Eye of the Observer Has a Cover

I tell you, it's been excruciating watching Kim Van Deun's phenomenal cover for the third Black River novel, Eye of the Observer, taking shape and not being able to share it - I mean, outside of sticking my phone under people's noses whenever a new version came through, that is.

One of my personal goals with this series is that each book will be something very different from the others, and that extends to the covers too, which means Kim dealing with even weirder demands that just, "Okay, this time we need to have the party squaring up to a giant eyeball."  And I continue to be in awe of how much he rises to those challenges.  Honestly, there's no way to sum up how much time and effort and - on Kim's part, anyway - how much skill and imagination goes into these things.  But then, probably I don't need to, right?  I'm pretty sure the results speak for themselves, and they're right there.

Another aspect that made this particular cover that bit  trickier was spoilers - or rather, the avoidance thereof, since there are some major twists and turns along the way.  I think we struck a pretty good compromise, all told.  I mean, if you've read the first two books, I'd hope you're wondering what the heck's going on here.  Is that Pootle?  Or another observer?  Are they about to fight or is that how people pose when they're making friends in the world of the Black River Chronicles?  And where did Arein get that cool new staff from?  The answers are, of course: read the book.  Which you should be able to do very soon, since I delivered the final, edited files a few days ago.

At any rate, as much as I love this new cover, I don't love it quite so much as the full and uncut version that doesn't have my stupid name blocking a good chunk of Kim's gorgeous artwork.  So here's what that looks like...