Inception Point

New Cover Reveal #SciFi

I’ve been doing a wonderful course this week to help with my marketing and sales efforts. It’s been a bit of a revelation during the first two days, so I’m hoping the last four days will be just as good. The first thing to come out of it was the inspiration to improve the front cover of Astronomicon book 1: Inception Point. I’ve got some tweaking to do yet, maybe another version or two, but I wanted to share the new idea for the cover to see what everyone thinks.

The cover art is the same, but the font, sizing and layout are very different. Does it work? Is it eye-catching? Does it work better than the previous version?

I’ll be posting it on Twitter and Facebook too.

Inception Point launches on #Amazon

Inception Point is now available on Amazon! It’s taken longer to get here than I expected and, while it’s a landmark development, it’s not the end of the journey. There will be news posts, a social media campaign, lots of marketing and more to do to complete the job.

Astronomicon Inception Point front cover Inception Point can now properly take its place as the first book in the Astronomicon series and I have unpublished ‘Astronomicon: The Beginning’. To be honest, I never liked that title anyway. It’s going to take some weeks to remove all traces of ‘The Beginning’ from the world but I’ll do my best.

Inception Point is not just a revamp of ‘The Beginning’, it’s a rewrite from scratch. The main spacecraft, the Elysian, has been completely redesigned to make the technology hugely more realistic. Almost all of it is based closely on existing technology or on NASA, and other space agencies, research. This drastic change in the vessel’s layout and structure forced a redesign of all the scenes set inside the ship but, most importantly, the vessel’s crash-landing on the surface of Proxima C bore little, if any, resemblance to the original.

The ship’s modular design allowed me to radically improve the pacing of the novel and add some interesting plot elements to the story. Added to that, new characters, better action, different challenges, improved relationship development, more alien life and more make it a more impressive introduction to the entire Astronomicon universe.

Don’t for one moment think you’ve already read this book if you’ve read ‘The Beginning’, this is not the same experience.

Download a free sample here:

Revealing Exciting New Cover Art!

After four days of intensive work, I now have new cover art for the first Astronomicon novel. The book rewrite has gone well, creating a novel which is substantially different and much improved from the original. A new front cover seemed like a good way to draw a clear distinction between this novel and the original.

That was enough of a reason on its own, but as the novel has a new name (Inception Point) and the design of the Elysian spacecraft featured on the existing cover art has completely changed, the existing artwork is also completely obsolete. I created a 3D model of the Elysian vessel over a year ago but it was only ever supposed to be a diagram to help me write the novel. Several attempts to improve it enough to work for illustrations did not produce good results, so my only other option was to rebuild it from scratch.

This time, with rendering in mind, I built it again with considerably more detail and appropriate lighting. It was a huge amount of work, but I think the results are more than worth it.

3D photorealistic render of Elysian space craft cover art.

Of course, the big advantage of creating a 3D model is that I can produce shots of it from any angle, at any distance and infinitely vary the lighting. For example, producing a rear-view shot like this took less than forty minutes:

3D photorealistic rear view of Elysian spacecraft cover art (Sorry, I forgot to change the background before rendering that one!)

I am so pleased with the results of this exercise, that I will definitely give it a go for more of the Astronomicon novels. Building the ship models at this level of finish, and matching detail, is certainly time-consuming, but just look at the results! It’s the best cover art I’ve ever created myself. I just hope it helps my sales on Amazon.

Clarifying the Situation re: Inception Point

After the mass of questions and complaints I’ve received over the past couple of weeks, I feel I should clarify the situation with Astronomicon: Inception Point and Astronomicon: The Beginning.

I believe the simplest way I can put it is: “Inception Point” is a completely new book, written to directly replace “The Beginning” as the first book in the Astronomicon series. It has not yet replaced it as it is not finished.

To make this totally clear, here is a list of things that are NOT the case:

You do not have to decide whether to read “The Beginning” or “Inception Point” first. They fill the same slot in the series and “The Beginning” will be retiring completely soon.
You cannot read the first 10 chapters of “The Beginning” then jump to chapter 11 of “Inception Point”. They are different books with hugely varying stories. Chapters in them are NOT interchangeable.
There’s no point complaining when reading “Inception Point” that things are different from how you remember them in “The Beginning”. They are DIFFERENT books, with different stories.
“Inception Point” is NOT an edited/enhanced version of “The Beginning”. It’s a new book.
I will NOT keep BOTH novels on Amazon as that would be hugely confusing for readers.
If you’ve already purchased “The Beginning” (which was and IS free BTW), then you can’t have Inception Point for free. It’s a different book and it’s NOT free (Although 99p is pretty cheap!).
No, I will not rewrite “Inception Point” to include your favourite scene from “The Beginning” – that would not make any sense.
No, I am not writing “Behemoth”. That is on hold until I finish “Inception Point”. I will announce when work begins again there.
No, the characters in “Inception Point” don’t all have the same names as “The Beginning”, nor are they all the same characters. Some have been removed, some replaced. It’s a different book!

I’m still posting a chapter per day on Wattpad, so it won’t be long before the entire “Inception Point” novel is complete.

Home of the Astronomicon Series of Sci-Fi Novels