Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holidays. Show all posts

Making of a Book Cover: Highland Sorcery Christmas

I really enjoy playing around with Photoshop. I'm not an artist by any means and I seriously just know enough to cause myself trouble, but I think I have a half-way decent eye at finding the stock photos that will work. I mostly go for the model's expression on whether they capture the feeling I hope my book evokes.

This Christmas book is a first for me as it has no cover model. I wanted something that said "Christmas" with just a glance, but also "monsters" because for the life of me I cannot write a fluffy happy everything's harmonious and joyful story to save my life. I wanted a book where all the main characters from the first four Highland Sorcery novels got together to celebrate just being family all in one place...and as it happens, one time too, since they have all been traveling back and forth through time.

Well, I got them all together. *Clearing throat and ducking*. But it wasn't easy and they had one heck of a fight on their hands to get there. It basically goes: Toren and Charity's son is in danger (in two time lines), they kill the monsters, so yeah, let's have Christmas now.

Best freakin plot ever, right? Brings all sorts of Holiday cheer. In case you're wondering, that squishy sound is my eyes rolling.

Back to the cover:

I started out searching for something Christmasy: Loved this picture because the ornaments have a kind of Scottish pattern on them. (Note: I play around with the pictures and make mock-ups before buying them so this still has a watermark. My favorite place to purchase stock photos is Dreamstime.com.



Then I went searching for the perfect monster breaking into their happy little Christmas. The monsters actually come through rifts in time so this one breaking through the wall seemed perfect.
 I also found this broken ornament that symbolized a disrupted Christmas nicely. Well, I think so at any rate.
Next I layered the three photos on top of each other to see if they would work together. Using the eraser tool, I erased the bits I didn't want like the glob of red ornaments and the gray wall the monster was coming out of. I also used the clone tool to blacken over the top of the monsters snout and teeth so I would just have a clawed hand, since my monsters' faces don't look like that at all.

With a little placement, here's the mock-up I came up with at first. (Again, notice the watermarks since I haven't purchased all the pictures yet since I may not use them. That's what I like about Dreamstime. They allow you to play around with their images first.)

As much as I like how this turned out, it also seems a little busy, especially when you take into consideration that it will mostly be viewed as a much smaller thumbnail on most of the distributor sites.
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So I played around some more, got rid of the Scottish ornaments (glad I didn't buy it yet--maybe next Christmas?) and moved and angled the monster's hand a little bit. Then I went back to Dreamstime and purchased the two pictures so I can legally and honestly use them, and started over again, darkened the font color, and here's the final version.

It will be officially released on November 2nd, because when else would a Christmas with monsters be released except on Dia de los Muerte I ask you?

But it is also listed for preordering at Smashwords and hopefully soon at Barnes and Noble as well for the whopping price of $1.99. 


Also out now is the boxed set of the first four books in the Highland Sorcery novels. Four books for the price of two. 

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Holiday Blog Hop

Thanks to all the participants and those who left a comment. I loved reading them. Anyhoo, I had my child pick a number so lucky #7 commenter Laurie is the winner of my prize Highland Sorcerer. 

Congrats Laurie. I'll be contacting you shortly for mailing details!  And as far as the nook or kindle winner, that should be listed soon as well. Good luck y'all for that! I hope one of you that came over here wins it!!!

It's a Happy Holiday from your favorite Authors and Bloggers. While we know everyone celebrates a different way, we wanted to make sure that you guys knew how much we treasure you all. So from Dec 14th to Dec 17th, all 200 or so of us will be blogging about the holidays and what they mean to us. We may talk about our favorite holiday traditions, recipes, gifts, reads, heroes, and so much more. We want to hear about what you do for the holidays, what you read, and who you'll spend it with. We hope to see you here and happy hopping!


And while we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

But that's not all....

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times!

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
2nd Grand Prize: A $200 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!


So what are the Holidays like for the Autrey Family? Weird actually. We are still finding our way. Having a child with cystic fibrosis meant that more often than not due to cold season, Chase was in the hospital for Christmas. Fortunately the children's hospital tried to make it really nice for families with lots of special events, even Santa visits, going on. Then there were all the do-gooders that pop up around Christmas. We've met several Texas Rangers, and Dallas Cowboys, and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (tiny petite things in real life-could blow them over with one breath), a few celebrities like Garth Brooks. As nice as that is, we'd much rather be at home.

Then we had the year when we nearly made it without a Christmas hospitalization  Chase's lungs were holding their own (okay he had just been in over Thanksgiving so our fingers were crossed), but just our luck, my sister-in-law thought it'd be a great thing to hook a trailer behind a SUV and enjoy a pseudo hayride in which our other son fell out and got run over by the trailer. There was a horrifying Bump as the first tire ran over him, then a second Bump as the rear tire got him.

Christmas Eve. Miraculously he was fine, not even bruised, but had to take him in just to make sure... 6 hours later totally bored in the ER, we got to take him home. Joy. What would a Christmas be like without that? And now one of our favorite Christmas carols (cuz we are all sarcastic butts) is "Samuel got run over by a trailer".

So for years we haven't had a normal Christmas. Two years ago, Chase passed away a couple of months before Christmas. No hospital stay, but being at home sucked too, so we hit the road and went down to Galveston. Yes, Galveston in winter. Cold windy beaches, flopping jellyfish, but great food. We wandered around not really knowing what to say to each other and missing the one we lost terribly and opened presents in a motel room beneath a little tree because we couldn't bear to be at home.

Last year? A hotel again, this time closer to home. 15 minutes away actually, which was kind of lame.But we saw a few movies, went out to eat, and went ice skating together  so it was fun and different, but home pulled us back a day earlier than we planned.

This year it's time to stay home. I still won't hang any stockings. The youngest is insisting on getting our tree out so that's inevitable though we're waiting for our daughter to fly in from college and she and T can decorate together, though I'm not sure where to put the tree since part of my present to my husband this year is letting him keep his music set-up in our living room for all of December. It is wall-to-wall speakers, guitars, cords, amps, drums, and electric piano. Don't ask. I can't fathom why he needs the huge speakers in a little 10x16 room either. He just does.

I get two reactions from people coming to our door. One of amused indulgence from the women and salivation from the guys.

So there you have it, the not-so-Holidayish-yet-true story of Autrey Christmas Pasts. I have no idea what this one will end up being like. Shrugs.

Run along and comment on all these blogs. I hope you win a Kindle. My personal giveaway will be a signed copy of Highland Sorcerer, so be sure to comment and while you're at it, let me what your most unusual Holiday was like.

The main list for all the Author Blogs is here. or they are all below...