A near disaster

I don’t think this merits a featured post of its own, but it’s a curiosity that might interest dyed-in-the-wool gamebook otaku. Back when Oliver Johnson and I started writing the Golden Dragon gamebooks, we were learning the ropes about book production at the same time. Manuscripts had to be ready months ahead of publication, and cover copy and artwork were usually the first thing you had to think about.

Series editor Angela Sheehan asked me to come up with a cover idea for The Lord of Shadow Keep. I tend to prefer visual imagery to prose, in fact, hence the frequent references here to movies, television and of course comic books. But I had no clear idea of what was going in the book, and when inspiration fails it really tars and feathers you. Case in point, this absolutely epic fail of a cover concept. A back view of a dark lord gazing out at the countryside in contemplative mood? What in actual frell?

Luckily the cover artist Bruno Elletori had the sense to ignore my notes and instead fix us up with a full-tilt action scene which conveyed a sense of immediate danger. All I can say is that usually I did a lot better job of coming up with a cover concept – consider Lords of the Rising Sun, for instance, or all the new Critical IF gamebooks. But when you know what you’re doing, and you still drop the ball, that’s when it lands with the most resounding of thuds.Still, it could have been worse. Check out this cover of the Berkley edition that was released in the US.

Come back on Friday for the main post, in which we’ll be taking a look at the work of a classic science fiction author whose bravura world-building makes for great roleplaying campaigns.