Up
the Tower
by
J. P. Lantern
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Disaster
brings everybody together. A cloned corporate assassin; a boy genius
and his new robot; a tech-modified gangster with nothing to lose; a
beautiful, damaged woman and her unbalanced stalker—these folks
couldn't be more different, but somehow they must work together to
save their own skin. Stranded in the epicenter of a monumental
earthquake in the dystopian slum, Junktown, there is only one way to
survive. These unlikely teammates must go...UP THE TOWER.
The author has graciously answered our question, "How do you pick out your book covers?" Thank you very much
Book covers are of course one of the
most important aspects of how a book sells. You need to make sure
they look professional and catch the eye.
I’ve had two different book artists.
The first was a friend of a friend who had been doing it for a while;
her name is Aubrey Watt. She did work for the first trilogy I
released, THE
RED COUNTRY TRILOGY, and a series of shorts that I had
thrown together that are now collected in a book called AROUND
THE MARTIAN FRINGE. With those, basically I threw a
bunch of information at her about the books and the themes and tone,
and she put together some great looking stuff. I had a few ideas, a
few concepts, but she really took the ball and ran with them and did
some great looking stuff, I think.
For DUST
BOWL and UP
THE TOWER, my wife did the covers. It was the same
kind of arrangement. I talked with her a lot about what the book was
about and what I was thinking for themes and tone, and she just
whipped some stuff up that was great. The DUST BOWL cover is pretty
terrific—I love the little splash of blood under the tumbleweed
there. The UP THE TOWER cover I think also is also really great; for
the book, I wanted to instill this sort of pulpy, noir-like vibe to
it, and I think it just nails it. I also really dug the way the
letters are kind of ripping apart, signaling the earthquake to come
in the book.
My wife is basically a champ because
she’ll bring me something that is basically what I said I wanted,
but it’s wrong because, you know, from the conception to the
execution, something gets lost. So I ask for this change or that
change, and they all seem small to me, but they’re inevitably
something that’s going to take up six hours or so.
So, ultimately, it’s a collaborative
effort that requires other people being patient with me (thankfully)
as they hone their talents in on what I’m imagining. Of course, I’m
always happy to listen to their suggestions and advice, and basically
just comply with whatever they say is best.
Excerpt
“Hey,
Smellson!”
Samson
ignored the jeer, focusing carefully on opening the box. He was
twelve years old and he did not want to screw this up; being twelve
was important, and people took the things you did seriously so long
as you did them well.
“Smellson,
hey!” The Crowboy banged his crowbar on the dusty ruins of the
factory line where they had set up the six crates from their haul
that morning. “Don’t blow us up, okay? I don’t want to die with
your stench clogging me up, yeah?”
Again,
Samson ignored the other boy, trying to concentrate as he eased his
longtool through the gap in the crate before him. He very well could
blow himself up; he could blow them all up. Inside the GuaranTech
crate he tinkered with was a copbot.
Copbots
blew up all the time. If their main processors or power source were
damaged, they blew up. If they were being captured, they blew up. If
they ran out of ammo and couldn’t refill within about ten minutes,
they blew up. When they blew up, they incinerated everything in about
a hundred foot radius. The warehouse was not big enough for the
Crowboys to keep their distance and still work in the role of
protection as they had been hired. So they were in the blast zone as
well as Samson.
The
copbots, deactivated, were precious and valuable. Strangely, they
were valuable precisely because they were so hard to deactivate. A
copbot was made almost entirely out of self-healing nanotech, and
with enough time, it could repair from almost any wound to its metal
shell. So, to keep this sort of power out of the hands of the
gangster conglomerate that ran Junktown, the Five Faces, and any
other sort of competitor, the copbots had a very liberal
self-destruct mechanism.
This is
what Samson worked against.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR
Bio and Links:
J.P.
Lantern lives in the Midwestern US, though his heart and probably
some essential parts of his liver and pancreas and whatnot live
metaphorically in Texas. He writes speculative science fiction short
stories, novellas, and novels which he has deemed "rugged,"
though he would also be fine with "roughhewn" because that
is a terrific and wonderfully apt word.
Full of
adventure and discovery, these stories examine complex people in
situations fraught with conflict as they search for truth in
increasingly violent and complicated worlds.
Blog/website:
http://jplantern.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/JpLanternBooks
twitter:
@jplantern
I like the blurb. The book sounds exciting.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for the feature!
ReplyDeleteWhat's everyone's favorite cover in the recent past?
I liked the excerpt the best, thanks for holding this giveaway.
ReplyDeleteI really loved the excerpt. This sounds like a fascinating and unique story.
ReplyDeleteBook covers are VERY important.
ReplyDeleteI liked the cover a lot, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI loved the excerpt, thank you for holding this contest.
ReplyDelete