The Blood Omen Logo

The book cover of the Georgian version of Blood Omen 1

Why did you choose a bat and snake to represent your vampire saga?

I was sitting on our rooftop terrace in a seaside town near Barcelona (sigh!), scrap of paper and pencil in hand. Stuart was already written in to the story, as was his symbolic back tattoo. He got it done as a symbol of his belief in the combined power of the vampires and the ancient Egyptian god Apophis. As part of the cult, 'Apophi,' he expected to harness the power of the God of Darkness and Chaos to enable the vampires to walk in daylight, so giving them the one gift needed to help them succeed in subduing human resistance.

...for the first time I saw the huge black, white, grey and red tattoo that covered most of his back.

It was a horrific image; a sharply drawn beast of a bat, wings outspread to cover the vampire's shoulder blades. It had vicious sharp fangs and talons like a bird of prey; talons that were sunken into the fleshy body of the serpent it carried- easily recognisable as the Apophi snake. In turn, the snake's venomous fangs were biting into the belly of the bat and blood dripped from its greedy jaws.

The snake's tail slid part-way down Stuart's spine.

A tattered ribbon wound under the bat and on it I saw the writings of the vampire script.

"What does the tattoo mean?" I asked him, shivering inwardly at how realistic and bloody the tattoo was.

He didn't move and for a moment I thought he hadn't heard me. But as I was about to speak again he abruptly stood up and turned to face me; his movements as smooth and as lithe as a cat's, making me flinch unintentionally.

"Bat and Snake united. Vampire and Apophis," he told me. And then he continued, speaking in Strix: "Tik Lucifuge dil musteighrit aljunut d'aldam. É dil feeza tik masas addima!" His voice was low. I could see by his expression that he expected me to be unable to understand. He was wrong.

"The Lucifuge…will...wake up...the army...of...blood." I began to translate, frowning in concentration. Stuart looked at me, eyes wide in shock. "And the blood drinkers will win..."

The book cover of the Georgian version of Blood Omen  2, showing Stuart and his tattoo

The vampire bat is a universally recognized symbol for vampires, so that was an easy step one. Having chosen Apophis (Apep) to be my top bad guy, the snake (his symbol) was a logical next step. How to combine them? Blood. The bat is clawing at the snake, having already bitten him, and the snake is biting into the bat's belly: a circle of blood-taking. 
The pencil ran across the paper and fifteen minutes later, I was done! My final image wasn't as sharp and 'horrifying' as I wanted, but I didn't want to put teens off reading my books, so left it as it was- 'medium' scary! :)
When my book was printed in Georgia, the in-house artist at the publishers improved the design with my guidance- sharpening the edges and darkening the aura of the bat-snake. For aesthetic reasons, they chose to break the circle of blood-drinking in the new design, leaving the snake captured and hanging in mid-air. But by then I'd written the ending of my last book and so knew it was also an appropriate image, if not exactly the same as Stuart's tattoo...

Prior to the Georgian release, I made sure my logo was seen around Tbilisi city!

My original book cover for Blood Omen 1 (Amazon version) and the original sketch