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 Book Cover The Anointed

The more I learn how to Photoshop, the more I want to play around with my covers. It's terribly addictive. This week I updated all three of the covers to my Anointed series, taking them from a horror look to more of a gritty texture with the monster hunting half-human teen brothers.

Here's for the first book in the series The Anointed.
The original photo. This model just has that hard-edged take no prisoners look that big brother Jake embodies. But I wanted the covers to have both brothers so I went scouting around for a stock photo to both fit Cael's more innocent outlook, but also fit the picture. Fortunately the cover model I already liked for Cael also happened to have a photo of him sitting on steps. Perfect!

He needed some darkening up to match the dark tone and saturation of the first picture, and I had to shrink him just right to get his butt planted perfectly on the steps behind Jake.



 A little cropping here, a little cropping there.

Now to go all grainy and texturing. These guys fight demons and operate in a pretty dark gritty world so I wanted the cover to reflect that.



Add the Title and Author (moi) and it's good to go.

                                                   Kindle version                Nook version








My One True Love turns Fifty


My wonderful sweet husband is the big five-oh today. Neither of us is sure how that happened. We just started climbing the hill, and oh, hey, we're over the top and sliding down.

I'm just hoping this side of the slope is a lot smoother than the climb. Besides, we can always roll.

The first time I saw him twenty-five years ago, I was attracted at first sight. I came to Texas to visit a roommate from college and while we were doing the tourist things like Billy Bob's and the downtown cowtown strip, Peggy dragged us to this dive of a bar The Wedgewood Lounge because her friend from church (Pat) kept inviting her to come see his band play and she didn't want to go alone.

I could see why. There were more people in the band than there were occupants in the bar, one of which was slouched and sleeping over the bar.

But that was it for me.  Good thing he was wearing jeans instead of his black spandex he claimed he sometimes rocked out in cuz that would have been a deal killer. *Shudders* What may never have been over black spandex. Oh, did those happen to get lost in the laundry?  Sorry dear.

But spandex aside, I married an intelligent, confident, funny, sweet, forgiving, generous guy.

I love you sweetheart. Happy Birthday, Pat!!!

WIP Blog Hopping


I was tagged by my good friend and fellow chapter mate from North Texas Romance Writers of America chapter, Jerrie Alexander. She’s funny and generous and a wonderful writer. I’ve been anxiously waiting for the arrival of her first book The Green Eyed Doll.

What is your working title of your book?  Reaped

Where did the idea come from for the book?  I was reading Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation and the thought of what it would be like to randomly be plunked into the middle of another world’s war in another person’s body must be like. I know, that premise has nothing to do anything about WWII, but that’s how my bizarre brain works.

What genre does your book fall under? Young Adult Fantasy.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? I would want actors that aren’t well-known because when I write I don’t imagine any real person’s face so I wouldn’t want my character forever slapped with a really famous actor’s persona like that.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? She died on that lonely country road when their truck flipped, but woke up in a sterile facility with scientists calling her a different name, and in some other girl’s body.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? After six years of being with a traditional publisher, I have fallen in love with everything about self-publishing. Guess I like the freedom and control of it all.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? This book idea so far has been the one-that’s-gotten-away. I had the idea for it at least ten years ago and have written the first chapter many times and then tossed it. It’s gone through several transformations, from a an old man plunked into a young man’s body in a battle similar to WWII, and now it’s completely different about a teenage girl whose soul is scientifically “reaped” and placed into a test-tube grown body. Trouble is, she wasn’t supposed to retain her memories, but does.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to do National Novel Writing Month to push myself into actually writing this thing and finally get it out of my head and onto paper where it belongs. So, long answer to your question: In a month, I hope to have the first draft completed in a month.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? I’d have to say James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series due to the mad scientist experimenting on kids aspect.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Just the whole identity factor. How much of who we are comes down to who we are physically verses who we are inside. Then take those both away, bodies and memories, and who are we then? Would we have the same values or even personalities deep down or does that all filter away?

I have tagged Gina Lee Nelson, Lee Thompson, and Jesse Kimmel-Freeman  to learn more about what they are working on. So go on over and see what they're writing. 


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