To an author, creating a book cover can be a surreal experience.

A story that until that point has been only words, enters a new medium. You get to see what your world looks like. And when you have another artist/designer do it, you get to see it through someone else’s eyes.

I commissioned the cover for First Command through MIBLART.

I started by explaining that the book was about a group of astronaut cadets who crash land on an alien world. The lead character, Cassi, is a 19-year-old cadet, who assumes a leadership roll as they battle pirates and aliens and struggle to find a way home. The designer presented an idea of Cassi in a futuristic suit holding her helmet aside. They wanted to set her against a background of alien terrain, and other planets or moons in the sky, with a wrecked spacecraft in the background.

We went through a couple of rounds of tweaks, and in the end this is the cover we’ve come up with…