20100114 – Unlike the other chapter spreads, this one has a mockup of the book spine. I probably should have done that for Incursion and Expulsion, but oh well – the idea is to produce the thing as One Book. If it becomes One Book In Two Parts, I’ll spine ’em up then – it might be good practice for TV and DCR, as the two combined will be roughly the same length as The Dualist.

As with all of the covers, this one is effectively “art complete” but not “ready to publish” – for that to happen, the spread would need to be broken up and the art shifted around to compensate for bleed – front, back, and spine. This is why publishing the chapters as issues is tempting – it would give me a few tries to work the kinks out before committing to something Big and Expensive.

This may not be the Final Cover, but it’ll do for now – the original sketches had a “flotilla” shot on the back, mixed in with Dyluck’s hair. The Sabrosa, Cheops, Daedalus, Hemera, a Majestic and a couple of Lokis… and despite some extended wailing and gnashing of teeth and much hammering at several different compositions and mixes of boats… I couldn’t come up with anything that I really fancied. The blockiness of ship design from this period doesn’t help.

Ultimately, I went with no ships – the story is about Dyluck, after all. The space porn is really just the icing on the cake.