First glimpse: Cover art for The Lucius Chronicles

First Glimpse

… Cover art for ‘The Lucius Chronicles’…

Hi Everyone! I wanted to share with you, the first sneak preview of the cover artwork for my latest book, ‘The Lucius Chronicles’. This is only a rough mock-up of the proposed cover, but I liked it so much that I couldn’t wait until the finished version was available to share it with you.

‘The Lucius Chronicles’ is a compilation of the three books that comprise the DATS Trilogy: ‘Death and the Schoolboy’, ‘Death and the Atom Bomb’ and ‘Death and the End’, which tell the story of Johnny the schoolboy and his adventures with Eddie, the Death of Children, as they battle the supremely evil Uncle Lucius, the original Death and eponymous villain of the book.

Lucius Chronicles - Draft Cover. Rob Gregory Author

First glimpse of the draft cover for ‘The Lucius Chronicles’.

All of the books are currently available separately on Amazon and Smashwords, but I’ve wanted to bring them together in one place for a long time now, to give readers a more meaty experience and to allow them to devour all of the stories in one go. Hopefully, ‘The Lucius Chronicles’ will be out as an ebook just in time for Christmas and all going well, will also be released in paperback format in 2019. Pre-orders will, as always, be discounted, so watch this space for more details and get your orders in fast!

Anyway, back to the cover. The artwork, which I hope you’ll agree is amazing, was done by American author and illustrator, James Stevens, who has a book of his own entitled, ‘Fern Majestic and The Fall of a Dragon’, coming out in a couple of months’ time. You can find out more by clicking here. He’s on Twitter as well (@FernMajestic) and is a really nice guy, so feel free to look him up, follow him and drop him a line.

The original cover sketch.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I first approached James about doing the cover for ‘The Lucius Chronicles’ and based on the results so far, I’m really glad that I did. I’d seen some of his art on Twitter and was really impressed by his style. When he agreed to give it a go, he read the entire DATS Trilogy in two days flat and fired up with bags of inspiration, quickly came up with an initial concept sketch that pretty much became the final version. In fact, the only thing that we ended up changing were the characters in the foreground, just to make Johnny and Eddie a little younger and that was only because I was being pedantic!

Lucius Chronicles - Revised Cover Sketch. Rob Gregory Author

The revised cover sketch.

With a bit of luck, in a week or so’s time, I’ll be able to share the final draft of the cover for ‘The Lucius Chronicles’ before it goes to the graphic designer for finishing. I can’t wait to see what the final imagery looks like and I hope that you’ll be impressed too.

Oh, and one last thing. When finished, ‘The Lucius Chronicles’ will also contain a selection of line drawings depicting various scenes from the three books, done by my good friend and excellent cartoonist, Eugene Georgiades. I will share some of them with you a bit nearer the time, but for now, you’re just going have to make do with James’ fantastic cover art. Enjoy!

London Lost

… images of a time gone by…

Back in late April, when I was flicking through some of my old photos, searching for shots of Reading University to support my blog ‘A peek down memory lane’, I came across upon a small box of 35mm slides, which was given to me by my Uncle many years ago, along with a portable, battery operated slide viewer. Amazingly, the slide viewer was still in working condition, courtesy of a new battery, and I spent the best part of an hour completely diverted from my original task, flicking through the slides instead.

London lost - Battery operated slide viewer. Rob Gregory Author

They don’t make them like that anymore!

Most of them were old family photos from the 1960’s, you know the kind of thing: camping holidays, day trips, photos of children (now grandparents) playing in the garden and of course, Christmas. Others were part of a series of a more astronomical bent that was apparently never finished, including pictures of Apollo 9, Apollo 11 and the Gemini missions (more on that in a future blog).

County Hall

However, the subject of today’s story is a series of slides, also part of an unfinished ‘instalment’ collection, covering London in the 1950’s. Now, I’m not sure if the original slides were deliberately meant to look like this. In fact, I’m pretty certain that they weren’t, but for whatever reason, over time only the red, white and black hues have remained, which I think gives the images a wonderfully arty and almost eerie feel.

Tower Bridge

Most of the locations are, in some way or other, iconic. But while some have remained unchanged, others have undergone various facelifts in the intervening years and some, because of changes that have taken place around them are now almost unrecognisable.

London lost - Shell Mex House. Rob Gregory Author

Shell Mex House, The Embankment

Anyway, why not take a moment or two to flick through London as you’ve probably never seen it before and lose yourself in the warm, fuzzy glow of nostalgia for a simpler time, now long since past… Enjoy!

London lost - Royal Festival Hall. Rob Gregory Author

The Royal Festival Hall

Big Ben

Admiralty Arch

The Tower of London

One of my favourite images here is of ‘The Pool of London’ (below), because it was taken looking away from Tower Bridge, not facing it. You can find out more about it here.

The Pool of London

For more rants, ramblings and reminiscences, please feel free to have a good old rummage through the rest of my blog and if you fancy something more substantial, then please do check out my books. Thank you.