Any writer will tell you that, in the life of a book, one of the great moments is when you first see the cover. In this case, wow! Hats off to Alan Jones at HarperCollins Canada, who designed this cover for Dead Reckoning. The judges were unanimous, apparently -- the sales-and-marketing folks, editor Patrick Crean, and moi. And I, for one, am gob-smacked. How does he do it?

Six weeks ago, when I delivered a USB stick containing about 80 images to managing editor Noelle Zitzer, I said hello to Alan -- and drew his attention to one picture I especially liked. I had gleaned it from a large-format book, one of the glories of my personal library, published in 1877: Arctic Expeditions by D. Murray Smith. Alan liked the image, too.

He began working his magic, trying this variation and that, and also playing with other images -- with the fantastic end result you see above. OK, so this rendition is not final, final, final, if only because the Latin quotation is a placeholder. But it’s 97 per cent, near enough to count, and I am thrilled.
P.S. The book launches in September. Publicity director Colleen Simpson, literary agent Beverley Slopen.