Welcome to my stop on The Apollo Academy’s Blog Tour!
Today I’m excited to be interviewing Kim about the beautiful cover for The Apollo Academy as well as the book trailer! (shown below)
eighteen-year-old Aurora Titon can have whatever she wants—clothes, expensive
gadgets, anything money can buy. All she really wants is to escape her
pampered, paparazzi-prone life for the stars. Becoming the first female pilot
to train as an astronaut for the Apollo Academy is exactly the chance for which
she has been waiting. Everything would be perfect if it weren’t for
her unreciprocated crush on a fellow student, the sexy astronaut bent on making
her life hell, and the fact that someone keeps trying to kill her.
science fiction series, The Apollo
Academy, is an action packed story of love, discovery, and survival.
Available NOW at Amazon and Barnes&Noble!
Hi Kim! So excited to have you on the blog today to talk about the cover and trailer for The Apollo Academy! Let’s start off with the cover first.
1. Who designed the cover?
Cliff Nielsen. He’s a fantastic artist and I can’t say enough great things about him. You may recognize some Cliff’s art from Cassandra Clare’s, Colleen Houck’s, or the latest Star Wars/ Star Trek covers.
Oh, that’s awesome! I didn’t realize he also did the Star Wars and Star Trek ones!
2. How does it work — do you pick from a few choices of cover designs or is it more of a back and forth on editing one design? Can you tell us a little bit about the process?
When you first begin the cover design process, there’s a lot of back and forth emails. I had to give Cliff the book’s summary, character descriptions, chapter samples, etc. I also gave him my opinion on what I thought the cover should look like and what was important to me. He took over from there.
3. What did you want the cover to portray? I wanted a lot of things from the cover!
-I wanted to see the two main characters on the cover, Aurora and Zane.
-I wanted it to be clear that they were both astronauts.
-I wanted it to be clear that there was a love story.
-I really wanted to see the wings on the back of their flight suits.
-I wanted a shuttle and stars somehow portrayed.
Cliff took all of my thoughts, mixed them with his own, and then created five different cover possibilities. I had the tough choice of choosing which of the five I wanted to go with. That was HARD! They were all terrific.
I am probably the most indecisive person ever, so I can’t imagine having to choose!
4. I know I tend to judge books by their cover (even though I shouldn’t!) — what did you want to jump out at readers from the cover?
I’m a cover junkie and I wanted people to see The Apollo Academy’s cover and just HAVE to pick it up. Cliff has a way of taking normal things and making them incredibly artistic. For example, Aurora’s red hair. He was able to make her hair swirl in the shuttle exhaust and into the stars above.
I love that the hair swirls into the exhaust and sky!
5. Now, moving on to the awesome book trailer! Tell us a little bit about what you wanted to show in the trailer!
I wanted the book trailer to play more like a movie trailer. I’ve always envisioned The Apollo Academy as a movie, even while I was writing it.
My husband has a good background in editing photos/videos, so I begged him to help me make a book trailer. My first task was to write out a screen list. Basically what I wanted to see, the order in which it needed to be portrayed, and the text.
We bought footage from iStock videos and what we couldn’t find there, we recorded ourselves. For example, the flight scene in the trailer is me in a Cessna-172 doing spins and recording it from my iPhone. (Don’t worry, I wasn’t the one flying at the time.)
We then edited all of our footage and pieced the video together.
That is SO cool! That’s awesome that you guys put it all together yourselves! And, I’m glad you weren’t flying at the time. 🙂
6. Who was involved in making this trailer?
My husband and I did it together on a Mac Computer.
7. How long did it take?
Once we really got moving on the project, it took us about a month to get everything together.
8. Is there a reason that we don’t see faces of anyone in the trailer?
Without a big budget, it’s hard to get exactly what you want without hiring models/actors. I also didn’t want to take that away from the viewer. I think it’s better when we imagine the characters ourselves, you know?
For sure! For those book to movie adaptations I always have to adjust my mind’s image of characters to fit the actual cast!
9. Is there anything else you’d like to share about the cover or trailer?
I hope you love them both as much as I do!
Thanks so much for letting me have you on the blog for the interview!
P. Chase holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Aeronautical Science from Embry Riddle
Aeronautical University, which basically means she’s kind of a geek and loves
flying airplanes. Naturally, her books tend to include aviation, hot flight
instructors, aviator glasses, and—let’s not forget—kissing! When Kimberly’s not
writing or reading, she’s hanging out with her husband, four-year-old son, and
two dogs.
Here’s a chance to win a free electronic copy or an Apollo Academy Launch Specialist t-shirt!
What an interesting post! I immediately recognized this as a Nielsen cover. And I think it’s great how the trailer was developed.
Thanks for sharing!
Cool interview. Seeing this book everywhere. The story actually sounds interesting so i might give it a try soon.