Behold, the cover for The Vastalimi Gambit, the second book in the three book Cutter's Wars series.
Pub date is 31 December 2013, so if you are staying home New Year's Eve ... ?
You can pre-order it here, or here.
I'm pretty happy with the cover, since I didn't expect to get Kay, it being photo-based like the cover for The Ramal Extraction, but Ginjer (my long-time editor) prevailed. When I pointed out that Wink–the guy in the foreground–had his finger curled around the trigger, which is not a good gun-safety thing, the art director fixed that.
Always nice to work with editors and artists who attend to the small details.
Ace is now an imprint of the megalith publisher created by the recent merger of Penguin Books and Random House, jokingly referred to as "Random Penguin," in some circles.
I like that name, Random Penguin, it has a certain ... je ne sais quoi, no?
At one point, the collection of imprint lines got pretty long as houses merged; here is a book from Ace/Berkeley/Putnam/Penguin/Random House.
And now I need to get back to finishing the third in the series, which is overdue. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one; I hope it's not an oncoming train ...
9 comments:
Oh, boy! Thanks! And I've scheduled the last of my "use it or lose it" vacation for 12/30 & 12/31 - I know what I'll be doing.
If they could only make that Mauser smaller....
The weapon actually looks like a (slightly) modified NERF Vigilon!
Cover art for weaponry is sometimes most interesting. I didn't go into great detail on the sidearms this time, so there was some room for artistic wiggle. In my mind, none of the pistols or carbines my characters carry are as big as what got depicted.
One of the problems with photo-covers is you have to work with what you can find.
When I talk about a pistol, I'm thinking something more like what Will Smith carried in I, Robot:
http://tinyurl.com/l9bhe9n
Or Harrison Ford's piece in Blade Runner. Or even Robocop's full-auto fluted barrel.
http://www.toplessrobot.com/Deckard%27s%20Detective%20Special.jpg
http://www.toplessrobot.com/Robocop%20Auto-9.jpg
Back when I came up with the spetsdöd, I did get pretty specific, and most of the illustrators who did covers for the various editions missed the mark. The Orbit Books (British edition) of The Machiavelli Interface came pretty close.
People read something and form their image of what they think it looks like. I had a reader tell me once that he was sure Khadaji had a beard. I never said he did. Part of the deal is the reader fills in his or her own details, and that includes the cover artists ...
....it looked like the broom handle grip on a Mauser pistol.
I always liked the look of the modified Sterling sub used by the Star Wars Stormtroopers.
I always thought "when" the Matador books have a movie made they would shorten up the tube on the spetsdod - I know, it wouldn't work by the nail contact then but for ease of use for the movie/actors - production wise but now they can special effect whatever they want even on the small stuff it seems.
One of the guys who had an option on the rights thought a spring-driven retractable barrel would be cool; I liked that idea; point your finger, the barrel pops out, curl your finger, it retracts.
Random Penguin is great! Phil K. Dick and Douglas Adams would have loved it.
Ford! YOU'RE A RANDOM PENGUIN, stop IT!
Actually, it is a Nerf gun. The artist on these covers has been using nerf guns as a reference for some time. You can see a nerf sniper rifle in one of the Lost Fleet books I think.
I like the retractable barrel idea.
....and Mauser Broomhandle Nerf pistol - niiice.
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