A Smugglerific Cover: The Spark by Susan Jane Bigelow (& Giveaway of Broken)

Susan Jane Bigelow’s Extrahumans series is one of Ana’s current favourite Science Fiction series. The first book, Broken was one of her notable books of 2011 and the recently released Fly Into Fire, a tremendous follow-up. As such, we are delighted to be unveiling the cover of third book in the series, The Spark – check it out:

THE SMUGGLERIFIC COVER:

THE SUMMARY:

Deirdre Burns White clings desperately to her normal life. She has a job, a boyfriend and an apartment in the city of First Landing. She’s made sure life is normal… because Dee is an extrahuman. She can make fire with her mind and she has the devil’s luck, but because of that, she was once imprisoned and tortured by the ruthless Confederation military. All she wants is to bury the past and blend in.

When an old friend shows up bearing a letter and a command, though, Dee finds she can’t run any longer. The ghosts of her past have come back to haunt her, even as the first cracks finally begin to show in the Confederation’s smothering oppression.

Now First Landing is in a state of open, wild revolt, and Dee has to make a choice: to hide herself away, lost to guilt and regret, or to embrace her past and her dangerous powers to help save the people and the city she loves.

Dee could set the world on fire; all she needs is a spark.

DESIGNING THE SPARK COVER:
by Kate Sullivan, Candlemark and Gleam

Occasionally getting to do cover design is one of the great treats of working at a small press. For the most part, we commission outside artists and designers to work on our covers—there are just so many talented people out there that we’d be remiss in not finding the perfect artist for each book! Sometimes, though, I’ll get an idea in my head that I simply have to run with, and I jealously guard my right to design the occasional cover.

The Spark comes from that; it’s the third in the Extrahumans series, and the third cover I’ve designed for these books. In some ways, this was both the easiest and the hardest cover in the series to do. After reading the manuscript, I just knew that the cover had to be as electrifying and dynamic as the book itself—but it also had to tie in with the visual design of the two earlier books in the series. Broken started out as a visually interesting cover, but one without a lot of colour impact—just the punch of bright red from the title. We kept the same “feeling” in the second book in the series, Fly Into Fire, but added more colour in; there’s tans and golds, in addition to the red of the title. Plus, there’s that silhouette, echoing the silhouette of a woman on the cover of Broken.

For The Spark, I wanted to start moving even further away from the stark neutral colours of the earlier books’ covers. The series has started moving on—we’re not on Earth anymore, and we’re following a different set of primary characters than we were in the first novel, although some of the series’ most beloved characters are still around and checking in. I wanted to show a little of that new direction in the first encounter you have with the novel, immediately upon seeing it on a shelf. So instead of going with a grey or a gold for The Spark, I dove into using a highly saturated purple. We still have the now-traditional silhouette—this time, of Dee, exercising her abilities—but we’ve gone from somber, muted colours to this really wild, popping electrical storm, all toned into deep and vivid purples, with a crackle of white.

The font and some of the other elements, like that silhouette and the Extrahumans logo on the spine, tie the book back into the earlier ones, but now, with this shot of colour and moving on from the red titles, we’ve got room to play and develop even more nifty covers for possible future books in the series!

THE GIVEAWAY:

We are giving away ONE copy of Broken, the first book in the series, so that one lucky winner gets to read from the start. The giveaway is open to ALL and to enter, just leave a comment here. Contest will run till Saturday April 21 11:59PM (PST). Only one entry per person, please! Multiple entries will be disqualified. Good luck!