EARTHFALL Draft Cover

Hola, gang.

I’m not ready to reveal any text just yet, but I will share the second draft cover for my upcoming release, EARTHFALL. EARTHFALL is a science fiction adventure story set in the relatively near future (though a date is never mentioned, we’ll call it 2040 or so) and deals with America’s final restoration initiative designed to reconstitute the nation after a thermonuclear exchange. (Does anyone even use the term “thermonuclear” anymore?) Essentially, Harmony Base puts itself on ice for a decade after the bombs fall and the mushroom clouds sprout until the time comes for them to dispatch teams that conduct recon operations to determine how badly off the nation is, and of course, to contact any human settlements that might have survived the ravages of the Sixty Minute War. The teams are a mix of military and civilian specialists, and they have armored rigs called Self-Contained Exploration Vehicles (SCEVs) which they use to begin explore the shattered remnants of the former United States of America.

Of course, what they find isn’t what they had been looking for.

As I said in an earlier post, this is a novelization of a screenplay I wrote back in 1983. There’s actually a huge amount of work involved in resurrecting such dated material, and the fact that it’s in script format doesn’t make things any easier. I stripped out a lot of movie elements that just didn’t work in a novel (mutants after ten years? Really?), but I worked hard to preserve and enhance the drama. It’s still in first draft format as of this writing, and I’m still doing the required body and fender work, but I imagine the book will be released in January.

That said, I do have an eye-popping cover in the works, and while it also is not yet finalized, here’s a peek. It was developed by Jeroen ten Berge, and the rigs at the bottom are provided courtesy of digital artist Nathan Carlisle (not the opera singer…well, at least I don’t think he is…)

Hope you like it!