A Wolf Slayer Saga | Stephanie Flint

A cover for Melange Books. For this cover we wanted to keep with the theme of the previous books: Dragon Sword, Sword of Doom, and Sword of the Quest. I used the same model (piece-parted to get the pose we wanted). In order to try speeding up the process, we fully discussed the author’s vision for the cover before I started piecing everything together. I asked him to clarify a few of his ideas, and we managed to get this put together withing four proofs (minor tweaks on each. I toyed with the idea of the flames pouring over into the series title to add more drama and flare.

This is the result:

Stock images from The Dollar Photo Club (Site now defunct):
katana and three images of the (same) model

Stock from Dreamstime:

https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-bonfire-flame-fire-forest-autumn-flames-image34236555 – fire
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-meteor-shower-isolated-black-background-image49030556 – meteor
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-roche-rock-ancient-ruined-chapel-perched-top-rocky-granite-outcrop-known-as-located-mid-cornwall-dedicated-to-st-image32326080 – ancient ruins
https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-black-smoke-red-flames-photo-special-nature-protection-action-intended-to-make-better-habitat-rare-heathland-image39123676 – lower fire

Behind the Scenes – A Wolf Slayer Saga: Dragon Sword

This is a cover for Melange Books. Since we knew we had a sequel coming, we put a little more focus in setting up the basic structure of the cover… the wolf head at top, the series name on the side, and the placement of the title and author name. We also played with the mood, choosing the dark blue color for the forest and the red of the title to create a dramatic, dangerous tone. We chose a model with multiple poses, though I did a bit of photomanipulation to make him look more like how the character is described in the book. I also made both him and the wolf have a more noticeable scowl, and I played with the depth of field to put more of the emphasis on the model.

For the back cover I went with a simple leather texture to match the edge of the front cover with the series title. This is the end result: