Cover Story

My cover for Spatiality began as a line of light.

I wanted a symbol or icon that would carry through all the books. I imagined a vivid slash slicing through the page like a blade. I imagined this as folded line, a line of light—an architectural gesture, enigmatic and ephemeral. It could be the edge of a structure or an aperture.

It also represents the fabric of space, the folding between space—the way that the Heliod manipulate space, make use of it, control it—exist within it.

The line is also a portal, a threshold or a rift.

The rift is the element that looms heavily over all the books; the rift the antagonist seeks to tear into space, to breach into another space, to free his brethren, to avenge their imprisonment.

It is also a line that both divides the characters from one another and at the same time binds them to each other, a demarcation of their fates.

Following the line of light, I imagined silhouettes etched into the stars.

I wanted to avoid direct representation. I wanted a shadow, an impression of the main characters without conveying exactly what they looked like. I deliberately eschewed that direct representation as I felt it would prevent the reader from imagining them themselves. Again, I wanted a symbolic iconography, something not unlike like an 18^th or 19^th century portraiture of silhouettes.

I knew she should be sad, not unlike the character of Hannah as you meet her initially. I knew he should be proud in a way, looking out into the distance, meeting his fate directly as Ethien perhaps wants to, but may not actually be capable of.

And then more pragmatically I knew I wanted there to be space between the letters as the letters in the title fill the negative space of the slash, the line of light bisecting the main characters. My hope was the symbol, the silhouettes, the very placement of the title and the nature of the font and text would convey the key concepts of the books in an indirect way, and convey some aspect of the characters’ personalities.