HALLMAN: Starship Plangite

As a child, still living on Earth, Jonathan Fargates was told by his mother the story of a ghost ship drifting through space. After passing through an undetected shield raised by an advanced alien civilization, as he remembered the story, the bodies of all its tripulation were vaporized, leaving no survivors. All of the subsequent attempts to retrive the spaceship, his mother told him, have failed with catastrophic results. None of the ships sent to retrieve came back, leading to the belief that the ship somehow still carried the consciousnesses of the members of its tripulation, and they attacked and destroyed anyone and everyone who went to their rescue. That ultimately led to the prohibition by the Conglomerate for any ship to enter the sector where the ship could be found.

The ship's name had almost been completely wiped from captain Fargates's memory, only resurfacing while he was passing through the supposedly banned sector---whose ban he knew fully well wasn't present anywhere on the Conglomerate's records---and stumbled upon a ship of a decomissioned class which happened to be the same of the ship from his mother's story. He attempted to contact the ship and, to his surprise, he received an answer.

"This is captain Fargates of the spaceship SS Fortuna", he said, "identify yourself".

The image that came on screen was very unclear, almost completely obscured by static. Captain Fargates could barely identify the figure of an old man so thin he thought for a split second he had seen a skull rather than a living human being. The man wore a captain's uniform, there wasn't a single hair on his head, his deep eye sockets made him look like he was over a hundred years old. He seemed much too old and frail to be a ship's captain. He began to speak in a surprisingly young, deep voice.

"This is captain Stuart of the SS Plangite".

I've recently finished watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I might have still been watching it when I wrote this, or I may have done so soon after I've finished, I can't quite remember. I wrote this short fake excerpt as quickly as I could and as soon as it came to me. I think it might work well if I wrote this concept as a novella.

You may notice the change in author name from River to R. K. Hallman. Same author, slightly different pen name. In future covers, I plan on swithcing between the two names depending on which one I feel suits better the cover.

HALLMAN: We Are the Aliens - 4

Fonts used: M+ 1m; Fanwood.

The gift the alienkind gave us, the humankind, had revealed some extraordinary facts. It was impossible to believe it, yet all the evidence we needed was there all the time – we just didn’t see it. We knew they could breathe in our atmosphere. We were able to communicate with them. It’s a wonder we didn’t figure it out by ourselves.

And this is the end of the We are The Aliens tetralogy. I think this cover is the worst of all of them, and at the same time, it took more work to finish than the others. I made two alternative designs, though, and I also played a little with the colors.

Oh, and I have updated the last post on this series. Now it has a fictional excerpt.

A few days ago, I posted a rather bad drawing on my tumblr that would serve as starting point for this cover. That’s it, I just wanted to link to that drawing.


P.S.: That’s it, I ran out of ideas. So no new cover for probably a really long time. Maybe I will still update this blog once or twice, with redesigns of old covers or something like that.

HALLMAN: We Are the Aliens - 3

Fonts used: M+ 1m; Fanwood.

There was a small box on the table. The aliens left it there, of course. It was a green box, and it had a card attached to it. I picked the card and looked at it, it was the shape of a small alien head. I smiled, those guys had a sense of humor.

But I was afraid. We didn’t know the aliens very weel, we didn’t know what they were capable of. Maybe there was something bad inside it. Maybe that box was something that I should let alone.

I opened it and everything stood still.

Sorry, no fictional excerpt for this one. The last non-existent book in the series, though, will have an excerpt that I believe will be longer and better than the others. Especially because the last book is actually the one I thought of first, and I imagined te whole series because of it.

***
UPDATE (2013-08-5): As you can see, I put a fictional excerpt there. I think you should know something about it: the whole excerpt is inspired by this Jonathan Coulton’s song: youtube.com/watch?v=0qgFxKIv32Q

It wasn’t meant to be when I started writing it, but I thought about the song while writing, and I couldn’t resist. The more I think about the song, the more I believe it fits really well with the We are The Aliens fictional tetralogy. This excerpt is in my opinion the best of all the fictional books in this series.
***

IMHO, this cover isn’t quite as good as the other two, but that’s what I managed to make with my skills, and I try to work with my limitations, not against them. I believe that’s why my covers are a lot better than these.

HALLMAN: We Are the Aliens - 2

Fonts used: M+ 1m; Fanwood.

“I see you”. The phrase appeared on the computer screen. I tried pressing Ctrl, Alt, and Del, but nothing happened. “I see you I see you I see you I see you”, said the screen. I didn’t understand what was happening […]

Surprise! (As if anyone reads this blog.) “We Are the Aliens” is not just one book. It is actually a series of books. There’ll be four books total, maybe more, but probably not. The next post won’t be a book from the series, though.

HALLMAN: We Are the Aliens

Fonts used: M+ 1m; Fanwood.

 “We are the aliens”, said the one who seemed to be the leader. They looked exactly like the kind of aliens you expect to see in the movies. I could not believe what I was seeing… or hearing. That creature said “the aliens”, as if my partner and I knew which aliens they were.

I am never sure about my stuff when it’s so colorful. I believe I work better if I only have to worry with two or three colors. Nevertheless, this is a nice design, I think. Also, this blog needed more Hallman, since there was only one cover for him until now.

HALLMAN: Seven Black Dots

Font used: League Gothic.

“Then I saw seven black dots painted in one of the bricks. They were disposed a pattern similar to the one in the faces of a die, but they weren’t aligned with the sides of the brick, and I found that a little unsettling. One of the dots was split in two, with a part of it in the brick below.

That struck me as really odd. The regular pattern the dots were in suggested they were there for a reason, yet the split dot suggested they were there purely by accident. I knew then that solving this mystery wouldn’t be as easy as I had expected.”

I don’t know whether these paragraphs are well written or not, but I know that I like it. I kinda wish this wasn’t just something I written to be a non-existent story for a fictional author in order to make a fictional cover. However I don’t believe I would be able to write a story that could include these two paragraphs, since I created them out of context like this.