The 2024 Novel Cover Reveal

 

I am happy to announce that Passage to Jarpara, the third and final volume of the Tales of the Tropic Sea series is my 2024 novel. Since this is a cover reveal, we'll talk about the cover with only the blurb to describe the story at the end.

About the time I was writing Sailing to Redoubt, I painted half a dozen very impressionistic paintings of the island of Lil Lon, and the harbor of Fey Lon. The goal was to try to make them bright and tropical, without being too concerned about exact details. I used a section from one of the harbor paintings for the first edition, which can still be seen on Goodreads. I've changed the cover several times since then. The last, and present cover uses a painting entitled, Sunrise on Lil Lon. Being lazy, and knowing how iffy my painting is these days, I decided to use its companion piece, Sunset on Lil Lon for this book. I also decided to use the same color for the spine and print boxes as that book, to make the two a matching set (with middle book, The Prisoner of Cimlye, being an outlier). Both these paintings are impressionistic street scenes set on the little island of Lil Lon, but, as I mentioned, my main focus was on nice, bright colors - and lots of them. Do they work, as covers? Who knows? I'm not too concerned about whether covers draw readers or not. I don't think my readers care. Plus, I did have one reader/reviewer say that she was attracted to Sailing to Redoubt by the cover, so that's one win. The one thing I am concerned about is making my covers an expression of my "brand" hence their uniformity in design.

As for the current blurb, here's what I have;

 Taef Lang is on a quest…

… To find a job.

Now a married man, the time has come for Taef to seek his long delayed career as a professor of Island archaeology and/or history. After introducing his new bride to his family, he and Lessie, along with Sella and Carz set sail eastward across the Tropic Sea for the distant Island and University of Jarpara where he hopes to land his dream professorship. 

Passage to Jarpara is a simple travelogue, an account of that journey across the Tropic Sea. It’s a record of islands called on, old friends and acquaintance met, new ones made, as well as potential pirates, curse-beasts, haunted Tiki palaces, fire islands, and a race of immortals they encountered along the way. In short, it is another colorful glimpse of life in the Tropic Sea.

Passage to Jarpara is the third and final volume of Tales of the Tropic Sea, drawing a fitting conclusion to the adventures of Taef, Sella, and Lessie which begun with their voyage to Redoubt Island, and continued with the freeing of the prisoner of Cimlye.

Stay tuned for more details!