, leaders, and cultures.

Author’s Note: This is Book 2 in the This Corner of the Universe series, continuing the story of the original crew of BRS Anelace.  If you want to start from the beginning, you can find Book 1 here: (link)

We may tweak this a bit before it’s posted on Amazon and B&N in October, but the gist is there.  As I’ve said before, Book 2 will be different than Book 1.  We go from a single, small ship to fleet actions, Durmont gets significant page time, and … did someone say carriers?  It’s brand new technology for the Brevic navy, and perhaps learning how to use them in the middle of war wasn’t the best idea.

Stay tuned for more updates in September as No Way to Start a War inches its way to a final release date.

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Indie Book of the Day, Aug. 27th

I received a nice note this morning informing me that This Corner of the Universe is today’s Indie Book of the Day over at IBD!  Looks like another nice site to browse and support indie authors, and I thank them for the mention.  I’ve emailed them back asking permission to add their site in my list of sites supporting indie authors (which is on my Fiction Links page along with a list of scifi authors I’ve connected with).

IBD Award

TCOTU’s first award!

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