Cover Story
What’s behind the new covers for the Horthólary Series
Here at The Tricky Genre Press we’re excited to have received the first set of covers for the updated Horthólary series - The Lays of Maladie.
Four Horthólary novellas by jjhudsson published by The Tricky Genre Press, 2026 (see notes for image credits).
This collection of novellas was first published in print over ten years ago by our good friends over at Tartarus Press. Ever since, we’ve been on at jjhudsson to get them updated for the digital age and, after much kicking and screaming, he’s finally got around to it. He and Angus, our eagle-eyed digital auditor, are even now arguing about dropped capitals and semi-colons.
I grabbed a few words with Jess, our wonderful designer, to get the low-down on the new covers:
TGP: So Jess, these covers look great. Tell us how you came up with the concept?
Jess: Aren’t they adorable? I love the colour-ways and all those nasty beasties.
TGP: Yes; about those beasties - where did you get the images?
Jess: I like the spider, don’t you? Nasty, horrid things. I found a huge one in the bath the other day. I had to get my hubby to suck it up with the hoover…
TGP: Oh dear. Where did that image come from, I wonder?
Jess: Oh, I don't know, really. I think they come up the drain, don’t they?
TGP: I mean the image of the spider. The one on the cover of Nemestrinus.
Jess: Oh that. Is it the one about the warlock or the giant worm?
Jess was full of exciting information about the new covers. I’m just going to summarise what was a very long conversation:
1) The covers were made using the brilliant free software, with the unfortunate name, GIMP
2) We use images freely downloaded under Creative Commons from Wikimedia.
3) The ones we have used are from the Annals & Magazine of Natural History, Zoology, Botany and Geology (1894)
4) In a new layer, we scaled the image to the same size as the cover, and added a another blank layer underneath it. Into this underlay, we dropped the cover colour (red, blue, two shades of green). Finally, we reduced the transparency of the upper image layer until we got that nice, creepy mix of color and image showing through.
Jess ended by telling me the cover for the collected novellas (yes - you will be able to read all four novellas in one epub!) will be slightly different, but from the ‘same stable’. Maybe it will have a horse on the cover!
We wait with anticipation.
Notes
The background to the image Four Horthólary novellas by jjhudsson… is ‘Weatherworn top of wooden table’ by W.carter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ed. For ‘digital auditor’ read ‘ digital editor.’
