Tag Archives: Cover Art

Werewolf – In Space!

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Of Monsters and MainframesOf Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At the risk of putting a spoiler right up front…

Space werewolf with a robot arm. That checks a lot of boxes as a friend of mine once said.

This is an interesting look at monster movie stories in space. The author clearly has a lot of all the classics. It would be very easy to see this being converted into a movie. The vision here is quite cinematic.

That being said, there were parts of the story that seemed to lean on the ‘movie magic’ thing. It was hard to tell how big certain things were in the story as described. Either they were multiple sized or changed size or were somehow just right for wherever they were needed.

In all this took time to get into but was really enjoyable! Would recommend.



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This was also a Watch The Skies selection and I couldn’t resist a really fun image for the fanzine cover art:

Rabbits

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Rabbits (Rabbits, #1)Rabbits by Terry Miles

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Really enjoyed this one! A great head bending story.

I was shocked to discover the main character was specifically designed to not have gender identifying aspects. I read the story as if the main character was male, but other members of my book group did not. Turns out that was done with purpose and I think that’s fantastic.

There were a number of places in the story that reminded me of the old movie Time Cop. The person comes back to the “now” and nobody else remembers the “was”. I would enjoy seeing this as a movie or limited series!



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Since this was a selection for Watch The Skies, this is the fanzine cover I created, along with two alternate versions.

There was also one part in the book where a van screeches up to the curb and the door slides open in front of the main character, and all I could think was, “You can’t fool me… I get the candy *first*…”

This was the first alternate:

And this was the second alternate:

Black Leopard, not read wolf~

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I put this work into the same category as I do many other works that win awards for reasons beyond my understanding. I don’t get it. I am clearly not the right audience for this work. Part of my dislike is the writer’s style. Part of my dislike is the sexual violence. Part of my dislike is the main character… I just don’t connect. I gave this more than one shot, but just never got past about chapter 4 or 5.

I will say this title did provide for interesting discussion among the members of our club. Interesting discussion is about as far as I can recommend it.



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Something I did not add to my Goodreads review is the artwork I created based on whatever inspiration I could find in the portion of the book I did read. The visuals of this mystic tree and following various forms of a being through the mist did help me create this work. It was also nice that I got some small amount of feedback on the art. IF I can create something and it provides enough of a mood or a feeling that you are compelled to comment that’s a good sign.

Cover Piece

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I’m still squeezing in time to do graphic work for Watch The Skies. This was the cover of the July fanzine. Normally I go for some kind of image inspired directly from the work, but I hadn’t gotten far enough by the deadline, so I worked to come up with something more abstract.

Process and Choices

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Along with writing, running games and creating stories I still create art. Well ‘art’ is a strong word, but I still make covers for Watch The Skies. At this point I know I’ve done more than 200 different pieces. Working and reworking those covers is a process. I’ve gotten a lot better and a lot faster at the process over time, but there are still a series of choices that have to be made each time. Sometimes I create options for the covers that never see the light of day. This month was an example of my method and I thought it would be a good idea to post up a couple of the options just for the sake of seeing the process. 

 When I’m working with photos in particular for any of the things that I’m creating, I often will use various filters through the computer to make these pictures look more seamless than they really are after I’ve compiled all the pieces. I know that using filters isn’t necessarily the same as drawing and/or painting with color to create the same effect, but given a shortened time frame the computerized tools are generally the option I need to go with.

 Here are a couple of alternates that I created for this month’s cover of our Fanzine.

Copies for each variation. I'm still partial to the neon in the bottom left corner.

Hopefully seeing these variations and knowing that there were other covers, other pieces that were attempted and discarded would help anyone who’s looking at the process of others in order to inform their own working steps. Creating a draft for writing is essentially the same thing. Computers are fantastic for copies. You have the ability to create a thing, then take that base and start again in a different direction. Running multiple iterations until you find the one that you think will work can be a long process. I think that could be an interesting discussion topic actually – how many iterations of a thing are you comfortable with before you put it out where the public can see it?

Still Making Art

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A lot of what I’ve done in the recent past has been more illustration or collage, but I am still working on making art. It’s taking time to get the creative battery charged up, but it’s going.

This piece was inspired by an AI driven teddy bear nanny bot using a mini-gun in a recent Watch The Skies book selection. It was originally published in Watch The Skies, the January 2025 edition.

Night Winds

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The first book of Kane.

Night Winds by Karl Edward Wagner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is another foray into old school sword and sorcery for me. I have this paperback series on the shelf. I read them many years ago and I recall that I was super impressed with them back when I read them in the 80s. I was happy to see these books were available in e-reader format since I didn’t want to take the chance that I might damage the old books.

There are two parts to this review. The writing and the covers.

First – while I understand that matching Frazetta’s isn’t going to happen, the gay romance cover art really set me off. That pose, the terrible sword, the wrong color hair… it was genuinely off putting. Romance photo shoot guy is clearly muscular enough, but it’s just all wrong. At least get a darker background? The cover is so far off from the book it became a distraction.

So, the writing. I understand why I liked them when I read them as a youth. A powerful character who was more than just brawn. Planning, maneuvering, striking only when the time was right and then overpowering the enemies – exactly the sort of thing I would be drawn to.

Reading these stories now, as a more mature reader, I see where they fit in their time. Much like the Black Company (finished and reviewed recently) it is an example of the times. Casual misogyny, rape, murder and misdeeds fill the book. There are mutilations, revenge and horrible deaths. Kane, the cursed man traveling through these various stories seems… less invincible than he did when I read him as a youth. It also feels like there should be more of his curse, some evidence of his longevity more than speculation and hints.

I wanted to be more enthusiastic about this series upon rereading it, but it just fell short. Still good. Still an excellent example of old school sword and sorcery, just not as ‘amazing’ as I remembered. Worth reading if you want to dig into that old school stuff.



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Seriously – between the two? I’m taking the one on the left every single time.

Cover Me

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I spent my evening at the monthly meeting of my local science fiction (and fantasy) fan/reading group tonight. We’re about to wrap up our 26th? year. We’ve been at it a long time. One of the things we’ve been doing during that time is creating a monthly fanzine.

There was a time when I was very bitter that we were clearly eligible for winning a Hugo award in the fanzine category and could never gain any traction, even with our own members. That eventually slid into disappointment more than bitterness, and then into happiness that we weren’t tied to scandals and terrible nonsense.

These days, we keep creating the fanzine because it’s a small thing that brings us joy. A few dozen ‘subscribers’ and a way to get some relatable content out to our friends. Yes, we’re still eligible to win a Hugo but I’m no longer certain it’s a thing we would want.

Jeff dug up some physical copies of old covers. For many years we had an actual, printed paper copy to hand out live and in person to anyone showing up for the meeting. These old pages showed me a variety of the kind of artwork I’ve done over the years. A lot of what I saw here was cringeworthy. Some of them I like to this day.

I don’t post as much about my art here these days in part because there’s less of it than there used to be. I just don’t have the same amount of time I did before. There are so many things to do in this world that sometimes I lose track and don’t create as much art as I’d like. Even the cringey stuff. Gotta break some eggs and all that.

I suggest doing art. Create something. Save it if you like OR give it to somebody. Someday it might come back to you so you can see how far you have come.

Kaiju Trees

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Sometimes the fun part of coming up with cover art for the fanzine each month is trying to figure out what an alien landscape will look like. Sometimes that’s the most daunting part as well. What if it’s not described well? What if your vision is absolutely NOT what the author had in mind?

This month Watch The Skies is reading Kaiju Preservation Society by Scalzi.

Spoiler alert – there are different trees in this novel… and I had fun making them. Here’s a background preview of this month’s cover:

Still Watching

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We’re closing in on the end of the 23rd year of the fan group Watch The Skies. It’s been an amazing run and I genuinely hope it rolls at least another 23 years or more.

We still publish a fanzine each month and I still get the opportunity to make cover art for the various issues. The August book we were discussing was called Paradox Hotel. I liked the visual concept of various versions of the hotel being slightly out of focus with each other. A blurry filter over the camera lens. I pulled together some images and set to work. Here’s the cover for the August issue: