Instantly elevate your book's visual appeal with my collection of premade book cover illustrations. Each design is a masterpiece waiting to complement your story, offering a captivating first impression that entices readers to delve into the magic within the pages.
With 350 premade covers sold to date across 12 preious series, my science fiction premade covers are second to none.
If you have a tight marketing budget or need to release your next book quickly, you've come to the right place.
Explore 22 original covers that will transport you to new worlds, all at an unbeatable price.
Starfall covers have all been designed in Ultra-wide format. This format gives you added flexibility in layout, which is ideal for adapting your cover for various media and promotional materials. It just looks great too! With these extra wide dimensions, each cover stands out beautifully, and provides you with the creative freedom to showcase your book in the most captivating way possible.
Every cover is crafted with attention to detail and designed to be as unique as your story, ensuring that it will catch the eye of your readers and look fantastic in both digital and print formats. I'm confident these covers will bring out the essence of your work and give it the professional finish it deserves.
Check out the premade cover galleries below, which feature three categories: Core, Elite, and Prime!
(All prices shown in GBP):
The price includes paperback formatting, ebook cover, 2K, 4K, and 6K artwork without text, and custom text for the front, back, and spine. If you prefer to use your own text and format the cover yourself, that's perfectly fine too.
I offer an extras package that can be purchased for each premade cover. This includes:
All of these extras for a set price of £40! This can be added at any time after purchase too.
If you're interested in purchasing a cover, please email me at tomedwardsconcepts@gmail.com or tom@tomedwardsdesign.com. Include the name of the cover you'd like (e.g., Premade cover 1) and mention if you want custom text. Also, provide a second or third choice cover in case your first choice is unavailable.
All covers require a contractual agreement, and invoices are issued in British Pound Sterling.
Covers are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. If your chosen cover is available, it will be reserved for 48 hours after your initial email request. During this period, you'll receive a contract and invoice, which must be signed and returned, and payment must be made. If this doesn't happen within the 48-hour window, the cover will be released back for sale.
Covers without custom text will be dispatched within 72 hours of receiving payment.
For covers with custom text, delivery time varies as we'll collaborate to design a suitable font and style. This process typically takes 3-7 working days.
Payment can be made via PayPal or direct bank transfer (including services like Wise). If you choose PayPal, a 5% fee will be added to cover their charges.
Please specify your preferred payment method in your initial email. I hope you find the perfect cover for your sci-fi novel!
'My biggest challenges in becoming a writer were what’s often called the ‘inner critic’ and also writing consistently.'
Scott Bartlett writes his books from inside a mech, which is inside the hangar bay of a light armored cruiser stationed just past Jupiter. Certain parts of the last sentence may not be completely true. Here are some more believable statements:
Scott was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland – the easternmost province of Canada. During his decade-long journey to become a full-time author, he supported himself by working an assortment of jobs…
...salmon hatchery technician, grocery clerk, youth care worker, ghostwriter, research assistant, pita maker, and freelance editor.
In 2014, he succeeded in becoming a full-time novelist, and he’s been writing science fiction at light-speed ever since.
Click here to check out Scott's new military sci-fi box set, Ship of Prophecy, which collects the three complete series of the Ixan Saga!
Tom’s artwork shouts quality and style, and as far as I’m concerned there’s no better way for me to package my books.
Moreover, Tom’s range is incredible, and no matter what I’ve asked for in my cover brief, he has always been able to represent it strikingly. If ever I request tweaks or changes, Tom has always been incredibly accommodating in implementing them promptly. But generally speaking, my covers turn out best when I trust his artistic ability and instincts.
My writing routine tends to change yearly, and sometimes monthly. I have a high appetite for novelty, and it seems I’m always experimenting with what routine will lead to the best results, in terms of creativity and output. The demands and realities of life have an impact too. After a break from writing, it always takes some time to get back into the flow of things.
Since 2024 began, I’ve been getting up at 6am, which has been something of an adjustment from my normal wake-up time of 9am – or later! Getting up at 6, though, I normally start writing around 8:30. At 9am I do a little bit of necessary admin work, and by 9:20am I’m usually driving to my office in the closest town to me. That’s about a 10-minute drive.
Once there, I write until 1pm, and then I stop, no matter how much I’ve written. For some accountability, I’ve also started logging my word counts, both per-day and per-session, as well as tracking my average rate of words-per-hour.
But what I’m finding really effective is trying not to worry too much about how many words I’m getting in per day, and instead focusing on writing consistently throughout the period I’ve allotted for it each day. I’ve already had one hiccup, but I was able to quickly kick things up again the next day, with a renewed focused on those two principles: not focusing too much on word totals and forcing myself to stop at 1pm, which acts as a signal to myself that I’d better spend my time before 1pm writing, or it simply won’t get done!
Early in my writing career, I made the decision to always work with the most talented professionals available to me. I knew that to stand out in an increasingly competitive book market, my prospects would be well served by an investment in working with an artist who would represent my work in the most compelling and dynamic way possible.
When I published my first space opera book in 2016, Tom Edwards was the premiere cover artist to work with in the genre. Fast forward to 2024, and that hasn’t changed. Back then, when I was first starting out, working with Tom meant a stretch for my budget. It meant taking a bit of a financial risk.
That investment has paid off – many, many times over. I consider my decision to work with Tom early on as one of those pivotal moments that contributed significantly to my success as a writer.
I've kept coming back to Tom, dozens of times, for every single book cover, for one simple reason: I understand what gets readers interested in my books.
The saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” is rarely ever followed, if ever. Virtually every reader judges a book by its cover. What’s more, they do it in less than a second.
That’s all you’re likely to have to grab a reader’s attention – a fraction of a second. These days, readers are treated to a smorgasbord of high-quality books to choose from. They scroll through page after page of them.
For yours to catch their eye, it has to leap off the screen at them. That’s what Tom’s work does – it reaches out and grabs them.
Your book’s cover represents the very first step readers must take on the path to reading your book. If you don’t make it an attractive step, chances are they’ll never take it.
Ender’s Game is the book I’ve reread the most: I’ve read it seven times, and I think it’s had a pretty unmistakable influence on my work. I also read Dune as a teenager, and found its world detailed and immersive enough that I’m sure it’s inspired my love of worldbuilding. In fact, that’s my favorite part of writing now!
I’ve also read my share of epic fantasy, which I believe has impacted my work too. These days, I find myself taking a deep dive into the lore of J. R. R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings, with a particular focus on how Tolkien wove his beliefs into the staggeringly detailed world he created. I’m currently reading the appendices to LOTR, and I recently picked up The Silmarillion from an airport bookstore.
My biggest challenges in becoming a writer were what’s often called the ‘inner critic’ and also writing consistently. I decided I wanted to become a writer when I was 15, and while I managed to write my first novel in high school, I really had no idea what it meant to stay disciplined as a writer.
It was partly insecurity, or my ‘inner critic,’ that kept me from writing consistently. I would always have an ideal in my head that I could never seem to match on the page. I’d reread my work and think it was junk. My stories just didn’t seem as special or impactful as what I’d envisioned when I set out to write them. And I let that stunt me. It made writing painful for me, and I would procrastinate a lot, when what I probably should have been doing was practicing by writing more.
Gradually, I gained the confidence to write more and more consistently, and for better or worse, a big part of that involved external validation – first from submitting books to awards and winning a couple of them, and later from readers who enjoyed my work.
As for finding enough time to write: I found it hard to come home from a day job and then make myself write. At the end of each day, I just didn’t seem to have the motivation for it. My solution was to save up enough money to be able to quit the job for a few months and focus on writing full-time. When the money ran out, I’d find another job, and start saving again. I went through that cycle until I started making enough money from my writing to write full-time indefinitely, which I’ve been blessed to be able to do ever since. That was nearly 10 years ago, now.
I keep in touch with readers via semi-regular email newsletters and also individual email correspondence. There’s also the Readers Group I started on Facebook, called Scott Bartlett’s Spacers: Space Opera Fans. I really enjoy keeping in touch with my readers. It’s one of my favorite parts of the job.
As for feedback, I have what I call my “Alpha Team,” which at any given time is five or so readers who read my early drafts and provide feedback as fans of the genre. My books also go out to the 500+ readers on my ARC Team around 2 weeks before launch, and in exchange, they’ll let me know about any typos they find, along with leaving an honest review on launch day. Other than that, I’m always open to reader feedback, and I do my best to continually improve my writing in light of it.
I’d encourage aspiring writers to be clear about what their goals are. Is their goal to write for their own fulfillment, or do they want to make a career from this? Would they want a traditional publisher, or to publish their books independently? Will they write fiction or non-fiction? What genre will they write – and what will they need to know in order to write effectively in that genre? All answers to these questions are valid, but I believe it’s important for a writer to know what his or her answers are as early as possible.
Once they’ve figured out what kind of writing they’d like to do, I’d advise them to do their best to combat their inner critics and to stake out time in their schedules so that they can write consistently. I know from experience just how hard both things can be, and sometimes just learning how to practice can itself require practice.
One insight that likely would have helped me when starting out would be to ignore the daily word counts you see other authors posting. The word count an author should shoot for is the one he or she can do consistently, every day - even if that’s just 250 words. If you write 250 words, six days a week, that’s 78,214 in a year, or a decent-sized novel. And you can grow from there.
It definitely is a balance, and sci-fi always involves some element of the speculative. I think of The Martian as the gold standard of hard science fiction, but it’s a sliding scale, and a lot of books would be considered part of that subgenre which don’t approach The Martian’s level of scientific accuracy.
Generally speaking, writers should avoid yanking readers out of the story they’re reading, and including anything that’s clearly false will probably cause enough dissonance to do that. But in some areas, readers seem tolerant of deviating from known science. For example, if a story has characters traveling from one star system to another in a timeframe short enough to be meaningful for the plot, then that story is breaking the law of relativity. But plenty of popular sci-fi stories have characters doing just that.
At the end of the day, I think it’s about sticking to the rules of the story you’ve set up from the start. As long those rules remain consistent, readers seem generally willing to come along for the ride.
Absolutely. At the beginning of my Ixan Saga, it’s a new technology that leads to just such an ethical dilemma. Technology is a double-edged sword, and during the early adoption phase of a new technology, we often can’t see the negative consequences it will have for our society.
Humans use a technology called dark tech to dominate the galaxy in the Ixan Saga - a technology that allows them to open temporary wormholes to fire on targets with impunity. During this period of dominance, the species it shares the galaxy with grow resentful of humanity, and when dark tech finally fails, humanity finds itself surrounded by enemies.
I think humans are fundamentally very bad at predicting the future – there’s always a factor, either unforeseen or seemingly insignificant, that ends up having a much greater impact on reality than we think it will. Usually there are lots of those factors.
And so, I don’t bother trying to predict the future in my books. One might stumble on a detail here or there that ends up being correct, and some readers have called my books prescient, but that’s only because I identified a trend at its beginning that ended up becoming widespread.
And that’s to my point: I firmly believe that science fiction inevitably has far more to do with the present than it does with the future. I also don’t believe sentient aliens truly exist, so there’s also that, haha!
I mostly write in story arcs that stretch across multiple books, since that’s what readers seem most interested in reading. Readers seem to enjoy characters they can get to know over a series – characters who become something akin to close friends. Watching characters grow as they confront successive challenges is one of the joys of reading fiction, and in a sci-fi series spanning multiple books, the challenges can get pretty epic!
Short stories seem great for experimenting with unique concepts, and I’ve written short stories that have later grown into novels. But I’m a novelist at heart, it seems. It’s “big ideas” that initially attracted me to this genre, and the longer formats really allow an author to flesh those out!
Like I mentioned, I’ve also read a lot of fantasy, and I think my work would be different if I hadn’t. For example, fantasy novels often feature multiple points of view, and that’s a hallmark of most of my books as well. The influence of fantasy is also clear with my trilogy The Ixan Prophecies, which was my first military science fiction series and also the first of the series that make up my Ixan Saga, three of which are collected in my recent box set Ship of Prophecy. In the Ixan Prophecies, it’s an alien prophecy which predicts the downfall of humanity that drives much of the conflict.
One never wants to simply regurgitate the same old tropes that a genre’s readers have seen time and time again. If it can be done in a way that makes sense for the genre, I believe that bringing in elements from other genres is a great way to keep things fresh and interesting, while breathing life into tropes that, while cherished, may have begun to grow a little stale otherwise.
Click here to check out Scott's new military sci-fi box set, Ship of Prophecy, which collects the three complete series of the Ixan Saga!
'The more you can do to help a world come to life, the better the story will be!'
Kenny Gould is a writer and entrepreneur from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He holds a degree from Duke University, an MFA from Chatham University, and an MBA from NYU Stern.
Prior to writing fiction, Kenny covered food and beverage for Forbes, Men’s Health, Bon Appetit, and more. He’s also the founder of Hop Culture, an online magazine featuring stories from the craft beer industry.
To date, Kenny has written several fantasy fiction books, three of which have covers designed by Tom Edwards. If you want to see the works Kenny and Tom have done together, check out The Castle of 1,000 Doors, the first book in Kenny’s Toroth-Gol series. Kenny also recently published The Potionmaster, the first book in a new fantasy fiction series. You can keep in touch with Kenny on Instagram at @hopcultureken or join his email newsletter list here.
Before I decided to start publishing my fiction, I spent a decade writing manuscripts and quietly burying them beneath the lint and unsharpened pencils in the bottom drawer of my desk.
At some point, I realized that was silly. Why write if I wouldn’t let anyone see my work? I’m a creative at heart, so I decided to go the self-publishing route, though I’m also a professional, and I wanted my books feel as much like a “real” book as possible.
This desire led me to Tom. From the very first work I saw in his portfolio, I knew he’d be able to convey the humor, action, and excitement of my series through the cover. And isn’t that the point of a cover? To set effective reader expectations?
Tom was my first choice for an artist and I’m so enamored with the work we’ve done together. I couldn’t recommend working with him more highly!
Prior to my career as a fiction writer, I started a digital magazine called Hop Culture, which threw beer festivals around the United States and had its own line of glassware and apparel. In that role, I worked with many awesome artists including Killer Acid, Sam Taylor, Yeye Weller, Pseudodudo, and Lauren Martin, to name a few.
Just like those artists, Tom is a professional. It doesn’t matter that he’s designing book covers while they designed festival posters or beer glasses—the best artists I’ve worked with were able to take my vision, combine it with their own, and create something greater than the sum of its parts.
When I was seventeen, I went to a boarding school outside Boston, Massachusetts. It was an old school that dates back to 1778 and I’m pretty sure the insulation in my dorm hadn’t been updated since it was founded. At night, I liked to read in bed, but when I was done I’d have to get up, run across the frigid room, and turn out the lights.
I decided to solve this problem by buying a lamp. Only, when I went to the store, the only thing in stock was functionally a battery pack with a lightbulb. Still, it served my purposes. I brought it back to my room, stuck it to the ceiling with double-sided tape, and read from beneath the warm coziness of my comforter.
At around two in the morning, the tape failed and the whole thing dropped ten feet, where it shattered over my head. I don’t know if you’ve ever been woken up by two pounds of glass, plastic, and batteries smacking you in the face at 9.8 meters per second, but it’s quite unpleasant. After I got everything cleaned up, I couldn’t fall back asleep. I tossed and turned for about an hour, and just when I was about to fall asleep, I heard a voice: “We left for a reason.”
I’m a pretty grounded individual and I don’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or anything similar. Honestly, I think I was just tired and a little loopy from the blow to the head. But that night, I swear I heard a voice. I started to think: Who left? For what reason?
In the morning, I opened a new Word document on my computer and wrote, “We left for a reason.” And then I kept writing, trying to answer those other questions.
Sixty thousand words later, I had my first manuscript. I’ve always loved reading and I suppose it was only natural I’d make the transition to becoming a writer. For me, writing fiction and writing non-fiction are expressions of the same skill. I don’t see them as mutually exclusive. In my opinion, the goal of any story is to use the reader’s time in a way that he or she is happy they spent it with you and not one of another billion competitors for their attention. This applies to fiction and non-fiction just the same.
During my first year in college, I commissioned a French cartographer to design three maps: one of a world, one of a continent, and one of a city. Those are the places I write to this day!
In my opinion, anything that helps ground you better in a fantasy world is a service to the story, whether it’s models, character sketches, maps, etc. The more you can do to help a world come to life, the better the story will be!
I write best in the morning. I usually get up around 5:45 AM or 6:00 AM, walk the dog, tell my cats they’re very special, make coffee, and then I write until 9:00 AM, when I get ready for my day job as the VP of Sales at a tech company.
I have to write in the morning and I need coffee, or nothing works. I don’t think I’m unusual in that way.
Some of my favorite authors include Stephen King, Brandon Sanderson, Annie Dillard, MFK Fisher, and Michael Chabon. I love the dark, dry humor of British fantasy authors like Roald Dahl, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Mark Lawrence.
There’s a great book by Austin Kleon called Show Your Work, which is all about exposing your process to the outside world—and following through on your projects to make sure those get seen, as well.
When I first started writing, I didn’t show my work. I wrote thousands of pages and put them in a drawer. I never let them see the light of day.
If I could’ve done anything differently, I would’ve let people read those stories. Maybe they were terrible, but the only way to grow is to get feedback. Think about this—by hiding my stories, I missed out on years of growth. Where would I be now if I’d had the courage to get feedback from the beginning? So now I’m making up for lost time!
On the book side, I’m slowly but surely working on the the fourth book in the Toroth-Gol series, and I have a few other projects coming out this year, including a cozy fantasy. The best way to stay up-to-date on those projects is to follow my personal Instagram at @hopcultureken or join my email newsletter list here.
'It may not seem so, considering I already have 45+ books in the bag, but I only began my publishing journey in late 2018'
G J Ogden is a sci-fi author who loves to write action-adventure space sci-fi stories with real heart, humor, and drama. He has published over 45 sci-fi books with a combined 13,500+ 5-star ratings, including several Amazon Best-Sellers, and is the winner of the Kindle Storyteller Award 2023.
Visit G J Ogdens site
Click here to check out Forsaken Commander, the winner of the Kindle Storyteller Award 2023!
Click here to check out Master General, Book 6 in The Aternien Wars Series! Out June 24
From as early as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to tell stories. Star Trek played a big part in this, as I mentioned elsewhere, but I fell in love with alien worlds and epic fantasy settings even before learning about the Starship Enterprise.
I was a kid during the early days of computer gaming (BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and up) and RPG games really helped to drive my interest in storytelling, along with the wonderful “Fighting Fantasy” novels.
I was also a role-playing nerd and gamemaster (Paranoia and Role Master mainly), which is the perfect outlet for someone who loves to tell stories.
I tried to write my first novel in my early 20s, but I didn’t have the patience or discipline back then. I did eventually finish that book (and series) more than 15 years later. It’s called The Planetsider Trilogy, and it’s still popular today, having held No.1 slots in Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction on Amazon US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Age and experience have their benefits, I suppose!!
I’m extremely organized when it comes to planning and writing. I create detailed notes about the characters and the world they inhabit, and I always have a series arc in mind before I start. That means I have 5-6 books worth of story in my head before I begin.
When it comes to writing, I create a detailed outline first, using a three-act structure. And I mean detailed! I go chapter by chapter and the outline itself usually ends up being 15-20,000 words. I keep trying to trim this down, but never succeed.
The benefit of having a detailed outline is that I can write a chapter a day, every day, when I’m in writing mode. I sometimes take a day off writing (if something else is pressing – marketing work etc.) but generally, I don’t. That means I have a 1st draft done in four weeks. And because of the outline process, it’s usually pretty clean, because I’ve made sure to include all the important elements from the three-act structure.
It can be quite intense, especially at the start of a five or six book series, knowing how much work is ahead, but the routine is important for me.
I was shopping for covers and cover designers one afternoon, as authors often do, and part of that process (for me) is checking the Copyright pages of books with covers I liked. Tom’s name kept appearing, which led to his website and an awesome list of pre-mades, which were sold out! That was a good sign (though not for me), but by that point, I’d decided I wanted a series of "Tom Edwards" covers, so I bit the bullet and got in touch. That was a great decision.
In a word, it’s quality. I’ve worked with some great cover designers, but Tom’s art style and creativity elevated the books and I think definitely contributed to their success. I’ve even adjusted my written descriptions of some of the characters depicted on the covers to match Tom’s designs because they were so on the money.
I have a bunch of social channels but I’m terrible at posting content and updates. I’m just not a very ‘social media’ sort of person, in general. I have a newsletter, which I’ve curated over many years, and the membership of that is ~7,000 strong. That’s my main method of communicating with readers.
I do encourage feedback and I get a lot of comments, particularly on the adverts I run to promote my books. I engage with everything, even the snarky comments! However, I think it’s important to take these comments with a pinch of salt, and the same goes for reviews. I read the bad reviews and the good (thankfully, most are good!), in case there’s anything I can learn (common mistakes or peeves, for example), but ultimately, it’s my story and my decision. I write what I would want to read.
It may not seem so, considering I already have 45+ books in the bag, but I only began my publishing journey in late 2018, so I’m still relatively new. I remember finishing my first novel and putting it out there to very little success. I read a bunch of “how to publish” books and marketed it in the best way I knew how back then, but the launch went off with a whimper rather than a bang (or even a fizzle).
I remember being really discouraged by that. All that work and effort and… nothing. I asked myself, what’s the point of carrying on? As a new writer watching their first book vanish into the quagmire that is Amazon, you’ll probably ask yourself the same thing.
My advice is to stick at it. Chalk it up to experience and keep writing and learning. Both are really important. Learn your craft, learn what sells and why (tropes, genres, covers), and learn how to market your books. A lot of authors don’t want to mess with that side of the business, and if that’s you, then go the traditional route instead and find a publisher. Indie publishing means being a writer and a marketer. It sucks, but to succeed you have to advertise, or be a social media genius. Since I’m not the latter, I have to do the former!
Over time, you’ll build a following. There’s an oft-quoted saying that “nothing sells your last book better than your next book” and I think that’s true. Keep writing good stories, make sure people know about them, and you’ll steadily climb the mountain.
For me, good sci-fi is a good story first and foremost. I like to think you could take all of my books and put them in another setting and the stories and characters would still work.
Forsaken Commander, for example, would work in the age of sail, or modern times. It would only require adjustments to who the antagonists are and where they are. For example, they wouldn’t be post-human in the age of sail, but could be another minority group, and the setting could be remote islands instead of planets. The elements of story and character I think would remain the same, because they’re universal.
I create documents that include important elements like a character’s wants and needs, their conflicts (internal and external), how they change as a result of the story, what impact they have on people and the world, and so on. I flesh all this out in advance so I know who they are and how they would react in given situations.
I use a tool called Scrapple to create massive scrap books of character or worldbuilding notes, which then becomes my master reference. After a while, you get to know the characters and settings well enough that it becomes second nature, but just as I like to outline my books in detail, I find that the initial work of piecing the characters together is invaluable.
I would say that I’ve been most heavily influenced by Star Trek, in particular The Next Generation. I’ve watched pretty much everything from Farscape to Buck Rogers, but TNG sticks with me. I love the camaraderie of the crew, the moral quandaries they face, the impossible odds they always manage to conquer, and the dignity with which they conduct themselves. I think my stories and characters owe a lot to TNG, even if they’re generally darker, grittier and harder-hitting.
In literature, I read a lot of classic sci-fi, and while elements of these 50s, 60s, and 70s novels have aged badly (especially in how they treat women), the stories and characters have stood the test of time.
I love Alfred Bester, for example, and The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are books I can re-read over and over again. In terms of modern influences, I think John Scalzi is great. He has great style and humour.
As I write this, I’m currently reading the Silo series by Hugh Howey, after falling in love with the Apple TV show and… wow, wow, wow! What a set of books. Absolutely fantastic stuff. And Hugh Howey is an indie author too, which makes the series all the better in my eyes!
I like structure and having a plan, so my writing is heavily influenced by the sort of episodic sci-fi shows I grew up watching, such as Star Trek, Babylon 5 and their ilk. I use a three-act structure and think of each book as a ‘season’ in a wider story arc. Each book / season tells its own story, but builds toward an over-arching conclusion.
This allows me to put the foundations in place for long-term storytelling, while ensuring that each book stands alone, and contains all the juicy story beats, tropes and hooks that readers expect and love. Moral Ambiguity: Science fiction often explores moral and ethical ambiguity.
Navigating thorny moral and ethical considerations is a common element in all of my books, some more than others. The Omega Taskforce series and its follow up, Descendants of War, cover these aspects perhaps more than in my other series. It’s serious ‘needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ stuff.
I love the idea that achieving the best outcome sometimes requires making a truly terrible choice. And I love dark, conflicted characters, who struggle with their own humanity, but are at their core good people. Commander Dalton Reeves from Descendants of War is perhaps my darkest character in this regard. His moral compass points in the right direction, but his dark side and explosive temper can lead him to take extreme measures. You might not agree with what he does, but deep down, you’ll probably cheer him for doing it!
Do the ends justify the means? I let the reader decide!
The Aternien Wars series was actually inspired by Elon Musk’s Neurolink chip, and questions of where human augmentation might eventually lead us. We’re just at the beginning of this ‘post-human’ age now, which is scary and exciting.
In this series, post-human experimentation leads to the creation of the god-like leader of the Aterniens, Marcus Aternus, who styles his empire on the myths of ancient Egypt.
I wanted to explore how an advanced, post-human branch of humanity might co-exist with the old-fashioned flesh-and-blood kind. It turns out not so well.
Prejudice and fear of change and technology are central themes throughout the series. In the books the Aterniens are considered perversions of nature and a threat to human purity. It’s because of this that they’re persecuted and exiled, eventually leading to two bloody wars.
The prejudice the Aterniens face is mirrored in the way the central character, Carter Rose, is regarded. As a post-human soldier created to combat the Aternien threat, he’s ironically treated with the same fear and intolerance as the enemy. He’s forsaken by the very people he fights to protect. Real history shows us that soldiers are often treated poorly by the governments who use them, and sometimes even by society, as was the case with those who fought in the Vietnam war, for example.
It’s not a very optimistic vision of the future, but as in all of my books, there are strong themes of hope and redemption, camaraderie and of the value of remaining principled even in the face of extreme adversity and intolerance.
For me, there’s nothing more cathartic than someone overcoming seemingly unconquerable odds to win the day!
It’s a really easy process, which is important when you’re pressed for time, as authors often are. I can describe what I’m looking for, and Tom will nail the brief first time. After that, it’s just about details and revisions to get to a finished cover. It’s a hassle-free process.
Click here to check out Forsaken Commander, the winner of the Kindle Storyteller Award 2023!
Click here to check out Master General, Book 6 in The Aternien Wars Series! Out June 24
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No AI is used in my creation process 
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