One of the reasons I go to DragonCon, Atlanta’s internationally-renowned science fiction and fantasy convention, is networking. I met the people who owned the BattleTech IP back in 2007 or 2008 and ended up writing the licensed BT story “Skirmish at the Vale’s Edge” for their now-defunct webzine BattleCorps.

Ten years later, I was considering self-publishing my steampunk war military fantasy Battle for the Wastelands and had attended art events throughout Atlanta looking for potential artists. I met artist Matt Cowdery in DragonCon’s Artist Alley and soon hired him, not just for Battle, but for multiple book covers.

And over the years, this partnership has borne considerable fruit…

This isn’t a particular character in the book; it’s generally based on the final battle in which a large ground force faces off against a large dirigible attack.

The man on the right is Falki Grendelsson, the villainous Grendel’s eldest son and heir. Although Grendel is of Sejer (Norse) background, his late wife was Jiao (a sort of combination of China and Japan) and most of Grendel’s children take after their mothers in looks.

Although Thing originally had a cover assembled from stock art I found on Adobe for the small press that published it, I had this new cover done to be more consistent with the sequel The Atlanta Incursion, which you can see below. That’s male lead James Daly on the left and female lead Amber Webb on the right.

TAI is basically “aliens at Georgia State University.” I got my M.A. there, so it’s familiar ground.

And those are for published books. Here’s the cover for the Battle sequel Serpent Sword, which I’m still editing and will hopefully have out sometime in March…

This is based on the climactic battle of the book, a trans-continental dirigible assassination/rescue mission in regimental strength. All the marbles…

And finally, here’s the cover for The Walking Worm, the planned third book in the “Long War” series that began with Thing.

That’s the cover for The Walking Worm, which at the rate I’m going is going to be a 2024 release. That’s James Daly on the right, and MJ-12 senior agent Thomas Bolton (who appears briefly in Thing and is a major character in TAI) on the left. And they’re in a bit of a pickle. :)

The World According To Quinn

My Matt Cowdery Book Covers