Art

I get a lot of people asking who did the cover art for Necromancer’s Gambit. Well, the culprit is a mate of mine, Oliver Flude. He’s involved with Hot Bed Press in Salford,  www.hotbedpress.org. He also has his own website: www.oliverflude.com.

The style we were going for was a sort of wood-cut/engraved effect. Quite a few readers like it. However, some readers don’t like it too much, and the central buyer for Waterstone’s said he would have preferred a white cover rather than black. Apparently, white covers are all the rage at the mo when it comes to fantasy books. The fashion was started by Trudi Cavanagh’s ‘The Magician’s Guild’ trilogy. All of Terry Brooks’s books have just been reprinted in white instead of black.

Oliver Flude did my cover for free, bless him. He also did a great comic book version of Necromancer’s Gambit, which you can see below. You’ll notice that the name of each chapter is next to each picture. You may also notice that the chapter titles run together in one continuous sentence that tells its own story. Few people spot that as they’re reading the book!

necromanga-comic

Update. Ollie the artist has just started doing some sketches for the cover of book 2 (Necromancer’s Betrayal). Here’s a sketch he did of Strap. What do y’all think?

Update, March 2009. Oops. A few die-hard fans have said that the picture of Strap above is neither young enough or handsome enough. Oh dear. I’ve told Ollie he has no option but to read the book if he’s going to get it right. He sighed at that. Temperamental artists. Maybe I should get another one. I met a nice guy at Borders Gateshead who bought a copy of Necromancer’s Gambit and sent me a link to his fantasy art site: www.amarnaru.com. What do you all think?

Update, April 2009. And here’s a great drawing done by my friend in Preston, Becs Alcock, age 7 years old…

Update, May 2009. Very excited. Ollie the artist has just done a preliminary sketch of the cover of Necromancer’s Betrayal. He’s made Strap younger, as per the feedback of some readers. I’ve told him the sketch isn’t dark enough (along with some other things), so he’ll do another one (I hope). I’d also welcome comments from readers of the site!!! By the way, the cover of book 2 will be white, unless there are loads of howls of protest from fans.

Update, 30 May 2009. Okay, here’s the pencil version of the cover to Necromancer’s Betrayal! Small changes will be made as Ollie does the final version in charcoal (or whatever it is he uses).

 

Update, 6 May 2009. Hurrah! Ollie’s finished the cover art. Sent to the publisher now.

Update, 24 Jan 2010. Happy days! Ollie has just done a first draft of the cover for Necromancer’s Fall: Book Three of the Flesh & Bone Trilogy. It’s not perfect (Kate needs sexing up, Mordius needs to wear something other than a night dress, and so on), but the shape’s definitely there. Great to see it taking shape. Feedback from all you readers if you have time? The cover will be blood red for this one!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update, 20 Feb 2010. Cool. Ollie’s just done a new version of the cover of Necromancer’s Fall. You  can see it by clicking on the page called ‘the flesh and bone trilogy’ and then selecting ‘necromancer’s fall’.

Update, 7 April 2012. Well, Empire of the Saviours will be released a month or so from now. Good ol’ Oli did the cover art, but the publisher Gollancz decided they wanted to go with a Portuguese artist called Andreas Rocha instead. I still secretly prefer Oli’s cover. Oops, did I say that out loud?

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