Here you go — my final cover art for Random House/Del Rey‘s forthcoming trade paperback, ELRIC: THE SLEEPING SORCERESS by Michael Moorcock. If you’re keeping score at home, this will be Book Three in Del Rey’s six-volume Elric series and it’ll be a December release. Here’s a few pertinent details for the first three books:
ELRIC: THE STEALER OF SOULS by Michael Moorcock (Book One) — cover art and interiors by yours truly; available now.
ELRIC: TO RESCUE TANELORN (Book Two) by Michael Moorcock — cover art and interiors by Michael Kaluta; available late July ’08.
ELRIC: THE SLEEPING SORCERESS (Book Three) by Michael Moorcock — cover art seen here, by yours truly; interiors by Steve Ellis; available early December ’08.
If you’re curious and haven’t seen this yet, here are my pencils that I previewed last month. So now that this cover’s finished, I move on to do the cover and interiors for Book Six in this series, which is a real honor since I’ll get to bookend the run. This stuff is so much fun….
You’ve done it again John! Your cover for The Stealer of Souls is now one of my favs, and now its going to be a long wait ’till this work on book 3 comes out, let alone the wait for book 6 too!
Top marks! Toe (a.k.a. Rothgo)
John,
The cover turned out exceptional! Well worth the wait!
And congrats on getting to do Book 6 and bookend the series also!
Christine
Thanks, Toe. Thanks, Christine. Much appreciated! 🙂
Looks good. I was afraid he’d be blue again, or that you’d decide to have him standing near a pink light source this time.
nice! this came out great…
Thanks, Francis! 🙂
Great Syd Mead image you did for ImagineFX…..saw that over at your site….
John
I think your covers for Elric are great apart from one thing, Elric’s face. He doesn’t look like how I have always visualised him – beautiful, cruel, slightly alien (or at least elven in the general sense). He doesn’t look very beautiful and looks more haggard than anything else. Sorry but had to be honest about this.
No worries, Doodle. I appreciate your thoughtful comment. When I first took this assignment, I realized Elric means many things to many folks, and everyone has a visualization in their own heads of what Elric should be. For me, he’s a tortured figure who’s torn by his own conscience, his noble ambitions, his chaotic nature, his cruel genetics and heritage, and his addiction to Stormbringer. In that last way, he’s not unlike a drug addict, really, and maybe that’s why I see him the way I do….many thanks for your thoughts! 🙂
Most Excellent!
Most Excellent!