Working on the cover design for LOTELO

I have been referring to 'Land of the Ever-Living Ones' by its acronym, LOTELO, and I have become quite fond of its short name. I came up with three possible cover designs and asked people on my Facebook pages to vote for their favourite, and to rate them according to a list of key words relating to the book's themes. Here are the three cover designs:

I asked people to consider the following key words when they were choosing their favourite: air, wind, fire, water, earth, monuments, prehistory, Ireland, mythology, otherworld, heaven, stars, celestial, cosmic, mysticism, ancestors, transformation, learning, knowledge, wisdom, death, rebirth, solstice, night and day.

The middle cover was by far the most popular, with the votes working out at a ratio of 1:2:1. I ruled out the right-hand cover altogether because many people thought its colouring was similar to the cover of 'Island of the Setting Sun', even though it is a beautiful cover nonetheless. Several people thought the middle cover could do with a bit of colour punch and depth, so I decided that, in keeping with one of the central themes of the book, I would add some stars into the sky and darken it up a bit. What I ended up doing was taking the sky from the left-hand image (stars over Dowth) and pasting it into the middle image. Here is what I came up with:

A draft cover for LOTELO.

I continue to work on editing the book. One major edit was done last weekend, and a second major edit is now being completed. When that's done, hopefully in a day or two, I will give a copy of the manuscript to two proof-readers to ensure it's all okay. At that stage, I hope to select a printer and get it off to print. In the meantime, I will try to format it for Amazon Kindle, where it will be available as an eBook.

All going well, I will be launching the book in Drogheda in early November, to coincide with Samhain. Hope to see you there!