FINAL Cover reveal + eBook
FINAL Cover reveal + eBook
a FICTION FRIDAY special
Today’s soundtrack is Linea Aspera’s second LP, LP II. I listened to this when re-writing TSG way back in 2018, but before then - in 2016 - I wrote the original draft to a looped playlist of Plaediean Friend, a set arranged by Spacemind.
I’ve picked LP II today not least because one of the main characters in TSG is called LP, but because I feel that I am again entering a new era of this multi-layered story, one which I think you’ll agree is the best era thus far.
Evolution/Synaesthesia
As always, I’m keen to keep improving my designs and stories before they reach the public. I really liked the cartoony and punky covers for THE STEPHANIE GLITCH, but I knew they strayed a bit far from genre expectations.
It’s a hard balancing act, being weird and original but still appealing to the humans in charge of putting books on shelves in places.
But I found a solution.
Like me, Stephanie has Synaesthesia, which means her brain translates light to sound, sound to light, amongst other complications. She’s crosswired, and it is this unusual [dis]ability which enables her brain to translate an ancient, hitherto unheard signal from the universe into a bright kaleidoscope of colour and music and energy.
Stephanie has within her head the perfect combination of evolutionary quirks, and it is this cocktail of weird which means she not only picks up signals from outside the universe, but she can actually understand them.
She is a human telephone between here and the afterlife.
But the afterlife isn’t just somewhere you go when you’re dead.
It’s a whole universe.
It gets weird.
With these plot points in mind, I wanted to make a cover that emphasised Stephanie’s cosmic journey of parallel-self discovery. I wanted to allude a bit to WBTH as well, because the books connect in a way. Beyond that, I wanted to show some of the TimeShips which are seen in all three series, EARTHLOOP, WBTH, and TSG. It was important to make these myself rather than pay someone else to do it, because this way I could embody Stephanie and build them out of building bricks.
This part took the most time, because I hand-built them in LegoStud.io, which I’m pretty proficient at, but building perfect triangles with bricks is never going to be easy. Nonetheless, I did it, and these little toy spaceships allude to Stephanie’s precognizance in the opening chapters of the novel.
Turn and face the strange
So here’s the cover. What do you think?
Expedition into the Simulation
You can grab a teaser eBook for THE STEPHANIE GLITCH with the button below, as well as several other sci-fi and fantastical reads by other authors.
When you go looking for Stephanie, she’ll have this cover. It was a hastily-made temporary cover for promos, I’ll replace it soon.
Synopses
The Stephanie Glitch is…
A psy-fi novel about a psychic who learns her world is ending
A new universe where time flows outward in every direction
An exploration of a fractal and fracturing reality
A journey of parallel-self discovery
A poem about existence, written as a 160,000 word novel
A mind-bending trip into a parallel world on the brink of collapse
Another book by Phillip Carter. You know what to expect
Do you have a favourite synopsis?
Love that you captured the kaleidoscope colors in your cover design! 👏
(Comment from BH Sprinkle via email)
"The Stephanie Project sounds like an excellent book & the synopsis has set my interest. Especially with the difference difference in the senses being coupled by unexplored universal ideas.
Going to add it to the never-ending TBR asap.
Thank you so much for all of these lovely newsletters.
-BH Sprinkle"
(reposted with permission)