Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
I have a new book in the final final stages of editing and it’ll be ready for release sometime in November. As such, now seems like the perfect time to reveal the cover.
Allow me to introduce you to…
That’s a lot of guns, and all of them are pointed at our ragtag band of misfits!
How did this occur? Well, you’ll have to read the book, but here’s the blurb:
WAR IS DECEPTION
STORIES ARE LIES
Sellane has assembled an army of exiles, conquered her rival warlords, and carved a small protectorate from the wild frontier. For a woman born to inherit an empire, it is not enough.
A bloody misunderstanding threatens to flare into an unwinnable war with the neighbouring Kingdom of Aelland, but when their ambassador summons her to the negotiating table, Sellane spies a slim opportunity to turn this powerful new enemy into exactly the sort of friend she needs, one who will help wrest her stolen throne back from her traitorous brother.
To forge this alliance, she will have to readopt the title of crown princess and venture into the heart of an alien civilization, into a tangled web of poisonous intrigue. She’ll have to bargain with criminals, conspire with monsters, deceive princes, and most importantly of all, watch her back.
The stage is set for the tale of her restoration, but the role she must play is perilous, and all the other players are hiding very sharp knives.
Theater of Blades is roughly twice the length of book one, Troupe of Shadows, clocking in at ~200,000 words. That puts it well into “epic” length. A proper nerdy brick of a book like those you’ll find in your favourite really long fantasy series.
This is a reflection of how much more stuff happens in this installment. Troupe was a simple story. I like to think the characters and action and world building elevated it to something more just another tale about saving (sort-of) a town from bandits, but it was always meant to be small in scope.
It did, however, tease at higher stakes and more complexity on the horizon. Sellane wants to take back an entire empire and avenge herself upon its ruler. That’s the sort of ambitious goal that you can’t achieve in a weekend.
This sequel bites into the meat of the overarching story, and with that comes a lot of politics and intrigue and the occasional bit of plain old logistics. It’s darker too, as the middle chapter of a trilogy always seems to be. Don’t worry though. There’s still lots of nice touchy feely character moments and graphic violence.
I’m excited for you to read it. If you’d like a heads-up when it’s released, consider signing up to my newsletter, and if you’re interested in reviewing the book, this form can be used to request an advanced review copy*.
*If you’ve never heard of this series before, I’m also happy to send a freebie of book 1 along with any ARCs
The Cover Development Process
My previous two covers were both based on stock art. In fact, the first book’s cover was randomly assigned to me in a friendly writing competition and I worked backwards to create the story. I like them, especially considering how little they cost.
But stock art wasn’t going to cut it this time. I had some specific ideas that weren’t already going to exist on the internet, and honestly I’d been working on this book so damn long that I felt like I’d earned a little vanity.
That led me to looking into commissioning an illustration, and I just so happened to know a very talented illustrator who also just so happened to have read Troupe of Shadows. My good friend and TTRPG buddy: John Love.
I reached out to John and we chatted about what ideas I had in mind: I wanted something similar to the art style of the previous stock art style, with the silhouette-people against a colourful background (people with bright chameleonic skin is a fun concept in text but it’s kind of a nightmare for color composition) and I also had several scenes in mind as a memorable moment that sold the vibe of the story.
To illustrate how much drawing this myself was not an option, here are the initial concept sketches I provided to John.
The common themes here being surrounded and choas.
I also sent over pinterest boards stuffed with reference material for outfits, weapons, and creature design. One of the big things I wanted to sell was that the troupe is now full of juxtaposed elements. You have the frontier humans who feel like they escaped from a western, and the more typically high-fantasy qaelids, which are split into perpetually underdressed blade dancers and the armoured common troops, both of which have adopted firearms, and there’s even bird people and what not too now.
John went away and did their artist thing and this was the first thing they sent back. It was quite a detailed sketch, and also has the broad strokes of the coloring to give an idea of how the scheme would look.
It was John’s idea to make the cool back light orange to tie it into the cover of the original, and I think that was a good call. Not only does it provide that thematic link but it really compliments the greeny-blue.
Other than really nerdy stuff like making sure everyone was using the right era of firearm, one of the things we iterated on was the design of the “bird man.” He’s a small part of the cover, but a big part of the story. I wanted him to be there for readers to recognize.
Initially we had something pretty big and bulky, but I didn’t think the silhouette was distinctively “bird man” enough (which is my fault for providing very vague direction and confusing reference for this specific character).
After some back and forth I gave the direction of “if dinosaurs had evolved into people” and “he should be jacked” and that eventually transformed into this beast:
As things progressed, more specific detail was added to the various foreground characters and their composition was played around with. The design of the guard armor was so cool I wanted another one (also this balanced out the demographics).
My personal favourite part is how Zaevus, the man at the front wielding guns akimbo, turned out. He gained a lot of personality from sketch to sketch. He’ll be easy to pick out for any readers taking a look for their favourites. I don’t know about you, but that’s often what I find myself doing with covers like this.
The Dremeni Guard armor also looks great and I love how the mixture of archaic armour with a more modern weapon is super clear here.
And then there’s Sellane herself, looking badass as always. Right in the center of attention where she belongs.
For me, that was the fun part of this whole process. Getting to see some of the things I’ve described brought to life on paper.
Anyway, I enjoyed the process of seeing this cover come to life and I’m very happy with how this cover turned out. I hope the contents live up to the promise it makes the reader!
If you’d like to check out John’s other work, the best places to look are their website (https://johnlovesanimation.com/) and instagram (https://www.instagram.com/johnlovesanimation/)
Jennings Zabrinsky 