Many years ago when I’d finished my first draft of The Hammer Unfalls (which is now free to read on Royal Road!) I was hanging out on DeviantArt looking for suitable cover art. I found an artist whose digital paintings really captured the vibe of the story: René Aigner. I reached out to René then and he kindly gave permission for me to use this image as the cover for the book:
Many years have passed, and I did not publish it then. But I’ve always been struck by the eerie similarity between his digital paintings and the environments I’d described in my story, such as this scene of what is surely Glim looking on as Certe walks the Hiemal Peaks. Fantasy has some collective unconscious to be sure!
Here are a few other (spoilerish) pairings:
Check out René’s work here: