Thursday, July 13, 2006

Soldier of Sidon

Tor will be publishing Soldier of Sidon, the next "Latro" novel by Gene Wolfe, in October. This made me very excited because I was able to hire David Grove to do a series a beautiful chapter drawings. We don't get a chance to do black and white imagery often enough.

6 comments:

Nancy said...

That is a lovely drawing. It is a pleasure seeing good pencil and pen-work; I'd like to see more in the Virgil Finlay vein. Sometimes less is more.

RobB said...

I loved the chapter headers in Wizard-Knight.

When do we get to see the cover of Sidon?

Irene Gallo said...

Thanks, Nancy. I'll post some more in the Fall when the book comes out.

Hi Robb,

Those were done by Greg Manchess. We were complaining that people rarely publish illustrated books for adults anymore,like the old NC Wyeth books. Greg was already working on the covers for THE WIZRD KNIGHT so we decided to just add a little decoration to the chapters. He did a lot more of them than we paid him for. The books did very well so, we decided to follow suit with David Grove on the Latro book.

I still wish we could do a truly illustrated adult book. Greg did end up doing one for Wandering Star/Del Rey, THE CONQUERING SWORD OF CONAN. He did a dozen color paintings and 60 black and whites for it. (The Del Rey version is all black and white unfortunately.)

I'll try to add the SIDON cover soon.

RobB said...

Thanks Irene. I still haven't gotten around to rounding out my collection of the Del Rey Conan reissues, but it is nice to know the quality of the interior art (even if BW) will continue.

Hell, the entire design of the Wizard Knight was wonderful.

Anonymous said...

I'm actually just about finished with this book, and I love the chapter drawings. Great book, great drawings, great work all around.

A question about Manchess' work on the cover for "The Knight" - is it just me or does the giant in the background look like Gene Wolfe? Was this done on purpose or am I seeing what I want to see?

Irene Gallo said...

Glad you liked the book, Bobby.

It's funny to think of Wolfe as the ogre, but I think it's just a coincidence. Greg met Gene Wolfe once, very briefly. I don't think he has a solid idea of what Wolfe looks like.

I was recently handed our next Gene Wolfe project - a pirate book. I can't wait to get working on it!