So, now that Lone Star Sons – the first collection of adventures – is out to a selection of volunteer alpha readers and critics – who actually include a selection of junior readers of the age (more or less) that the book is intended for – my brother the professional graphics artist is wrestling with the cover. No, not the place-holder that I put up myself – but a genuiiine-original piece of cover art in the traditional Western pulp adventure artistic tradition. This is a bit new for both of us, since my previous book covers have largely been photographs, artfully filtered, edited and in the case of the last two, carefully edited together from wildly different sources. Frankly, I’m not Philippa Gregory – and I have a budget when it comes to book covers, and this kind of work-around has worked very nicely for previous books. But this one demands something a little more eye-catching.

My brother confesses that it has been twenty years since he generated an original sketch by hand; in the world of modern graphics artists, one apparently performs the magic with practically everything other than. So he is playing around, with his tools, and experimenting with skills that he hasn’t much used in a while. I tell him that it’s like riding a bicycle – you really don’t forget. Herewith, one of his preliminary studies:

It’s just a preliminary character study, of no particular character at all – but I am quite pleased.