Monthly Archives: December 2014

D’mok Revival: Descension’s cover design

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The pressure was on. The Awakening had a fantastic cover. I loved the nebula and the arachnid-like space station. Then came the incredible visualization of the asteroid base for Retribution’s cover. After two amazing starts, I fretted about how to keep the trend going–even topping the previous ones!

What to put on the third cover? It had to be visually striking, invoke an emotion. I thought about the core story of the third book, and the tension slowly building over the course of the trilogy. Inspiration struck! It was obvious. I had to show the Nukari armada.  I smiled as a vision appeared in my mind.
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I scrawled down the image on a scrap of envelope paper.  Now, for those that have not read the third book yet, this is NOT a spoiler for the following reasons: 1) their armada has been threatening since the first book, 2) the back cover tells you the armada comes out swinging, 3) the prolog at the beginning of the book talks about the armada and a gateway being built.  I won’t provide any spoilers or additional information about the scene than what I just mentioned.

Now, beyond the general descriptions of Nukari ships, no rendered versions of their vessels existed!  If I wanted to display them, we needed a design. Then there was the gate. There were aspects mentioned in the book, but nothing out-rightly specific about the visuals. It’s always fun to provide enough information to let the reader visualize their version in their mind. But, if I wanted that on the cover too, it would also need to be visually concepted.

So began the design for Nukari ships. I wanted them to be aggressive, dangerous looking, and capable. They needed to look like they could take a pounding, and deal great damage.  I made a quick list of the things that instilled fear people, as its the effect the Nukari would want their ships to have on opponents.  I looked to our “lizard brains” for stimuli there…  There’s 6 questions your lizard brain asks of every pieces of stimulus throughout the day: 1) can I eat it, 2) can it eat me, 3) can I kill it, 4) can it kill me, 5) can I have sex with it, 6) can it have sex with me (perhaps unwanted).

A few obvious criteria jump out: can it kill me, can I kill it, can it eat me.  Then I went to nature, what types of nature’s gifts create natural offenses/defenses for animals? Skin texture, natural body covering (scales, shells), body coloring, claws, teeth, a solid body structure, muscular composition, body size, and distance based defenses.  I then performed an animal image search on Google looking for various creatures.

After searching various creatures with tusks (boars and mammoths), horns (rhinos), and sleekness (black panther), I came across the Pangolin.

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Beautiful creature.  It doesn’t look very deadly, but it looks well defended with its sturdy body scales.

This was the upgraded vision…

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I sent the concepts off to my amazing 3D designer, Glenn Clovis, who began to render a number of options.  Some were more industrial, some more organic… Here are two of the many versions he did.  I’m showing these because they’re both officially a part of the D’mok Revival universe and protected assets (thanks to copyrights).  Yes, the ship on the bottom will be used–I’m not tell where, when, or how yet… But I do know.)

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I really loved the slick, smooth, almost squid like version (at the bottom).  But it didn’t “feel Nukari” to me.  The overlapping armor layers of the top ones were like the Pangolin, and felt great.  I knew this was the right direction.

He reworked the design based on some feedback.

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SO COOL!  Though the initial ship seemed too small.  Perhaps it would make a great fighter, but not the big “Laviathan” ship mentioned. I provided some feedback, and the next evolution appeared. He also started to apply the overlapping armor layers to the gate.
gate render
I liked where this was going. It still looked too vulnerable in the middle. I also wanted the front to look like “a deadly face.”  So we swapped the front cannons with longer, tusk-like components.  I also suggested we continue the layers of body armor to the rear of the ship.
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I made some suggestions like the following…
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Glenn took that and iterated.  To simply the design, we dropped the side cannons, and added a larger front cannon (inspired by the Bird of Prey from Star Trek).  After review, I thought it was cool, but had him add a second smaller one directly under it (it would have its uses).  We ended up with the following design:
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There, now that we had the ship, we could go after the gateway.  I wanted the designs to look related since the Nukari made both the ship and gate technologies.  After a few revisions, the overlapping armor was applied to the design.

Now we had to combine them.  We investigated a few angles (head-on, from the side, from an angle, etc.).  I wanted a dramatic scene.  My very first vision had an extremely closer perspective looking up at a sharp angle. We ended up being a little further back since the up-close view looked a bit distorted.  I wanted people to see the amazing detail of the ship, gate, and future nebula.
Glenn assembled the complete picture.
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The nebula was instantly striking (he’s so good). There was some lighting tweaks, and some changing of the effect within the gate. In the end, to provide scale, I thought we could go back to the “fighter” design and add some in.  It would make it look like an armada coming through the gate (Which was the point), and help explain the big ship was — BIG.
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And BOOM!  It’s one of those things where you see it and go, “THIS IS IT!”  I was blown away.  I was thrilled!  We’d done it again. I love collaborating with Glenn.  He’s a visionary, so very talented, and easy to work with (and patient with me).

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Planning for the third book launch for January

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It’s time for another launch party! To kick things off I made one of my famous lists:

What is D’mok Revival: Mindwalk?

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During the editing process of book three, my amazing editor, Arlene Robinson, voiced her concern about two specific chapters. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them, she felt they interrupted the pacing and focus of the overall story arc.

The two chapters in question were around 13,000 words that covered the mindwalk that the character known as Katen does in the mind of the Nukari beast captured in book two.

The segment exposed a great deal of information about what’s going on in the Nukari side of the universe.  Specifically, where the contemporary Nukari beasts were created, what type of master Kajlit’ga was, how the Nukari beast felt about Nukari activities, and what they knew about Rhysus Mencari.

It was very difficult to pull it from book three because I felt it really provided great insights into what’s happening in the D’mok literary universe.  It also exposed the mysterious personalities of Fio’tro and Fia’ra, and proved they were more than a bad case of dementia for Katen. In fact, you see their abilities and finally understand that Katen’s powers are actually a result of channeling what all three beings once individually did.

My editor did, in fact, review the content and professionally edit it. In response to some of her concerns and confusions, I added more content taking the word count to over 15,000.  In the end, she really enjoyed it and saw the value in what it added to the D’mok literary universe.

I couldn’t sit on this! I wanted to share it, especially for the amazing fans of the D’mok series.  So, I decided to package it up and release it as a stand-alone short story.  In late December, D’mok Revival: Mindwalk will go public.  To help with getting the word out, I’m going to provide in from two sources: Amazon for a minimal cost and, for fans, a special link to the D’mok Revival site where existing fans can get it for FREE. 😉

I’m looking forward to getting feedback on what people think about Mindwalk.