(The first person who gets the inside joke I’m making in the blog post title and posts the answer in the com­ments sec­tion, gets their choice of any book I’ve done signed and mailed to them).

Fan­tasy Fac­tion did an exclu­sive reveal of the cover of the British edi­tion of CONTROL POINT the other day. It’s by the dig­ital pho­tog­raphy artist Larry Ros­tant, who also did the amazing cover of Peter V. Brett’s The Desert Spear, which is one of my favorite covers in fan­tasy. I’m also super for­tu­nate to have Pete’s *awe­some* jacket quote on both covers.

It has a totally dif­ferent feel from the US edi­tion of the book, done by another artist I greatly admire, Michael Komarck. Komarck has been illus­trating book covers for many novels and also did a lot of the inte­rior art in my favorite role-playing games (including Shadow Run and D&D).

Here are the two covers, side by side:

US Cover

UK Cover

I have to admit, I feel like I won the lot­tery with both of these covers. The Komarck image is action packed and exciting. The Ros­tant image is moody, evoca­tive and iconic.

In both cases, the gear is right, with both artists willing to accept a *lot* of tech­nical detailed guid­ance from me and able to repro­duce it on the cover. I love that Oscar Britton is front and center for both. It’s so amazing to see a person I’ve known for so long on my imag­i­na­tion become flesh and blood through someone else’s art.

What’s really fas­ci­nating for me is the notion that dif­ferent national audi­ences have dif­ferent expec­ta­tions for covers. British audi­ences may find the US cover too … comic-booky. US audi­ences may find the British cover too … staid. Or maybe I’m totally off base. The exciting part is this: the dif­ferent covers remind me that my work is stretching across dif­ferent cul­tures, reaching dif­ferent sets of people with dif­ferent sets of expe­ri­ences and expec­ta­tions, miles apart.

Here’s hoping they love the story as much as I love the artwork.