Maelstrom Cover #1: Kelli Owen’s Six Days

I’ve been lucky over the past few weeks to get to work with the fantastic Thunderstorm Books. I’ve been working on three books for their Maelstrom imprint, beginning with tonight’s showcase, the cover for author Kelli Owen’s Six Days.

For me, this first book is special because it’s Kelli’s first novel. As she and others have said online, you only get one first novel, and I wanted to make sure that cover had good art on it.

The biggest challenge was that most of the book takes place in pitch black darkness.

Now, being a smartass, I was tempted to send them a full black cover with black text on it ( a la AC/DC’s Back in Black cover). But I decided to play it safe, and come up with something a bit more accurate. Here’s what it looks like (click on it for the larger version).

I don’t think I really have a “style” per se, I tend to just sit down and run with it. In this case, my procedures are fairly typical for what I would do. There are many painted effects for the girl, and plenty of reworked textures in the wall and on the girl.

I thought the red would “pop” on the cover, and I think it works well. I wanted to keep the mystery as much as I could, yet still showcase her in the image.

Here’s a closeup of what she looks like, and the hashmarks on the wall next to her that are important to the story.

Hopefully, as with all covers, I hope that I’ve both captured the story and made the person looking at the cover want to read it. That’s the trick with covers really, it’s not just a cool piece of art that the artist needs to shoot for, but something that intrigues and grabs the viewer so that they pick up the book.

Opinions?