in bold letters "Elyssia Books" beneath a stylized image of a flame

A Dance of Dawnlight, Cover Progress 1.0

As editing progresses on A Dance of Dawnlight, so too does the cover art creation!

a rough sketch showing a door opening from a dark stairway corridor, illuminating two women in the room beyond the door. One is Luca—wild orange hair, pointy ears, brownish complexion—who is opening the door and looking out into the stairway, warily. The other is Ellarian—blonde curls, glasses, tattoos—in the background working at a desk. Both women are dressed modestly in purple stand-in clothing for the time being.
WIP as of 5 Aug ’26
a WIP showing a door opening from a dark stairway corridor, illuminating two women in the room beyond the door. One is Luca—wild orange hair, pointy ears, brownish complexion—who is opening the door and looking out into the stairway, warily. The other is Ellarian—blonde curls, glasses, tattoos—in the background working at a desk. Despite a lack of detail in the background, the two figures have been painted in a lot of detail, probably too much detail for this much progress.
WIP as of 12 Aug ’26

Well before the illustration was complete for A Dance of Dusklight, I had an idea of what I wanted to do for the sequel, Dawnlight. It came very early on in the process, because the vibe that I was going for was easier to capture with the context of the second book. I sort of worked backward from there, actually.

—Clueless Luca
(AKA J.E. Holmes’s artistic alter ego)

The semi-titular caper that’s at the center of the second book is the mission that Ellarian and Luca undertake to the Dawn Bastion, a dark, foreboding place where Ellarian hopes to accomplish some critical research into the mystery Luca has tasked her with solving. Luca accompanies her to aid and protect.

Hopefully they can tolerate all the forced proximity, hm?

The tone that surrounds this mission to this location is exactly what I wanted to come across on the cover. I’ll make changes and additions as necessary to complete the cover.

I’ll be posting preview chapters on Patreon in the coming weeks.

P.S. this is actually not the first version of this book cover. Just like for Dusklight, I did some initial designs quite a while ago, though I didn’t go through nearly as many iterations! Seriously, the cover I ended up using for Dusklight was the 6th attempt. For Dawnlight, I’ve only had 2 so far.

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