True Blood

Yippee!! I'm in Vampire heaven.

True Blood the TV series (HBO) has finally aired in the US. As usual I have to watch it online, and even with my computer coughing and spluttering through the buffering process, I'm loving it! For anyone who's interested you can catch the first three episodes here

Of course, if I weren't so attached to the book series I could possibly look at it with a little less enthusiasm. I'm sure there will be people who hate it, those who enjoy it for what it is and others who just love it. I'm probably in the middle group ATM. Then again it usually takes me a few episodes to warm to a series.

Either way, I'm just so happy to see these characters finally come to life outside of my head. There's nothing better than sitting back and watching it all happen. I've been re-reading my Sookie series like a mad-woman. And for the records I must admit that I'm officially in love with Sam (Sam Trammell). He is just how I imagined Sam Merlotte to be and I just want to smack some sense into Sookie and tell her to wake up to herself LOL!

Bill's character I'm yet to warm to. There's something about him that doesn't appeal to me. Maybe it's the vintage hairstyle, or perhaps the fact that he actually does look dead LOL! I find him creepy one second and the 'guy next door' the next. I wish he'd stop trying to look through his eyebrows/fringe *sigh*

Sookie is another one I'm not sure about. I feel she's working the pony-tail a bit too much LOL! But there are times I think 'Yep, that's the Sookie I'd imagined'.

Oh, and then there's Jason played by Ryan Kwanten (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie - Oi, Oi, Oi!). Well what can I say other than I feel like I know him intimately LOL! If you've seen the show you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, well let's just say that he spends the majority of Episodes 1, 2 and 3 naked and very active. NOT that I'm complaining! The images below are rather tame compared to the show LOL!


So there we have it, the True Blood season has well and truly started.




Now, for something a little different. Today I decided to get a movie via pay TV. I decided to watch The Other Boylin Girl. Wow. And I say wow in that I mean 'what a miserable existence it must have been for those poor, poor women'.

Honestly! It saddens me how these poor girls were made to be the scapegoats for the males of their families. Pawns in the system certainly springs to mind. I doubt very much that women ranked much higher than the farmyard sow for that is all they seemed good for. Pumping out male Heirs. Heaven forbid if they gave birth to a girl - as Ann quickly found out. I guess we could argue that it's Hollywood's version of history but the sad thing is that it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Still it was certainly a movie I'd recommend. Kinda makes me happy that I wasn't born back then. Not that I'd be blogging about it now if I had LOL!

Phantoms' Pleasure & Halloween Angel

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Halloween Angel by J.P. Bowie is another m/m cover. From memory this had a touch of paranormal, in that one of the characters is a Vampire.

So this cover called for the dark brooding Vampire and the human character dressed in Angel costume.

I remembered having seen sexy guy's in their wings on some stock sites so I did a quick search and found my 'angel'. Of course I had to add new wings as the ones in the image were on upside-down. Of course!

Also the strap round his shoulder was a bit too wide so I narrowed that down a bit. This character also called for a silver loin-cloth. I was able to find a loin-cloth and played around with it until it gave the impression of being silver (hue/contrast/desaturate, etc).

Then I searched around for the dark, handsome & brooding Vamp. I have quite a few Lightboxes that I categorise images into, for example: male_brunette, woman_blonde, male_tattoos .. well, you get the picture.

So I had this guy tucked away for some time. I'd kinda had him pegged as a 'Vampire' type so he fit this cover really well.

So a bit of cutting and pasting and juggling for position and the basic cover was set. The black background was a bit flat so I decided to add an overlay of some black silk sheets although you can't see them very well.

Phantoms' Pleasure by Brynn Paulin.

Argh! The dreaded Menage image LOL! For some reason I can't get my head around these. Maybe because it takes a lot of time to find the stock that's going to work together.

I always tell myself that when I'm not working on any covers I'm going to try to build up a library of manipulated menages LOL! Of course I'm yet to do this.

So. Here we have a pretty steamy menage. The couple certainly looked up for it, so I just had to find a guy to join in. Funnily enough it is the same guy, just from a different image LOL! So in all honesty, once I chose the stock, it all came together very easily.

I matched the skin 'colour' to keep the same tones. I also used some hair brushes so her hair didn't look so 'cut out'. I popped the guy behind her and added some shadowing to his chest, where her hair is meant to be resting. Looking at it now I can see 'issues' with it. But I'm still flying by the seat of my pants in many ways.

Hopefully it will only get easier.