Cover Completed for Carlie Simonsen's 'Rocky and the Spacefarer's Rescue'

Finished the first cover for the C.M. Simpson Publishing December release schedule. One tween science fiction chapter book about Christmas and blending traditions.

EBook Cover for all Platforms

Print-on-Demand Cover

Cover Creation: Hammer and the Trolls

Hammer and the Trolls was a little difficult to dream up a cover for. In the end, I went with a variation on the opening scene, which involved Hammer, the castle and the drop ship. Because the princess is pretty central to the plot, I also needed a princess, but she couldn't be just any princess. She had to be tough and a princess, so I headed on over the Dreamstime.com and began searching.

I ended up selecting four photographs:

Tomasz Tulik supplied my tough-girl princess:

© Photographer: Zoomteam | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Aleksminyaylo1 supplied the perfect Hammer:

© Photographer: Aleksminyaylo1 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Junichi Shimazaki supplied Hammer's dropship:

© Photographer: Tsuneomp | Agency: Dreamstime.com

and

Igor Stramyk had the ideal castle:

© Photographer: Stramyk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

After that I took the following steps:

1.  Snipped the castle down to book cover size - which was a shame, because I wanted to show more of it;
2. Isolated Hammer;
3. Isolated the princess;
4. Reduced Hammer and the princess in size and arranged them on the cover.
5. Added the dropship.

The cover went through three design changes:

Hammer cover with ship in flight

Hammer cover with ship landed

Hammer cover without the ship

I decided I liked the ship on the ground, but that it needed a tiny little tweak:

Final cover for Hammer and the Trolls

Cover Completed for Hammer and the Trolls

Today, I completed the cover for C.M. Simpson's science fiction fantasy short story, Hammer and the Trolls.

In a world where trolls can invade a castle from the inside, an interstellar prince finds he’s not the only one who can fire a sun-cannon, and the princess discovers she isn’t the only one who needs rescuing.