Wednesday 19 October 2016

Fifth Astronomicon #scifi Novel out now

Fans of science fiction and followers of the Astronomicon series of novels will be pleased to hear that there is now a second standalone novel set in the ever-expanding Astronomicon universe, bringing the total number to five.
Front cover of Astronomicon: Deadline

This fifth novel is a departure in style from the previous ones. Its subject matter is lighter, the scenario humorous and the events bordering on farcical. I would not go so far as to categorise it as a comedy but it is strongly leaning that way.

It follows four weeks in the lives of an out-of-work life-support systems engineer and a failed journalist. Starting out in the huge mining community on the moons of Jupiter, they need to get home to Earth within four weeks to meet their respective deadlines.

Life always has a way of being more complicated than you expect and they did not expect an alien intruder, pirates, a covert government agency and some unexpected frozen corpses to get in their way!

Buy the whole e-book on Amazon now.

Tuesday 1 March 2016

Revamped Front Cover for Those Left Behind

This month I am unveiling the new front cover design for Astronomicon: Those Left Behind. It's long overdue, but finally ready.

One thing I've learned is that it’s not only vitally important for a book cover to be eye-catching. It’s also critical that it works well and remains clear when displayed at a huge variety of sizes. The previous cover for Astronomicon: Those Left Behind did not fulfil either of those aims properly.

The image itself was excellent, a huge, planetary scale detonation viewed from orbit, but the layout of the titles was just too small and cluttered to work at smaller sizes.

The new design, shown above, works right down to thumbnail size, has more visual impact and generally looks more polished. I hope you all like it.

You may notice that I have also tweaked the colour-scheme and texture of the font used for the titles. The font itself is too good to lose, but I have felt for a while now that the gold colour was simply too vibrant. It may have been eye-catching, but it was straying into tacky. Hopefully the new finish is a little more tasteful and has a more dramatic feel to it. Of course now I’m going to have to modify all my other book covers to match!