Woohoo! I can check off one item from my 2021 to-do list. New covers for The White Knight & Black Valentine Series have arrived!
What was wrong with the old covers? you ask. Absolutely nothing. It’s just that Hero Status came out in 2014 and cover trends have changed. I feel the the genre of superhero fiction in particular has evolved so much since then.
I’m especially proud of these covers since I made them myself in Photoshop. So… uh… If you spot any glaring errors, please let me know in the comments. I’m still pretty new at this. 😅
But enough talk! Check out some big cover images:
Dave Del Toro used to be a superhero. Now he’s retired and happily married—to his former nemesis, Valentina Belmonte, better known as the Black Valentine. The two have settled in sunny Miami and left the past behind them. No more masks, capes or handcuffs. At least, not outside of the bedroom.
But then the famous hero Supersonic turns up dead, and Valentina is arrested for the murder. Dave knows she’s innocent, but he has to find the real killer if he wants to prove it. Investigating on his own, dodging the law, he gets tangled in a web of conspiracy that will take more than super-strength to break. If Dave wants to save his wife, he’ll have to cross lines no hero ever should…
Valentina Belmonte isn’t evil anymore—honest. She’s hung up her supervillain costume, retired to Florida with her family, and hasn’t committed a crime in years. (Well, not a felony. What’s a misdemeanor here and there if you don’t get caught?) This time, she’s not the one in trouble with the law—her goody-two-shoes, former superhero of a husband is.
He saved her life two months ago but committed a spectacular amount of assault and property damage along the way. The feds plan to press charges…unless Val does something for them in exchange. Apparently, an old friend of hers is importing a deadly drug that gives people temporary psychic powers. The feds want to send in Val with a wire to get evidence to bring him down. Sounds simple enough, but things turn deadly fast, and Val finds herself up against another supervillain—one who can out-play her at her own game.
Val’s worried she’s gone soft since retirement, but if she doesn’t get the feds the evidence they need, her husband will end up rotting in one of the most hellish prisons in the country…
When a rescue mission goes horribly wrong, it will take all his superpowers just to survive.
White Knight is the most popular superhero in the country—which is bad news for David Del Toro, formerly White Knight, who retired from heroics years ago and just wants some peace and quiet. When the White Knight ride at a superhero-inspired theme park has a grand reopening, Dave is more than happy to give his complimentary tickets to his daughter and her friends and spend the day at home. But then the park gets taken hostage by supervillains.
The man known as Bloodbath spent the last decade in a maximum-security prison and blames White Knight for putting him there. He’s given an ultimatum: the hero comes to face him, or he’ll kill every tourist in the park. Dave barely managed to beat Bloodbath while in his prime and doesn’t like his chances now that he’s old and busted. But unless he does something, every innocent person in the park is going to die…including his daughter.
They messed with the wrong supervillain.
Valentina Belmonte walked away from her supervillain career years ago. Having peaked at the top of the national Most-Wanted List, she now lives a quiet life with her husband and daughter, enjoying the Florida sun. Sure, she has to curb her violent and illegal instincts to stay under the radar, but her family is worth it.
Until they’re attacked. With her husband—a retired superhero and the closest thing she has to a conscience—hospitalized and on the brink of death, she’s done playing nice. She doesn’t know who attacked them or why, but she’ll wreak bloody destruction until she finds out. Nobody does revenge like a supervillain, but as her single-minded pursuit grows more violent, it threatens the only family she has left…
A hero awakens.
Retired superhero David Del Toro has just woken from a coma—or at least, that’s what the black-market doctor watching over him in an off-the-grid safehouse says. The doctor can’t tell him what happened, but that’s alright. Dave figures he can just ask his family. Except they’re nowhere to be found, their phone numbers are all disconnected, and when he goes home, he finds a hole the size of an elephant smashed into the front of the house and nothing inside.
A villain returns.
Frantic to find his family, Dave calls on all the contacts he made over his superhero career. He learns that his wife has apparently gone back to being a supervillain, and his former sidekick has become a rogue vigilante. Something rotten is going on in the DSA, the law enforcement agency that handles superhuman crime. What does it have to do with Dave’s family? And with such a late start, still suffering the aftereffects of the coma, does Dave have any hope of stopping it?
I don’t think I’ll ever find stock photography models who look like I picture Dave and Val in my head, hence the silhouettes. (And I’ll probably never have the art skills to draw them myself.) So while these covers don’t quite hit all the popular trends in superhero book covers, I think (hope?) they get across the thriller-esque tone of the novels.
And if they don’t work out, I can always change them again. That’s the beauty of being an indie author.
Has your favorite book series ever gotten new covers? Did you love them? Hate them? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Kristen Brand 