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August 2, 2019 · 4:25 pm

The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear – Now Available!

Fooling a gryphon?

Not on her ideal day of treasure hunting.

But that’s exactly what she’s going to have to do if she wants out of the ruins alive–with her treasure in tow.

The next Legends of Cirena short story is now available as an ebook! 😀

“The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear” is the second story written for my collaborative adventure Facebook group.

Like “The Wind Mage of Maijev,” this one takes place approximately 200 years before the events of The Wishing Blade series and the Stone and String series.

Except, instead of a wind mage in a city that hates magic, we’re dealing with a shapeshifting thief and an uppity gryphon. Can the thief outwit the gryphon and get the treasures inside the ruins?

Read “The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear” to find out. ;-D

The Wishing Blade - Section Break - Magic Swirl

“The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear”

YA Fantasy Short Story

The Wishing Blade - Section Break - Magic Swirl

Fooling a gryphon? Not her ideal day of treasure hunting…

After a hunter cheats Nuaka in a game of cards, she’s ready for payback. A few shapeshifting ribbons later, she sneaks into his room and steals a promising set of directions to the local ruins—and treasure horde.

If she gets the treasure before he does, she’ll be rich, and that cheater will learn his lesson:

Don’t mess with the shapeshifter.

At first, everything goes smoothly.

And then she runs into the gryphon.

Can she use her wit and her magic to make it out of the ruins alive… and with her treasure?

The Wishing Blade - Section Break - Magic Swirl

Explore the trickery of a shapeshifter in this exciting short story.

Read “The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear” today!

The Wishing Blade - Section Break - Magic Swirl

Enjoy! 😀

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Tagged as fantasy, fantasy short stories, griffen, griffin, griffon, gryphon, Infinitas Publishing, rogue, shapeshifter, shapeshifting, short stories, short story, Stephanie Flint, The Gryphon and the Mountain Bear, The Legends of Cirena, The Wishing Blade, thief, trickster, world-building, YA fantasy, young adult fantasy

This cover (for Melange Books) one was an example of where having masked layers and the auto-align tool in Photoshop CS6 can be useful. This particular cover was comprised of 13 stock images in total, with a few of them being used more than once in various places across the manipulation (the explosion was made larger/smaller, flipped, and masked in different portions to create the multiple explosion effects). Not only that, but the two people were comprised of seven images, in order to create the pose that was requested. Made it really handy to have all the pieces in place, so all I had to do was replace the stock proof images with the full-sized ones (adjusted with auto-align, of course). My proofs tend to look fairly close to the final image, but not as smooth/retouched.

One part of this particular cover I wasn’t looking forward to finalizing was replacing all the little bullet holes with their full-sized stock image. However, once I got to looking closely (and tested placing the full-sized image), I realized I didn’t need to. The small size and texture affects rendered the slight watermark running through the particular bullet hole unnoticeable. So while the publisher picked up the stock for licencing reasons, I didn’t actually replace that particular stock image. Something handy to keep in mind when finalizing parts of covers that have a strong illustrated tendency to them (just don’t forget to purchase the original stock image).

This is the result: