Legacy of Ghosts by Alicia Wanstall-Burke – Cover Reveal

Writing Legacy of Ghosts may have been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a creative capacity, but choosing a cover artist didn’t take a second thought. Pen Astridge created the cover for Blood of Heirs, book one of The Coraidic Sagas, so it made complete sense to ask (beg) her to create something for the second instalment of the trilogy. I couldn’t wait to see where she took theme and style.

This decision was made even easier by the simple fact that Pen is amazing and has created brilliant covers for Mark Lawrence, Keith McArdle, J.P. Ashman, Graham Austin-King and Sarah Chorn.

Oddly, while I had zero clue what the cover of Blood of Heirs should or would be, I always had some idea of what Legacy of Ghosts would look like. Call it a premonition, a vision, or a booze-addled brain-fart, I just knew.

It would have blue on it. I didn’t know how or where, but blue was a thing. There would be magic. There would be a sword, because who doesn’t love a big pointy bit of metal? And of course, after the cover for Heirs dropped with a figure indicative of Lidan, I knew Legacy would feature someone who could very well be Ranoth.

I suspect my much clearer vision of what I wanted drove Pen to the verge of madness. I certainly shoved her over the edge trying to balance the depth of shadow against the super-rich light source that wasn’t present on the cover of Heirs.

In many ways, I did very little to help Pen create this cover, and that small part was a walk in the park compared to what I went through writing the words within its confines.

I began Legacy while Heirs was a reasonably early draft, sitting in limbo with a publishing house. My creative process struggles to move on with the next book when I’m not confident things won’t change dramatically with the previous volume, so I was hung up on all sorts of snags just getting the first few lines down. As it was, Legacy showed me the flaws in Heirs, which I was able to correct and smooth out into a more cohesive narrative.

Alongside this insufferable creative block, the four-year span from when I began page one to today has been one of personal tragedy, upheaval and catastrophe, least of which were the two surgeries I underwent. One of these involved the re-fusion of the joint in my right hand, apparently corrected two years before, while I wrote Heirs. Yet despite chronic pain and serious ongoing personal crises, Legacy wanted to be written, in the end providing an outlet and a sanctuary from my tumultuous reality. I’m endlessly grateful, at the end of it all, that the cover for Legacy of Ghosts is more than I could have ever hoped for, and I can’t wait to see what Pen has in store for the third and final novel, Empire of Shadows!

Four years have passed since Lidan’s world was ripped apart, and time is running out to change her father’s mind about the succession before the bargain with her mother expires. Torn between what she wants and what she knows is right, she is faced with an impossible choice: will her brother live, or will he die?

Within the walls of the Hidden Keep, Ranoth holds his secrets close as he tries to harness his wild magic. But when life in the Keep descends into chaos, he is cast once more into the outside world, forced upon a southward path toward unknown lands and untold danger.

With Ran set on seeking justice and revenge, and Lidan fighting to find her feet and follow her heart, journeys will converge, and the ghosts of a past thought long dead will rise.

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Legacy of Ghosts is due out November 30th of this year and is available now for pre-order! If you want to learn more about The Coraidic Sagas, you can visit Alicia’s website or follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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