Works of Art

After travel, the holidays, and a period in which my eyes refused to contemplate a display screen, I’ve finally returned to my part-time job as a publisher, and am working on the final ebook of my sea series, To Glory Arise, originally The Privateer.

Behold a couple pieces of art, conveniently in public domain, that might be suitable as cover art. Let me know which you like best.

Returning to my first published novel has been just a little bit humbling.  It is a first novel, after all, and as a first novel is flawed almost by definition.

But there was one character that raised my eyebrows.  A Catalan surgeon with an Irish name, and a taste for dueling and opium.  “That would be Stephen Maturin,” I hear you say.  Except that it isn’t.

I’m reasonably certain I was unfamiliar with the works of Patrick O’Brian when I created Surgeon O’Reilly, and so the resemblance to Maturin is coincidence.  (And the personalities of the two are quite distinct: O’Reilly is a remote, chilling isolate, with none of Stephen’s charm or love of music.)

But anyway, I’m thinking the resemblances are far too marked, and so O’Reilly’s name and biography may undergo some alteration.  I don’t want to have to keep encountering people who ask, “Why did you put Stephen Maturin in your novel?”  Cuz I didn’t, not intentionally anyway.

So I think he may end up becoming a Galician named Castro.  Which is a Galician name, I believe.  No one will take the character as a comment on Fidel, anyway.