A fantastic book cover with contrasted earthy and natural tones

Under Shifting Sands

C. R. Hogan

C. R. Hogan lives in small-town Texas with his family of five and two dogs.

Jacob Baird lives alone in the deadly Desert Sea, where sand blots out the sky and the land shifts and scrambles every day. Here, he cares for The Tree in his home beneath the dust, his nation's one hope for restoring the land as the sands creep west to swallow all. But when the orphan Jasmine enters his care as unknown nations arrive and war knocks at his door, he finds his quest to stitch the Desert back together paired with the new responsibility of keeping peace.

This book targets an upper-teen and adult audience interested in fantasy adventures with modern-world tones. Fans of fantastic landscapes and novel world building will find pleasure in Jacob's adventures.

Paperback

The cover should be inspired by the scene listed below. A 6x9 in format paperback will be used. The scene should be dark and peaceful, with high contrast between the setting and the primary focus--the shining tree. A literal interpretation of the scene would be excellent, but I would also consider a less complicated scheme using few literal details on a dark page with the tree sketched out in solid white or silver. The subterranean feel is important, especially featuring dark, rust-brown shades and blacks. He stood in a large hemispherical cavern maybe forty feet tall. The walls and ceiling were of red-brown clay, dirt, and rock, draped in some places in dense mats of leafy vines with short hanging creepers adorned by red and white berries. The floor was a flat spread of soft packed dirt, far less coarse than the sand and dust on the surface. Opposite the door, the cavern opened up into a descending chain of chambers, letting forth a soft blue glow. Though Jacob had affixed torch sconces to the walls of his subterranean home, none of them were lit. His light came from a less crude source. Dead center in the cavern stood a shining silver tree filling the cave with warm, gentle light. Its slender trunk was armored in smooth white bark, glistening and refracting light as if it were laced with strands of silver. Long, elegant limbs branched out from the trunk into a brilliant canopy of perfect symmetry. The delicate leaves atop the tree were now copper and bronze in color but would cycle out with silver and metallic blues and reds throughout the seasons. Perhaps most astonishing about the tree, however, were the flowers floating throughout the leaves. Shaped like large inverted tulips, they glowed orange and pink like an aging sunset, fully lighting the cavern. Their shine was bent and tossed about the cave by the metallic leaves and bark, and small peaceful bugs and flies lingered between them, smartly going about their work in perfect cohabitation. The trunk of the Tree was wreathed in a low pile of ivy and ferns poking through a mat of soft moss. Tiny translucent mushrooms dotted the garden, glowing blue and green and yellow. At the base nearest the cavern’s open side grew a little pond bubbling up from a spring between the Tree’s roots. Under Jacob’s trowel, the pond had come to encircle the tree on a little island, where he had placed a bench and a few comfortable reading chairs beside a fire pit. Here on this island was the only grass that grew within the uppermost chamber. Jacob had built a cute wooden bridge across the ring and stationed smooth steppingstones throughout it. Dozens of small creatures lived in the pond among its lilies and brush. Frogs and turtles and fish neighbored together in the water, living off of the bugs that skimmed the surface. Sometimes tiny waterfowl the size of a fist would journey up from the deeper caves to join their larger cousins, a pair of wedded ducks who quietly raised generation after generation of ducklings to send off into the chambers below as they aged. Sprouting from the pond was a proud little creek that tumbled off into the blue world below this uppermost cavern, feeding an even more varied and vibrant ecosystem.

Every design category has flexible pricing for all budgets. Book cover starts at HK$2,399.