The Soulshifter: Part One Cover Reveal!

While Soulbound has been taking MUCH longer to finish than I expected (it was supposed to be released last month on the 25th...well, I'll aim for THIS month on the 25th...), I do have some fun news! Last month, I received the cover for The Soulshifter: Part One, the first part in my very first serial novel!

For those who are curious, here is a synopsis for The Soulshifter:

Syncrel is a bounty hunter, one of the best in the Amüli Republic, and she’s been hired by her paramour and High Lord, Nicholas Rybredel, to track down an amüli accused of stealing souls. His kind are called Soulshifters, and their danger comes from more than just their ability to rip a soul from its human host on Earth--Soulshifters are widely-known magic casters, and magic is illegal in the Reublic.

To capture her bounty, Syncrel teams up with a local of Nabrevoi--the Republic’s north-most city--who calls himself Eblyn. Though she has little trust toward him, his is the only lead she has, and she follows him into the desolate wasteland of the Maervydoi Mountains to find her quarry. Not only is she travelling with a man she knows nothing about while searching for a felon, she’s doing it in the most dangerous and isolated part of the amüli world--the frozen Avdenavhin.

The plan for The Soulshifter is to have five parts released over five months, and Part One will be released the month after Soulbound's publication. While The Shoulshifter is being released, I'll also be working on the sequel to Soulbound, The Soulless King. Of course, I have no idea how long The Soulless King will take to write, but I'm aiming to release it around Christmas. No promises, though, because I know it will be longer than Soulbound, which is sitting at a fat 165,777 words right now, and will probably come close to 166,000 words by the time it's done. My guess is that The Soulless King will hit 175,000 words...so who knows. The Soulshifter will be much shorter, reaching a rough 50,000 words (it's a serial novel and a spin-off of the main series...so, yeah. Shorter!).

I have a special attachment to the main character of The Soulshifter...mostly because Syncrel is pretty kick-ass, but not only that, she doesn't conform to a lot of the female achetypes in the Fantasy genre. True, there are strong women out there in Fantasy (Arya Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire, just to name one of the most bad-ass women out there), but Syncrel is someone I hope most women reading the manuscript can identify with. She has a lover, but he's married and from a higher House than hers, so they can never be together as anything more than paramours. She realizes this and doesn't let it rule her life; she doesn't need a man to be happy, but she's happy to keep one around if she wants to have fun. Though her partner out in the wilderness is a man and there is sexual tension, she doesn't rely on him to solve her problems, and actually rescues him a number of times. She's a hero, and she knows how to take care of herself.

At any rate, I'm excited to reveal, at long-last, the cover for The Soulshifter: Part One, which was created by the amazingly talented Mallory Rock of Mallory Rocks Art, Graphic Art & Book Cover Design.

Pretty, huh? I like it, and Mallory did an amazing job of keeping a similar feel with the Soulbound cover without making this one feel like a sequel. She and I talked at length about the colors, and the size of the bird, positioning, and why she chose the background she did, etc. I'm quite pleased with it, because it reflects the cold and isolation of the Maervydoi Mountains, where the novel takes place. The novel is set during winter, too, so the icy white, grays, and blue really add to that feeling.

One of the major problems we ran into is that The Soulless King will have a similar color pallet; each of the eight books from the Soulbound series will have a different High House's sigil and colors for the theme. Soulbound is based on the Aneys House, whose banner is a golden eagle looking right upon a field of sanguine, so the colors Mallory chose were, of course, red and gold. The banner of the Rybredel House, the House featured for the cover of The Soulless King, is a silver crow clutching a snake, wings spread, on a field of dark blue...and for The Soulshifter, I wanted cooler colors, which are, of course, blue and gray. Mallory didn't want the covers to be confused, especially since the bird on The Soulshifter (a yellow-billed hornbill) looks a lot like a crow. I think she did a fantastic job of making sure the two covers won't get confused!

Okay, enough gushing for now. I need to get back to work--Soulbound won't finish itself! I hope everyone likes the newest addition to The Amüli Chronicles cover collection, and I look forward to any feedback you might have!