I’m proud to announce that one of the last few pieces in our first big push—phase one, I’m calling it—is ready for purchase.  Tales of Tellest went live yesterday, bringing together seventeen different stories and four talented authors.

Best of all, I think, is the price.  At $4.99, you’re making out like a bandit on the deal.  Since each of the stories are $2.99 (less Mageborn and Awake when they’re free), you’re really being given a decent bang for your buck.  The full book is over 600 pages, and this is just the first course of these wonderful stories that feature characters from the Tellest universe.

Be sure to pick up your copy on Amazon today!

The post Tales of Tellest has Released! appeared first on Tellest.

There were a lot of ways that we could have gone at this particular cover, which brings all the stories we’ve created in the last 18 months into one package.  We could have had a series of characters all bunched together into one space, but as of stories that are in this collection, they haven’t actually met each other.  It would be disingenuous to put them all together if they’re introductions wouldn’t be made for several years.  So Leo and I determined that there would have to another thread that tied them all together.

That’s how The Keeper of the Void, the final story I’ve written for this collection, came to be.

In Tellest, there are some things that are a bit beyond the existential. We’ve seen the Nexus, which connects the waking world with the afterlife, in addition to serving as a means for the gods to travel about the world in short bursts.  What we decided to do was add another layer of impossible to the world.  Whereas the Nexus affects space and mortality, the Void encompasses space and time.

Yes, time travel is a part of Tellest now.  In a lot of ways, it always was.  But we’ll get to that more later.  You can see that draft of the cover up there.  That’s the one we passed on.  We gave Leo the opportunity to create a character from scratch here, and he gave us two versions of a kind of “mad wizard” or “mad crone” to choose from.  We ultimately settled on our crone:

This is Nyrshia, the eponymous Keeper of the Void.  She’s not really female, but beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.  She (it?) chooses to represent itself the way it does so that she can interact with us on a level that we would understand.

You can also see the orbs in the cover as well.  These are the ways that we’ve bound all our previous stories together.

Here, you can see that idea beginning to take shape.  Since time is all relative, events sort of float around in the Void, ready to be observed—but rarely manipulated.

In this version of the cover, Nyrshia has been fleshed out a little bit more, and we’ve added the other big character to the story, a lad named Rhys who is a capable soldier that happens upon the Void.

The orbs are filled, as well, with the covers of the stories that we’ve written before.  You’ll see that The Bindings of Fate is in there as well, though it doesn’t fit in the Tales of Tellest collection—if we threw that in there, we’d have to put the other Child of the Stars trilogy books in there, and we’d be looking at around 1,800 pages worth of content, and this collection is supposed to go to paperback!

We took a step back to our monochrome cover just so that we could indicate which stories should have gone where.  We kept our most popular stories in the biggest bubbles, and eagerly awaited the unfolding of Leo’s own brand of magic.

This was the finished version of the cover, sans filled orbs.  Nyrshia is a bit more imposing in her finished form.  Leo captured the look of this character so exquisitely as someone who could be so disarmingly fragile but so powerful to behold at the same time. Rhys, meanwhile, looks a bit more brooding.

Now this is some beautiful work.  The orbs are being used in their entirety here to great effects.  And the stories inside them? Magnifique.  You can also see that Leo did some redraws of some of Kimirra’s older story covers for The Littlest Kobold and Remembered in Gold.  We thought that they didn’t quite stand up to the rest of the thumbnails on this cover, and asked Leo to spruce them up a bit.

Funny enough, we still have some times translating between Leo and I from time to time.  It’s very far and few between and he does some quick turnarounds, but you can see here that we accidentally used As Darkness Falls instead of The Fall.  You can tell that I have too many opportunities to use that word, especially when you consider that another short story in this very collection is called Fallen.

And here you have it.  The final version of our final 2014-2015 project.  Obviously we have to slap the title and back matter on there, and are working with Paul Davies to do so, but this is the Tales of Tellest in all its glory.  We hope you liked it, and we’ll come back at you with more great content in the weeks and months to come!

The post Art – Tales of Tellest Cover by DLeoBlack appeared first on Tellest.

In other news, we’re also going to be making Son of the Storm free for the next five days, so if you’re just jumping into the Tellest universe, now is a great time!

We’re more than halfway through our novella release schedule.  For those of you that have been along with us all the way, we hope you’ll agree that we’ve been delivering a great experience for you.  And for those just joining us, we hope to entertain you for months and years to come!

Cheers,

Mike

The post The Tinker’s Tale Amazon Release appeared first on Tellest.

Sometimes, when you’re working with an artist, everything just works right from the start.  I’ve been working with Leo, and while every time he delivers a stunning product, there have been a few times where it seems he just knows exactly what’s in my mind, and puts it right to page.  I think that’s one of the tough things about being a writer with no real artistic talent.  It can be difficult to have this impression of something in your mind and not be able to get it out properly without conveying it to people in words.

When I told Leo what I wanted to see for the cover of The Tinker’s Tale, this was almost exactly what I expected:

Leo is also getting used to the layout of the Tellest logos, titles and authors – For Son of the Storm, we had to get a little creative.

And despite how cool it could have been, I had to say no to this version:

The Tinker’s Tale of avoiding flying death.

Sometimes you just have to say no to dragons, even in fantasy.  If Maximus had come up against them, you can be sure I would have allowed them to share cover space with him.

Around this time, we decided that Seramore was a very important part of the story.  Though the countryside aspect had some impact, especially early on in the tale, it wasn’t as integral as this massive city that Maximus would be discovering.  So we came up with this:

I can’t even watercolor 1/10th this good.

It was a big improvement on the message that the story conveyed. There’s something about the urgency here that you didn’t really get when you were in the woods.  You can also see that our protagonist is progressively getting less scruffy here.

Once Leo knew how pleased I was with this concept, we moved on to the final piece.  Again, I can’t begin to express how easy this cover was to work on.  Leo did an amazing job.

This just pops.

At the end of the process, we had something that was so simple, yet so evocative.  The turn around time was ridiculous, too.  I think Leo managed to get this to me in less than a week after the original sketch.

After that, we just had to put together our final touches, including the logo, title and author, courtesy of Paul Davies.

And, voila!

It really could not have been easier.  I’m very pleased with the final product, and I’m hoping that when it releases on Amazon next week, its potential readers find it expressive and attractive enough to agree with me!

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For a gift from Rhianna to me this year, she really upped the ante.

Rhianna is a big fan of horses, and she really loved the idea of a clockwork horse.  Equinicus also features prominently in The Tinker’s Tale.  The best part is, this is old school painting.  It has texture – it almost pops right off the canvas.  Now, even though its sitting above our couch, you get to see it too!

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