Cover and Title Reveal for RP #4

Meet the fourth book in the Rachel Peng series:

PATREONbruteforce — As always, colors and text will change based on how it looks when printed, and other elements might be added.

Unlike the other books in this series, BRUTE FORCE takes place in locations outside of Washington. I’m not sure what the release date is yet, as I want to make preorders through distributors an option and that requires some substantial lead time. Right now my best guess is “before Christmas” which isn’t really a guess at all because this book will be available for sale in 2016 or murder will occur.

If you’re interested in how my cover artist Rose and I come up with book covers, here are some process shots.

I love the look of urban decay, so when I was bouncing ideas around with Rose, I found this internal shot of a warehouse. I thought it would be a nice general layout for a book cover. There’s a strong light source, different levels for dramatic elements, and some interesting textures.

But it wasn’t a factory, and the colors were horrible. So I sent this to Rose and said: colors and gears.

ROSEcoverreference2 — Look at this old rusty behemoth. This is gorgeous.

(ADMISSION OF GUILT-I don’t know where these images came from. I didn’t write down the source when I sent them to Rose, and a reverse image search comes up with bupkis. I assumed I’d be able to find their source when I went to post them. I am a jerk who made assumptions about image permanency and if these are somehow yours, please let me know so I can give you due credit.)

Rose and I passed art ideas and additional reference images back and forth for a few weeks, and then she started sending me process shots.

BFprocess2 — Working on layout and color compositions

After the colors and layout came together, the finish details went down. Rachel proved to be stubborn on this one.

As I’ve said before, Rachel is modeled on Joan Chen when she played Josie Packard from Twin Peaks. Chen is just a stunning woman. It’s difficult to convey physical details on a figure this small, but Rose did a great job. If Rachel is ever blown up on one of these covers to a huge page-dominating size, I want to make sure that the details are as consistent as possible. And once Rachel was done, we had an Art!

BRUTE FORCE. Coming soon. Or all of the murder.