Cover Reveal: Wolves

We couldn’t be more thrilled that acclaimed author Simon Ings has decided to join Gollancz. We’ll be publishing both his new novel, Wolves, in January next year, and five of his backlist titles in the following months. He’s an extraordinary writer, able to wield strong images and vivid imaginings in the service of gripping thriller plots, all set in all too nightmarish visions of futures both ordinary and surreal. Wolves is a perfect example of all of this. How do you reflect that in its cover? And allude to the narrative as well?

 

Wolves tpb

Here’s the blurb:

Imagining the end…

At school, Connie and Micky cooked up all the ways the world could end.

Years later, Michel imagines apocalypses for a living, and lives inside fantasies of the Fall. Conrad works in advertising, spinning aspirational dreams out of imaginary light.

Will their reunion reveal who killed Conrad’s mother?

Will it make them a lot of money? Or, just maybe, bring about the collapse of Western civilization?

Wolves is a surreal whodunnit about what happens when unhappy men get their hands on powerful media. Part crime novel, part coming-of-age story, this is an informed, atmospheric, cutting-edge tale of the near future.

 

It was clear to me that we needed something powerfully visual, an image that would evoke a strong reaction but which nevertheless allowed the reader to bring something to it. I also wanted something that would make this book stand out from everything else. And at this point there was only one artist in my head that I wanted to try with this cover. His was a name that I’d come across via Twitter, I’d seen some of his very varied work online, we’d been in touch, discovered some shared enthusiasms for ilustrators from the 1970s. I knew I’d love to have him do something for us, it just needed the right project. And then along came Wolves. It clicked in my head. I spoke to our excellent art department they got in touch with Jeffrey Alan Love (for it is he), we briefed him (fairly loosely) and this is what he came back with. It shouts of the dark menace of this book, it gets over the idea of uncertain unrealities, it gets over the primal dangers of the character’s ambitions and actions.

I have fallen in love with this cover. And happily so has Simon Ings.

What I’m particularly happy with is that Jeffrey and our designer Nick May have come up with a design that lets the illustration do all the heavy lifting work. And when a cover has to leap out from the shelf but also, crucially, work at thumbnail size on a website, that’s essential. It’s a work of art. And it matches the book in that and every other respect.

If you want to see more of what Jeffrey can do, follow him on twitter: @jeffreyalanlove or take a look at his website

And if you want to find out just a little of  what Simon Ings is capable of visit his website.