Happy New Year everyone! I hope your evening was safe and fun. I stayed home with my family watching some of our favorite movies, plus the last episode of BBC’s Sherlock in anticipation of season 3 starting soon.

A new year also means that it’s less than a week until the release of A Flight of Marewings! I’m putting together a huge blog tour for the release next week, and there will be more details on that soon. But first of all, I want to share with you the beautiful cover art created by Jennifer Cox of Dancing Heron Illustrations. It’s so gorgeous that I have to show you the complete picture without any text to ruin it.

All I can say about this is wow! Jennifer did a beautiful job of portraying the marewings in mid-flight with a grove of cloudfruit trees in the background. I love the colors that she used as well.

I met Jennifer at her booth in the Artist’s Alley at Fanime last May. While most of the fan artists at the convention focus on copying anime and manga styles closely, Dancing Heron Illustrations stood out by portraying characters like Link from Legend of Zelda and the main characters from Journey in an ancient Greek style. As soon as I saw it, I knew what I wanted for my cover. The mythical quality of these illustrations makes me think of The Odyssey, one of the oldest epic fantasy stories in existence. I was overjoyed when Jennifer agreed to do the art for me because I knew she would come with a great cover for me, and she exceeded my expectations.

Here’s what the art looks like for the cover of the ebook.

A Flight of Marewings is available for preorder on Smashwords now, and will be releasing in ebook and print formats on Monday, January 6. Watch for more news about the book tour coming in the next few days!