P.J. Murphy's Writer Site

Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for (maybe): the big reveal of the cover of my next novel, Six Steps to Salvation.

Drum roll please…

I’ve mentioned in previous blogs that Six Steps to Salvation is a loose sequel to my first novel, Troubleshot. To indicate this, I worked with the same graphic designer and used a similar colour scheme, substituting blue for green. Clever, eh? I also added the subtitle ‘Another Satire’ to hint that there’s more if readers want to check it out. This seemed better than calling it ‘Book 2’, as it is written so people can read this with no background. My cunningness knows no limits!

This will eventually form the second part of a trilogy. I’m about halfway through the first draft of the third book, so you shouldn’t have to wait for long for it. It’ll be called ‘The Triumph of Common Sense,’ if you must know!

Anyway, back to this cover. We have at its centre our (anti) hero, Trent Argent, whose pose is intended to be similar to that of the painting ‘The Scream’. What’s his problem? Well, he’s in Geneva, for one, as you can tell from the flag and the various landmarks in the background. Actually, Geneva isn’t at all a bad place to live (it’s one of the best for quality of life, in point of fact), but in this story, Trent is camping under a bridge with a group of unpaid interns.

I mentioned that Trent’s pose was intended to be like The Scream, but I abandoned that on seeing the first version of the design, which included Trent’s open mouth. Unfortunately, it looked like he was shouting at the reader, so I asked for the mouth to be removed. It seems it’s not that easy to get across anguish – that’s why they call it art!

I think the final image of Trent holding his hands to his head does the job, though.

I didn’t have a huge number of ideas for the back cover, and most of the space will be taken up by text and the barcode, but I thought it would be nice to include an image of one of Geneva’s mouettes. These are little boats you can take for five minutes or so to get from one side of the lake to the other. You can take them with a standard ticket for public transport, so that’s worth keeping in mind if you ever fancy a visit!

There’s also space to add a quote from a reviewer. The book is currently being read by LoveReading.co.uk, who have given me some nice reviews before and selected previous books as their ‘Indie Book of the Month.’ So, fingers crossed.

Advance copies

Speaking of… I’m still on the lookout for volunteers to receive an advance copy and potentially leave a review when the book comes out. So, if you can’t wait until April, get in touch!

Pre-order

Which reminds me, I didn’t mention that Six Steps to Salvation is now available for pre-order for publication on 22 April. You can pre-order the Kindle version right now using this link. The paperback version will be available on the same day, plus I’m getting an audiobook version produced for around the same time

Why not order all 3? I’m not sure why you’d want to do that, but you can’t blame me for trying!

That’s it for now. I’ll be talking more about the book and the writing process in upcoming posts, so watch this space!

Paul