Showing posts with label cover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cover. Show all posts

The Fae Ring

The Fae Ring cover 

She's always been a dutiful daughter...



Janet MacLeod has spent the last ten years dedicated to her clan, acting as the Lady of the castle—at the cost of her own happiness.

She aches every time she looks at her brothers, both happy with their wives, and wants nothing more than a love of her own.

He’s a broken soldier…


Xander, a former Fae Warrior, sacrificed his wings and magic to live in the Human
Realm and became a traitor to his people.

When he finds Janet forlorn on the beach, Xander gives her a ring he’s had since childhood, not realizing it’ll reveal her as his fated mate.

The ring’s magic activates the Faery Stones, and Janet is sucked into the Fae Realm. Her life is in immediate danger, for the Fae sense—and seek to destroy—any human who dares step into their world.

Xander is the only one who can retrieve her, but he too, wears a target.

Can he rescue his soul-mate and return with her to the Human Realm or will temptation of great magic and the rebirth of his wings force him to abandon their destiny? Duncan promises to help Claire get home, even though his desire to have her wars with his vow.
Torn between familiarity of the present and what she wants in the past, can Claire help Duncan find his brother and get back to the future? Will she even want to?
The Fae Ring cover back flap

About The Author:
Displaying photo.JPGC.A SzarekC.A. is my critique partner and I love her to death. I'm thrilled to show y'all her latest book ~~ Highland style of course. She's originally from Ohio, and has made me these to-die-for buck-eye treats. nom-nom-nom. Anyway, I'm so glad she made her way out here to Texas. She is married and has a bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice.

She works with kids when she’s not writing.

She’s always wanted to be a writer and is overjoyed to share her stories with the world. C.A. is just an all around great sweet person and I know you'll love her and her stories as much as I do.

Visit her on her blog, orn TwitterFacebookGoodreads and website. She's everywhere!!!

C.A. Szarek is also author of Collision Force, Chance Collision, Sword's Call, Love's Call and The Tartan MP3 Player.
Twinsie Jo




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Making of a Book Cover: Banshee's Cry


Original model for Jake




So here are the two models for the half-human, half-Anointed Gillant brothers Cael and Jake. As you can see the lighting is way different. Cael needed some darkening up some.
Darkened photograph of Cael modelCover model for Cael


Superimposed the pictures together, but had to put a wall for Cael to lean on so he wouldn't be floating in mid-air. Then I grittied them up in keeping within the dark edginess of their world. 
Below, I was playing with turning them into illustrations, but decided not to go with that look.   

So this is the final cover. I'm quite proud of it.
book cover for Banshee's Cry final

 Kindle version                                                  Nook version 



Making of a Book Cover: A Haunting

For the third book in The Anointed series, A Haunting,  I wanted to keep both brothers on the cover again. This one was a little harder to get just right. I loved the picture of Jake standing by the window, but I couldn't find any full bodied pictures of Cael to go with him so I had to not only cut and paste him in, but use one guy's body, and Cael's head. Here's the three original stock photos I had to work with:

Had to mirror image this guy's body to fit in the picture and darkened him up a little. He'll be darkened a little bit more after the fact.


Then desaturated Cael's head because he is so light  And then layer up the three different pictures. Head to body, Cael to Jake's photo... Cael still is too light for the whole though, but that will be taken care of.

Next put the gritty texture onto it and then darkened Cael up more.
Voila!! 

So after all that I decided Cael's head was too big, so started over and resized to a smaller head size. Geez.


Kindle version                      Nook version




Making of a Cover: Death & Kisses

This was a fun cover to play around with. Much more difficult than usual. This is my first published Young Adult book so just finding the picture took a long time. Since the story is about a girl who no longer fits in with her crowd at high school and also has some dark elements dealing with death and ghosts and revenge, I thought this first picture fit the bill, with this bright flower floating in dark water.

Then I group emailed my siblings. Oh man, I opened a can of opinions. More than 100 emails between us all later, and after one sister pointed out that with the title and the flower, it looked more like a "self-help book to aid people in saying their final goodbyes to loved ones"--Yikes--I scrapped this cover design completely.

The title itself brought even more controversy, but I figured that was good since I wanted something edgy that would make potential readers do a double-take. It has been titled Outcast for about 3 years while it found a literary agent and she tried to place it, that it was hard to let go of that title. If there weren't already so many books and albums with that title I would have gladly kept it. Death and Kisses though. Controversial. I'm pleased. We'll see how it goes.

Back to finding just the right cover picture. It took a while, but this picture finally felt perfect.
I love the dress, I love how we can't see the girl's face. I love the rose. However, since a haunted pond plays a big part in the story, I wanted water. This is where Smart Photo Editor comes in to change up the background.

We added water to the bottom of the background, but the lighting didn't mesh in the two color versions of both background pictures so we made the background black & white and kept the girl in color and the lighting blended perfectly. It also gave the book a surreal quality, which totally fits the vibe of the story. In keeping with the ghost and death theme, we also painted the rose black.

I wanted the bottom of her dress to be darker so it looks like water is seeping into it so we played around with that on Photoshop.

Next step is playing around with the fonts and colors and word placement. I could do that for hours. Then a coworker of my husband's had a brilliant idea to make the flower's stem pop out from behind the letter "S". Honestly, that is my favorite feature and so easy to do once my husband (the Photoshop, Sagelight, Smart Photo Editor genius--yes, he uses all those programs and more for different effects on one cover) showed me how.

At this point I thought it was done. I loved it as is, but no. You know how creative people can't stop dinking  around? A writer will always find something to edit in her book, even after it's published. Well, my artist husband is the same way, so he threw these at me:

Dang it. Now I love both this first one and the black and white background. I honestly could not decide so I took it to Facebook and had my friends choose between them. I paid close attention to my younger fb friends since this book is really for them, and nearly 90% choose the black and white background. I was surprised, thinking for sure teens would choose the color. Just goes to show you, you can't second-guess kids.

The next challenge was to make a version with a spine and back flap for the paperback version. Usually I pick pictures that have a width to already accommodate the extra for the back, like this, but this picture didn't have any, so we either had to find a picture to go with it or simply go with a black back. I found a forest that kind of goes with the original forest so we used that after darkening the trees a bit and converting it into black and white. I also had to redo the title words to make them fit, which meant redoing the flower between the two "S's" this time, but like I said before, that was easy and kind of fun to do, so no biggie.


                        For your Kindle            For your Nook          Coming Thanksgiving in Paperback

If you have any questions I can help you with for your own covers, just ask me, well, okay, I'll probably have to ask my husband, but he loves talking art...so...just ask.



Cover Reveal in the making

I love seeing the transformation a cover goes through. And I'm so pleased with how this latest one turned out for Highland Shapeshifter.

Here's the original stock photo: What caught my eye was not only the movement of the shot, but the worried expression on the model's face. So far I've loved all the girls on the Highland covers for their melancholy looks. On each of them, I'm drawn in, wondering what they could be thinking about.

Yeah, yeah, in reality, they are probably hoping the photographer will hurry up and take the shot, but...


Then it got tweaked a bit. Even though it will be cropped for the ebook cover, a version this size will be untouched for when we start working on the paperback size. It will be a little tricky since she is smack in the middle so the back cover area will have to be expanded, but that's for later.

This one below has been tweaked a bit, removing her reflection behind her. Later on the weird shadow on her leg will be removed and the brightness in the top left corner will be toned way down.


Next, it gets cropped. That was a little harder to decide which way to go because there is so much movement. The general photography rule (as my Sweetheart photographer husband is apt to point out) is for the subject's face to always look inward on the largest "rule of thirds" space. However, I liked the movement of her hair and hand lifting outward. It just felt more active, like she was on the run (which she is throughout most of the book) so I broke the rule and had it cropped so her face is closer to the edge, like she's looking off the page.

Below, notice the shadow from her dress on her leg is gone. She also has some weird nipplish going on with how she's leaning down, and since I write on the Sweeter side, I don't really want that, but some strategic letter placement with the title should take care of that. The things you have to look out for, right?

Here's the final copy. The light at the top corner is toned down a bit to give more focus on the letters. I really wanted a green on green, but the background was so busy, it was just hard to read and not showing up, so I went with kind of a white and green combination, which fits with the title lettering of the first book in the series with lighter and darker shades so it keeps a good continuity between books. I love how it turned out and can't wait for this book to come out this month. So what do you think of it?


Droopy Boob Effect

Does your cover suffer from the droopy boob effect? Why yes, it does. 


I adore this cover. The ghost has just the right expression and creepy level for the ghost in my newest book. 
However ...
No, that is not a droopy boob, it's actually a ruffle on her dress. See the pretty lace? But when viewed in thumbnail size ~~ droopy boob alert. Sigh.

Fortunately, I'm on good terms with my cover designer and instantly the db issue is whisked away.