When designing the cover for Paths of Exile, I had the following criteria in mind:
Now, there are plenty of resources a professional design studio has that I haven't, like a budget, an image library and professional designers. On the other hand, there are resources that I have that a design studio hasn't. I know far more about the novel and its setting than a designer would, and I can produce something specifically for this book that isn't borrowed from somewhere else - no fear of reusable cover art for me.
Anglo-Saxon England was famous for its skilled embroidery, and I had noticed that images from the Bayeux Tapestry can make striking cover designs for books about the Norman Conquest. I can't draw, but I can embroider, so I decided to try producing an embroidered image for the book cover.
I copied a drawing of a dragon from an illuminated letter in the Lindisfarne Gospels. The dragon looked altogether too friendly for my purposes, so I copied a much fiercer dragon's head, complete with sharp teeth and gleaming garnet eye, from the shield found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial and transplanted it onto the dragon's body.
The Sutton Hoo shield is from exactly the same period as the story - its probable owner, King Raedwald, was a friend and ally of Eadwine - and the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced in Northumbria only a century after my story is set. So I know the images are appropriate for the setting.
Dragon head transplant complete, I made the new dragon double-headed by taking a mirror image using tracing paper, and added an extra body coil in the middle by freehand drawing.
I transferred the double-headed dragon onto a piece of dark brown lightweight wool cloth, using white tacking cotton to mark the lines of the design.
Most of the dragon is embroidered in two shades of golden-yellow embroidery floss. The dragon's body is embroidered in chain stitch to give the impression of rows of scales, the heads in long-and-short stitch, and the jaws in buttonhole stitch.
The dragon's eyes are in satin stitch in crimson floss, topped off with crimson glass beads to recall the garnet eye on the gold Sutton Hoo dragon.
This gives detail and texture on a large image, where the individual stitches are visible, but doesn't clutter the image on a small thumbnail.
When the embroidery was finished, we scanned an image into Photoshop and sized it to fit on the book cover, leaving room for the title and the author's name.
A sample of the scanned backing cloth was repeated across the front cover of the book to give a textured effect. A colour sample from the backing cloth was used as a plain colour on the back cover.
The font for the title was selected from an online font library. It's reminiscent of the insular uncial script used in the Lindisfarne Gospels, so again it should suggest the right period. The same font can be used for the titles of related books to indicate that they belong to the same group. The font for the author's name is a neutral font from the same library, which I also use on the covers of other novels in different settings. The font colours were selected to blend with the colours in the scanned dragon image.
I enjoyed producing the cover, I like the result, I know it's unique, and I know that the elements in it fit with the time period (whether anyone else recognises them or not).
And yes, a two-headed golden dragon does play an important part in the plot
of Paths of Exile - but if you want to know what, you'll have to read
the book.
