My friend Tim Denee, he of the epic Saga of Bronzemurder fame, read book one, and was inspired to do me a cover!

I love this for a lot of reasons and think it’s genuinely brilliant. I had this idea in my head of commissioning a Michael Wheelan cover or something at some point when I’m more liquid, but as soon as I saw this I knew my idea was rubbish.

First, Tim’s work here is visually stark and distinct from any other fantasy novels out there. It’s not an illustration, it’s a design. I recently joined a writing forum and many of the folks there are published authors and have images of their covers in their posts and one thing I notice is while they’re very good, very nicely put together, they do all look very samey. In the case of certain genres, and here I include mine, that’s obviously the point. An Urban Fantasy cover says first “I am an Urban Fantasy novel” and, presumably, “I am an Urban Fantasy novel you have not read!” Which is an important piece of data for many readers who are just looking for “one I haven’t read.”

But I neither feel like Priest is typical, nor do I want people to think of it as genre fantasy, meaning “recognizably fantasy.” I feel like the work stands out, and I want the cover to stand out and this does that 100%.

Secondly, the composition is a little bit of brilliance. It’s not green by accident. The font and font treatment are, as a friend described it when I showed it to her, “macho.” That’s…you know that’s a pretty good description of the tone of the book. “Lots of tough-guy dialog” was one of my goals. It looks and feels very like a Western, which is  a perfect tone reference and a great little bit of juxtaposition.

Finally the elk skull on the cover does an extremely subtle job of communicating what happens in the book, what actually happens. The knights Heden is sent to investigate all have these real, elaborate, elk-horns fixed to their helms. When Heden sees one on horseback for the first time, he thinks he’s seeing an “Elgenwight,” or an elk-centaur. Because of the huge antlers jutting out from the knight’s helm.

Not only is stuff like this a real reward for the work I’ve done, not only does it inspire me to keep writing, it inspires me to be a better writer. It makes me think “what will the cover of Thief look like, and am I writing a book that good?”

I deeply enjoyed Tim’s reaction; “I don’t read fantasy, usually, and I can’t help being suspicious of self-published authors, so I started your book from a very wary and cynical viewpoint. And I enjoyed fuck out of it, read it in a couple of days.”

He also described it as “lean and compassionate” which is maybe the best thing anyone’s said about the book.

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