This is a book cover I did for Melange Books. I did use one stock image, the face. The rest of the pictures are my own. This is the first fantasy/romance/erotica based cover I’ve done.
At the moment it isn’t yet released, but you can find it at Melange Book’s main website when it is: http://www.melange-books.com
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures
Anyways, all photos are my own. Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4.0.
Filed under Personal Work, Photo Illustration
I was sure I posted this a week ago. Anyways, don’t worry… haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth. It’s been a busy past few weeks as Isaac gets prepared for grad school. We’ve been stripping furniture (old furniture, from the 1920s…) to stain, and that took up quite a bit of time for about a week. Anyways, I do have a new book cover to show you. 🙂
“At the Bullet’s Tip,” by Erika Lindsen, a romance thriller. 🙂
This was a cross between photomanipulation and digital illustration. Parts of it were drawn in (using Photoshop CS6), while other parts of it were originally photographs that I used the “threshold” tool on to give it that sillohuetted look. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Photo Illustration
Today I get to reveal the cover for Building A Better Monster, by Christopher Treagus. 😀 The book is anthology of stories, published by Barking Rain Press.
You can find the book here:
http://www.barkingrainpress.org/products/building-a-better-monster/
To put the cover together, I used multiple photographs I’d taken earlier of various animals, then put them together based on the different descriptions I’d found of a chupacabra. The publisher wanted a gridwork frame behind it, based around the concept of “building” the monster, and I want to thank my husband Isaac for giving me an idea of how to do it. Anyways, this is the cover that I completed. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Photo Illustration
Another Distant Horizon based picture. It’s been a while since I’ve done any sort of coloring of sketched art. So, to explain this, I started out by sketching the image with a pencil, then went and did a basic lining of that with a pen. Afterwards, I did some shading work with the pen, then erased the extraneous pencil marks. Once that was done, I photographed the image flat with a flash on my camera and pulled it into photoshop. Did the threshold adjustment to convert it to black and white.
Then I started layering and using clipping modes combined with blending modes and masking to apply textures and coloration. The textures were mostly pulled from pictures I took on a walk downtown earlier in the day. Once that was complete, added the sections around the tank, and blurred the edge a little to give it that dreamlike quality.
Overall I’m pretty happy with this. Granted, it’s not the best, by any means, but since I was experimenting with the technique, I’m not going to complain. And I’m thrilled with how the hand came out. I think it actually looks semi-realistic and pressed to the glass. Yay!
So… now that you know how it’s made, a quick explanation of the picture itself. It’s a scene… rather a couple scenes, in which the main character of my novel I’m working on is caught in a telepathic attack. And she’s imagining she’s in a beastie tank… which turns people into monsters. Long story short. But that memory attack plays back into the story more than once, so I wanted to have a shot at creating an image of the tank.
Anyways, that’s all for now. Done on my laptop with Photoshop CS4 and bridge. And a mouse.
Filed under Personal Work, Photo Illustration, Writing
Finally wrote out the synopsis for book three of the Distant Horizon storyline with Isaac (my husband), and afterwards, it left me wanting to create a picture representive of the ending. So here it is.
This time I didn’t try to make a book cover format, since I wanted more freedom for positioning.
Photoshop CS6 kept trying to shut down on me while I made this, but eventually (finally!) I just merged a bunch of layers and went from there. The authosave function did come in handy, though it was amusing seeing the file have recovered-recovered on it after shutting down the program twice.
Anyways, just some original art for the fun of it. 🙂
Meanwhile, “Ashes” is formatted, and I’m just waiting to hear back from my beta reader before I release it on Smashwords. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Personal Work, Photo Illustration, Writing
As I get closer to self-publishing “Ashes,” I thought it might be nice to do a cover reveal. So here it is, the cover to “Ashes.” It’s got some similar treatment done to it to resemble “Socks,” but it has a different color scheme to match the themes in the story itself. As an interesting little side note, I believe this is actually the same picture I used in “Socks,” but done differently enough that it shouldn’t be noticable. (Except that I pointed out, but anyway).
As a side note, I was debating on whether or not to include a blurb on the cover mentioning that it was a short story or prequel. After some discussion on Absolute Write, I decided not to include it. Why? Because the same information will be mentioned on the web page where it can be bought/downloaded. Also, because hopefully it will resemble the cover of “Socks” close enough that a connection will be made. Granted, this is experimentation on my part, but that’s kind of the point of doing this. 🙂
Without further ado, the new cover!
Also, as a quick note, I found this article and thought those of you interested in doing your own cover creation might like reading it. It’s about font choice. 🙂
http://clancytales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/how-to-font-your-cover.html
Filed under Book Covers, Photo Illustration, Writing
This was a gift to my husband. He’d surprised me by dressing up all fancy-like and grabbing his sword (nice way to introduce the idea of an impromptu date), and I got a few pictures. A few days later I put this together, using some pictures I’d shot earlier of a hawk he spotted and some woodsy pictures. All the images are mine and this was completed in Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 4.0. 🙂
Filed under Personal Work, Photo Illustration
So, as Isaac and I get closer to finishing Distant Horizon (and thus starting querying), I’ve been doing reading on how marketing of a book is done, both for trade and self-publishing. After all, both are looking for readership, right? I found a few interesting tidbits I thought I’d share.
One is the article at the link below. It talks about how marketing is done of a book in the trade publishing world, and points out some good tips that could probably also be used if you’re self-publishing, too. It talks about the importance of marketing as a way to gain publicity, but that marketing doesn’t always equate to publicity. It’s that word-of-mouth you want, when you get other people promoting your book without your asking. Needless to say, I thought it was an informative read:
http://editorialass.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-dont-we-throw-some-money-at-it-like.html
Another interesting idea I came upon was the idea of offering signed prints of your book cover (if it’s one that looks really good) for the first people who buy your book off Amazon and show you a receipt. Found this at Madame Guillotine’s blog, here: http://madameguillotine.org.uk/
Of course, ARC (advanced reader copies) are also a good idea, and it looks like Goodreads contests may be a good way to get publicity for them. The hope, of course, is that they’ll read your book and leave a review, and maybe, just maybe, recommend t to a friend. 🙂
Also, another neat blog (not so much on marketing, but on publishing) I found is called The Intern: http://internspills.blogspot.com/
Thought I’d share that, too. Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for you at the moment. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 