Help me judge my book’s new cover

People often judge a book by its cover, but here’s your chance to judge my next book’s cover before it’s even published! In contravention to all manner of advice I have always made my own covers, in keeping with my fiercely independent nature when it comes to authorship. My cover for The Neah Virus, my latest medical thriller novel, is no exception. So I’m wondering, how do you like it so far?

I developed the picture from my research on the sculpture and artwork of Pacific Northwest native people. The two-headed sea serpent is a spirit animal that figures in legends up and down the North Pacific coast. It is said to have great medical power, suggesting it might be related to the ancient Greek caduceus, the winged staff with two twined serpents carried by the medicine god Mercury, which in recent times has become the symbol of the medical profession.

Folks I have spoken to in Neah Bay say Makah tribal lore doesn’t include a creature comparable to the Alaskan Kwakiutl’s Sisiutl or the Tamallay of the Quinaults to the south. However, Makahs are quite familiar with a pair of Lightning Snakes who help Thunderbird on his whale hunts. Furthermore, a 500-year-old carving of a two-headed serpent was unearthed in a Makah archeological dig.

Anyway, enough about the serpent. How about the cover? I’d love to get some opinions before it’s finalized. If you’d like to have a say in my next book’s cover, now is the time. You can comment on this post below or find an email contact by clicking on the “website” link just under my smiling face above.

You can see I duded up the first image to make the second image a little more three dimensional. But does that help? I’m not sure. Click the images to see larger versions. The first is a little more stark and that seems like a good cover for a medical thriller where the stark terror of a deadly disease awaits within the pages.

So let me know which you prefer. Or, let me know if you’d prefer something else.

I’m all eyes and ears. So is the serpent.