Larry Rostant

For your viewing pleasure, the front cover of Justina Robson’s Keeping It Real: Quantum Gravity Book One. A tale of sex, elves and rock’n’roll, Keeping it Real has been described by SFWorld as “Justina ‘out to play’. And boy, does she have fun! So – think an enthusiastic melange of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Meredith Gentry, Tad Williams’ War of the Flowers, Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, a touch of Marianne dePierre’s Parrish Plessis, even The Bionic Woman or Transformers, and you get an idea of how much fun this book is.”

Cover art is by the wonderful Larry Rostant, who also provided the cover for the UK edition. I loved the slick, Matrix-esque depiction of protagonist Lila Black in Larry’s original image, but asked him if we could add an element to speak to the fantasy side of this sci-fantasy as novel as well. (I think the addition of rock star Zal sets up a nice sense of tension and expectation between the two figures. What do you think?) Meanwhilek, layout/design is by Prometheus’s in-house artist Grace Zilsberger, making her Pyr debut. I love the clean, iconic layout she’s come up with and look forward to working with her on many more Pyr covers.

Keeping it Real will be published in N. America in March, 2007. More exciting KIR news soon, I promise.