Princess Cyrelle has always been faithful and true to her family, country, and Goddess. But now her brother, King Elias of Cicia, has asked for—no, commanded—her hand in marriage.
Desperate to avoid this incestuous union, Cyrelle requests a series of increasingly impossible gifts and petitions the Goddess for a sign to sway her resolute brother’s proposal. As Elias persists undeterred, Cyrelle must risk everything to escape the only life she’s ever known.
Soon, she becomes Green Scales, hiding and struggling to survive on her own, far across the galaxy. But Phau isn’t the peaceful refuge Cyrelle had hoped for, and when the leader of its burgeoning rebel faction recognizes the runaway princess, she is forced to choose between safety and freedom. With the fate of two kingdoms on the line and nowhere left to run, Cyrelle must decide what it means to be true to herself, to her people, and to her heart.
Cover design
The third book I worked on was Millie Abecassis’s The Color of Time, a fairytale-inspired science-fantasy adventure. I conceived the concept for this cover to highlight the protagonist, Cyrelle, and her iconic snake-suit, and I could see the whole composition so clearly but I knew I couldn’t illustrate that image myself.
So I made this creative brief:
We had just been to Seattle Worldcon and attended a panel on cover design that included, among other folks, Alyssa Winans, who would go on to win a Hugo Award for her art later that weekend. Her work covers the spectrum of fantasy and science fiction and includes some of my favorite covers in recent memory—for Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills Cycle—and I was thinking about how rad it would be to get literally her to do this cover for us... and she said yes!
The illustration she delivered is just stunning. And as with several of our other books, I designed the title, spine, and back, integrating them as elegantly as possible with Alyssa’s gorgeous art:
Interior design
The interior design on this one was interesting because of the unusual narrative structure: it’s a second-person POV story split between two timelines, with occasional first-person interludes. I aimed to clarify these three storytelling modes within the design.
Here, we see the normal narrative flow broken by one of those first-person interludes, an entry from Cyrelle’s journal, where I chose an italicized monospace font to offset the “writing” from the “telling":
And here, we see the beginning of one of the book’s five parts, with a fantastical header illustration by Morgan Wodring, and with the intro text—a second-person bit that sits outside standard narrative time—offset in a heavy italic that hugs the image.
Marketing
Here are some examples of marketing images I created to support the book’s launch:
Buy the book!
You can pick up your copy from Shiraki Press or request it at your favorite book retailer. Buying direct from our website is the best way to support our press, but I’ll also recommend Bookshop.org as an amazing way to support your local indie bookstore. You can even request it at your local library!
The Color of Time (Shiraki Press)