Behind The Cover

It was requested that I have a discussion about the story behind the cover design. So here goes!

The concept for the book was floating around for almost ten years. The idea came to me while I was student teaching in Bucks County during a social studies lesson. I took down notes about the idea immediately and continued working on it for the next five years, adding to notes, doing research on various concepts that I introduce in the book and creating a number of cover images. I was certain that I had an idea for the cover that I was going to stick with until I realized that the title work I designed wasn't very legible.

When I was deployed in Oman, a new idea hit me; in New America, the government is very secretive about almost everything, so why not create a cover that exudes this aspect of what readers are going to encounter. It started with coming up with some truly American concepts that could be made a mirror of how we know it. New America had to be represented as a polar opposite of true democracy. The first items that came to mind were the American flag and the Constitution. The flag I decided to make into a shadow of how we know it. It only made sense for the Constitution to be redacted by the new government as they took control of all rights. I merged the concepts together and truly made it into a mirror by reversing the traditional position of the flag. Lastly, with the introduction of the RollerWatch, I created an IR Code to cover over the field of stars, but you can still see some trace of the stars, this is the hope that still exists in our protagonist.

I really enjoyed sharing this story with you and I hope you will ask me to share more. I am open to any questions or comments about my work and the thought process that went into it.