People invariably judge a book by its cover. And although I loved the original covers for the books in my Stoneslayer series, others did not.
Book marketing experts told me that the previous covers did not adequately convey the books’ dark high fantasy genre. And some reviewers agreed.
Several times, I have looked through Amazon at the covers for books in the same genre as Stoneslayer. Very in your face. They scream at you graphically and grab you by the throat. Look here! Not there, here!
That puts me off. I must have been a cat in some lifetime because if someone orders me to do something, I balk. Not out of spite (necessarily), but because I’m just not that into obedience, blind or otherwise.
Kinda like Helen Andros, the first-generation heroine of my series. (She really was a lousy soldier thanks to that tendency to ignore orders.)
Stoneslayer’s first book covers invited instead of commanded readers’ attention. They hinted at what’s in the pages rather than blast it out at full volume. They did not screech. They whispered.
This is not, however, an era of nuance or subtlety. Even book lovers apparently expect to a book cover to stage a silent attention assault. They aren’t sure how to respond to one that beckons instead.
Sigh. Bring on the demon. It causes so much trouble in Stoneslayer it must be good for something. Like attention and conveying a genre.
My series spans four generations of strong-willed women. Think of the demon as lurking in the first cohort. It emerges in the second. It rampages in the third and annihilates in the fourth generation.
Fun, no?
See the difference for yourself. The original Stoneslayer Book One Scandal cover is to the left while the tweaked cover is on the right:
Maybe you don’t like the change. It unsettles me but that’s the demon effect, I guess.
That lurking demon will go on the covers of all six books that chronicle Helen’s lifetime before moving to the next generation. (The fourth book in the series, Outcast, will be published later this summer.)
Then the darkness will spread across the covers and inside on the pages as the demon arises and more people suffer. Will the denizens of Azgard choose a different path or hurry on down the road to perdition?
About Candace Lynn Talmadge
Candace Lynn Talmadge is a USA-based author of dark high fantasy about political intrigue, demonic warfare, and spiritual awakening. Get a free excerpt from Stoneslayer Book One Scandal when you sign up for her free author newsletter on her Substack channel, Wider Realities.
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