Now that the first draft of Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is done, I can let it marinate for a few days before I return to polish it up for Beta readers. Meantime, I can cleanse my palate and concentrate on other matter like cover art. Here’s the third or fourth draft. I know what direction I’m looking for. I was thinking of commissioning a cover, but I might just go it on my own.
I think I’m going with an 9″ x 6″ form factor, so this would be the aspect ratio. I used OpenAI’s Dall-E 3 to render the eyes as well as the overlay with Greek characters. I may have made it too transparent, so I might need to pull it up a few clicks.
Interesting enough, I am compositing in PowerPoint of all things and exporting to PNG. I usually use Paint Shop Pro, but this may be good enough. I still need to compose the back cover and the spine.
My paginated draft comes in at about 320 pages. It was 256 unpaginated pages. There are 38 chapters, and each chapter begins on an odd page number. The facing page is always blank. This creates a lot of blank pages. I could render some line art on the facing pages, but I’m not taking that option at this point. Probably won’t.
My goal for the cover (as might everyone) is to catch a potential reader’s eye and signal something about the content. In this case, the Hemo Sapiens have violet eyes, so I thought that would make a unique image hook. The are open (obviously) to capture the Awakening aspect. The Greek letters on the overlay represent the science aspect. There are 5 versions of Hemo Sapiens so far, named Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon by their creator. I’ve highlighted those characters in a blood red.
Speaking of blood, this is obviously captured in the colour choice and the dripping font of the subtitle. This is also reflected in the stylised O, but I don’t wish to explain the significance of the stylisation now.
As is the entire cover still in progress, so is the treatment of the title as I am playing with a few options. The novel is set in the near future, 2045, so I was thinking of conveying a future with a silver font face, but the gold felt somehow warmer. I wanted to hint at the dystopian angle by distressing the letters.
So, there’s my confession. If you have any comments on the design, I’d love to read them—for better and for worse.
Ridley Park 