Well, after a lot of back and forth and fine-tuning the concept art because of how finnicky I am and how my mind kept coming up with new ideas based on different concepts that she was demonstrating, my cover artist Emily Jackson came up with fantastic cover art for They Came in Peace; the book is now available on preorder wherever books or ebooks are sold.
This post is all about Emily; she’s dedicated and hardworking, very creative, and I just can’t cheer her on, enough.
The cover art for this edition is inspired by the idea I’d had for the cover art for the first print run, which showed the Earth behind an occulting shadow; I was never 100% happy with how the original cover art turned out, and so I asked Emily to put her own spin on it. She was the one who came up with the idea of showing the ship…and it blew me away. Originally she’d sketched a silhouette that looked like a Klingon battle cruiser and I was just mind-blown. We’ve refined it to the image we’re colloquially calling the “Space Thumbtack” and I think it’s awesome AF.
Emily is, like me, an indie artist. Unlike me, a writer, her illustration turnaround time is a lot faster. I worked with her for months, thinking she was doing all the sketches with one of those computer pad and pen thingies…No…SHE DOES HER CONCEPT ART ON PAPER AND GRAPHITE – like the Old Masters before her!
Which means she cut me a deal as far as her costs go while hand-drawing each sketch she showed me. This is the HAND-DRAWN SKETCH that ultimately became the book’s cover:
And this is the finished cover:
Emily is also open to new contracts, and so I would be remiss if I didn’t leave her contact details, below. In fact, I asked her permission to write up this post, because the creator comes first. And she’s more than willing to take up any traffic this meager blog and its following might generate.
You can find samples of her work at:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rlJyWJ
And contact her here:
artworkbyemily1@gmail.com