The title is "Half Way Home." It's about a group of young colonists on a faraway planet. In the future, where hyperspace and suspended animation are the stuff of science fiction, distant planets are colonized by mostly-automated operations. While landing machines spend thirty years preparing a base of operations, 500 colonists are grown from blastocysts in training vats. Under normal circumstances, they emerge at age thirty with each of them fully trained in their slated occupation. The first thing each colony AI must decide is if its target planet is even viable. If so, it begins the colonial process. If not, the entire operation is aborted. The odds are 50/50, which isn't bad when the spoils of conquest are entire planets. Each colony is therefore seen as a coin-flip, with "viable" printed on one side and "abort" on the other. What was never planned for was a coin that landed on its edge. One that teeters between these two designations. Half Way Home is about just such a colony. Our protagonist is drug out of his training to find the colony on fire, the abort procedure begun, then terminated. The colonists are only 15 years old and have received only half their training. Less than sixty of them survive that first day, leaving a ragtag group of ill-equipped teens to determine what is up with their planet. And what their fate will be... Here's an idea for the cover: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
We have a Skald in the forums. It sounds alright, but that cover isn't my cup of tea, maybe a colonized planet with the sun reflecting behind it...
I love the concept, but the cover art seems like a treehouse or a fairytale. Try something like an image taken where you are maybe a hundred or so feet high, you can see the curvature of the planet and nearby there are trees everywhere, you see the siluhuette of a tree trunk and a teenager standing on a Y fork of the tree and one of it's branches fifty feet in the air. And as you look over the horizon you see a wasteland, maybe a volcano or frozen mountain, and you see a sunrise just coming up.
It looks too sedate, while the theme of the novel suggests chaos, venturing into an unknown world with no proper preparation.
Thanks for the feedback, guys. It seems all of you had the same complaint, that the tree felt a bit too whimsical or child-like. Here's another take: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
No, the tree paintings are done by Graeme Belchin, an Australian artist I'm collaborating with on these covers. The border art is from a scanned book. All I'm doing is putting the pieces together, scaling everything the way I like, and adding the font.
Its too bright, your summation suggests chaos and a dificult world, this cover seems to be something literally taken out of a dream.
Better? Which one is best? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Last is best, the others look like children's books. They are very good covers but not for adult scifi. But the last looks more like a poster for a horror movie.
The last is good, but I'd still prefer a cover with killer vegetation; the vegetation is blood-red and you can see people wrapped in it, with blood flowing out, but... that might be too gory.
I've got a great gore scene in this book. I read part of it to my wife last night and she made me stop. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!