Musings of a Cover Artist

Welcome 2012

2012-01-20T10:32:00.026+11:00

WOW! Can't believe my last post was in September last year. How time flies.

Well I guess I should start this post off with 'HAPPY NEW YEAR!!' Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, ate lots, caught up with family and loved ones and most importantly stayed safe.

As you can see in my last post my lovely old cat Cooch was not well. I'm sad to say that we had to have him put down not long after. We miss him dearly and so does his brother, Rangi. We've buried him in the yard and planted an Apple tree beside him. Hubby even got a little plaque made up, which we've mounted on a rock.

Here lies Cooch 'Fatman'
February 99 - September 11
Loved and Missed by Family

RIP big boy.

Now our latest news is that we've rescued two new kittens. They were advertised for free in the local paper. A farmer had 3 female cats dumped on his property and it turned out two of them were pregnant. I was surprised he kept the cats, but he said they were good 'ratters'. Anyway, he didn't want to be over-run with cats so he advertised the babies. He said he could have sent them to the RSPCA but thought, why make people pay for them. Still it probably would have been better for them, as they would have at least been vaccinated and desexed before being released on the world. Still I respect his kindness towards these little critters.

So welcome Gizmo and Maggie! And welcome Ringworm!! OMG who knew a couple of kittens could cause so much trouble. We were all covered in Ringworm (fungal skin condition) thanks to these little darlings. The kids were so bad they had to go on Medication. Hubby and I got bye with the Anti-fungal cream. But geez, talk about hard to get rid of.

Luckily my Vet lives just across the road and we were able to get them into the Clinic quick smart. Tableting two little kittens wasn't much fun, but we managed (after about 6 weeks!!) to clear it all up. Vaccinations and worming are all up to date and next on the agenda - De-sexing! Starting to think it would have been cheaper to get them from the RSPCA after all LOL!

Aaanyway ... COVERS! This should bring me up to date with the latest releases.

Total-E-Bound ...

Liquid Silver Books ...

Red Sage Publishing ...

and last but not least I've managed to pick up some work with
Samhain Publishing ...

So that's about it from me. Lots more covers in the pipeline. Hoping to do some before and afters perhaps (thanks for the idea Emmy!). So I'll leave you with a Happy Australia Day from us here Down Under ....

or .. not so happy! Actually it's damn miserable LOL!

Spring, Cats and Covers

2011-09-07T08:57:00.030+10:00

Well Spring has sprung here, Down Under. It's amazing how one day everything is dull and lifeless, and the next 'BAM' there are green buds on trees, plants seem to take on a life of their own and the grass gets it's groove on. I must admit it's been nice not having to mow every few days through the Winter months. But, Summer is on it's way and no doubt hubby and I will be sweating our butts off keeping the paddocks and yard under some semblance of control VERY soon :D

Mumma Plover has made a nest in the paddock right near the house yard. Every time we walk out the back door her and hubby start up their squawking. They've got the kids terrified LOL! Actually, it's kinda funny. My son takes great pains to irritate 'Sir Richard' the Rooster by running up and down the fence and getting Richard to chase him. Yet, he's afraid of the Plovers swooping him :D Personally, I'd be leaving the Rooster alone ;)

My lovely old cat, Cooch is getting on now. He's 12 years and has been diagnosed with Diabetes. So I'm needling him twice a day and monitoring his food. He went down hill quite quickly and was in the Vets for 3 days on a drip, due to being dehydrated. He's back with us now but I don't think for long. He's also in the throes of Renal Failure. He's been the best cat. I'm going to miss him when he goes. So in the mean-time he's being pampered and loved while he sends us into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, his brother, Rangi is getting bigger by the day. They've swapped roles as Cooch's nickname was Fatty. Now Rangi (Muffin)'s has earned the new nickname of Tank LOL!

Finally. COVERS!! It's been a stop and start couple of months with covers. I've managed to snag some work with a new publisher, but more on that another time. I feel like I've done a load of covers but with little to show for it. I usually wait for the Publisher to release the cover before I show it here, hence the long periods between posts :D

Anyway, here are the latest for Total-E-Bound ...

and Liquid Silver Books ...

That's it for this post. I'm off to tend my garden and plant my Lavenders :D

Cheers!

Covers and Lobotomy's

2011-04-29T14:55:00.018+10:00

Well the month is almost over and I think I've caught up with my current covers *phew*! Just waiting on the go ahead for the last two and I'll have a couple of days breather until the next lot come in :D

Here's some of what I've been up to lately for Total-E-Bound ..

.. Liquid Silver Books ..

.. Red Sage Publishing ..

and last but not least, Lyrical Press ..

For some reason I've found myself doing a lot of Lobotomizing (head chopping) of late. It's a bit of work to make it look acceptable, and even then, those covers will ALWAYS jump out at me. They'll never look 100% right in my mind. Perhaps it's because I've spent time agonizing over subtle tonal differences or trying to get perspective and sizing right :D

I've also been experimenting with my font style and textures. I think I'm finally starting to get a feel for them. It's only taken 5 years!

Well that's about it from me. Thanks for dropping by!

Happy New Year!!

2011-01-20T15:03:00.023+11:00

A belated Merry Christmas and New Year to you all. Can't believe another year is upon us.

I've had lots happening this last month or so, not only with covers but with life in general. We've finally moved house and are now settled (kinda) on our 5 acres. I'm slowly but surely getting my veggie patches up and running, and planted some beans and lettuces the other day. I'm planning on getting a good range of fruit and veg from the land here. A lot of work ahead of me but I think it will be very rewarding. Can't wait to get some chickens and the kids want some ducks LOL! I'm sure we'll have a menagerie of critters before we know it.

The kids will be starting a new school in a few weeks so that will be a bit trying, although they say they are looking forward to it. I must admit that I'll be looking forward to the peace and quiet LOL! Just can't concentrate on my covers when the kids are trying to kill each other ;)

Anyway, I'll finish up with most of my remaining covers from 2010.

Lyrical Press

September/October Covers

2010-10-20T19:23:00.015+11:00

I've been busy quite busy lately with covers and the real world. We're currently in the process of selling our house and buying another. So as you can imagine, trying to keep the house clean and tidy with two very lazy children living in the house isn't much fun.

The good news is that I will FINALLY get my acreage! Yippee!!! Five beautiful acres for me to raise animals and grow my veggies on. I believe we'll be settling on or around the 10 December (yes crappy time of year to be moving) so hopefully all goes well and we don't get pushed closer to Christmas.

Anyway, I'll try to keep you up to date with covers but for the meantime, here are the covers that have been released for September/October.

Oh, by the way I'm now working with Red Sage Publishing :D

August covers

2010-09-06T14:49:00.008+10:00

Another month has flown by since I last posted. I've been nice and busy with covers, which is great. I've also recently upgraded my computer and am getting the hang of CS5 and Windows 7. I have an enormous screen now and my IT guy set it up so that my old screen is an extended desktop. So I have the two screens running at once with different things up on them!

I'm really enjoying the 'deskspace' but I don't think my Wacom tablet likes it very much LOL! When the tablet is being used on one screen only the dimentions of the tablet are equal to that of the screen but now that I'm using two screens my pen keeps slipping onto the other screen so I can't find my pointer half the time. I'll have to see if there is a fix for that as it can get quite frustrating.

Anyway, here are my covers for August.

Bon Appetit is a menage cover. Unfortunately there are few, if any, good Menage stock images available so it's up to us Artists to whack another body in there. I'm sure if you ask any cover artist about creating Menage covers they will groan in agony before answering LOL! It's not easy finding people that are going to fit together and it can take HOURS of mucking about to find the right match. I'm pretty happy with how this threesome came together though.

Hard Drivin' Man is a straight forward contemporary Western. I really liked the image of the couple so I'm glad it was accepted.

Lovin' Leela and Bad Boy Back in town are pretty straight forward Contemporary covers.

When the dead speak had a few more elements in it with backgrounds, textures and brushes. This is the second book in the Southern Spirits series so I tried to keep the 'magical' sparkles in the theme.

Aged to Perfection is so simple but I love it. The colours are just so eye catching.

The Bouncer is a darker cover and from memory a Paranormal. Although looking at it now it doesn't really give the impression of a paranormal cover. Apart from the Dark tones that is.

I went for a different feel with Thief and am happy with how it came out. A bit of experimenting with this one :D

And finally Satisfying Olympipa. A bit of cutting and pasting in this one. The horses and the London background were two separate images. I'm happy with how they came together.

July Cover Update

2010-07-06T10:04:00.016+10:00

School holidays are once again upon us here in AUS. I have a HEAP of covers to get started on but it's hard to concentrate with the kiddies playing (or trying to kill each other. Honestly. It's one or the other. No in-between in this family).

We're also looking around for properties. We've been doing quite a bit of driving around, looking at areas that we think might suit us. Of course, what Hubby likes, I don't and visa-versa. I guess house hunting was never meant to be easy. I think I've found a nice area but will have to do a few more drives around to see if it's going to work for us. Then we'll have to wait to see if a property becomes available in that area LOL!

Anyway :D Here are some of the latest covers I've been working on - coming soon to TEB & LSB.

**Well it's been a good hour since I started this blog. They've gone and fixed something that wasn't broke and as usual, made it harder to use. I've switched back to the OLD editor because the new one is NOT user friendly. Hopefully now I'll get this done and be able to go to bed!!**

A Madam into a Mistress. It's been a while since I've done a lobotomy on a a cover. The character called for a blond male with longish hair. I couldn't be bothered turning Jimmy into said character so I just swapped his head with another model. Voila!

Ravishing Sara. Love this cover! It came together surprisingly easily.

Relentless is book 2 in the Southwestern Shifters series. Typical use of textures and masks to pull this cover together.

Schism. The cover was pretty straight forward. Tried to incorporate the Native American Indian feel in there while keeping it a contemporary.

The Lieutenant's Ex Wife. Love the colours in this cover. As the storyline involved a Computer Chip I thought I'd add a texture of said Chip.

Temptation is very basic. Actually, you'd be interested to know that I used the woman from Temptation's hair in The Lieutenant's Ex Wife. The model originally had short hair.

His Perfect Partner was originally more blue/purple until an author complained that it looked too much like their cover on the Coming Soon page. If they'd have been next to each other I could possibly agree but they weren't. HOWEVER, I happily changed the colour to a gold hue and all was well.

And last but not least Chasing Butterflies by Cat Kane is a Liquid Silver Books cover. I enjoyed this cover and the use of textures and brushes.

Latest Update May 2010

2010-05-21T14:01:00.015+10:00

I know I know.. It's been a while :D Been busy working covers, learning how to use my camera, growing some veggies and being Mum.

Here are my latest Coming Soon/Released covers (although by now I'm sure they're mostly released LOL!)

Sinfully Decadent and Reasonable Doubt. Both relatively simple Contemporary covers involving masks, blending and textures.

These two books are for Liquid Silver. It was difficult trying to make Divine Intervention look sexy whilst giving it a Political feel LOL! Love Charlotte's Younger Man. Had a bit of fun with that one, giving the guy a more modern hair-style and playing with the Egyptian textures :D

Thai'ing the Knot is another in a Series by Sedonia Guillone. The cool tattoo was thanks to the very talented Alizel over at DA :D A Subtle Breeze had a paranormal element to it (ghost of dead mother). It kinda worked with her blowing 'magic' dust over her son :D Surprisingly it fitted with the title too.

Forgotten Family is 2nd in a Menage series by Brynn Paulin. I have to admit that I find Menage covers a bit of a chore. Probably because there's so much work involved in them. The theme follows on from book 1 :D

The Perfect Union. I had to create the celtic triad in Photoshop for this one. So I'm rather proud of this cover. There was a lot to fit in but I think it balances out nicely.

Bound by Moonlight is 2nd in teh Exotic Wolves series that I have done, again mostly masks and textures. Mirror Image is another cover for Liquid Silver. I enjoyed the Sci-Fi Theme for this one.

Rescued is pretty straight forward. Masks, blending and textures.
What's your pleasure is 2nd book in the Pleasure series. I really like the simplicity of this cover. And just in case your wondering, that is supposed to be a burn scar on her back. It was an interesting time trying to get something that looked relatively real.

Deadly Obsession and Taking the Chance. Two more contemporaries. Pretty straight forward really.

Healing Hands, probably my favourite cover here. Love the fantasy element to this cover. It all came together quite easily. Ride 'em Again Cowboy is 2nd in the series. I kept the same theme as it was about the same characters.

Just for something different I have created a couple of covers for a few 'Cover Artist' challenges. They are available to purchase should anyone like the look of them. Titles and names, etc can be changed of course :D I'll hopefully be doing more of these in the future, incorporating some different Genres as well.

Contemporary Fiction Thriller/Murder Mystery

Cheers!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-27T10:19:00.018+11:00

Geez it's been some time since I've posted. Here it is. Christmas already. Wow! Didn't see that coming ;) I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to an equally fantastic New Year.

What an interesting year it's been. A new publisher, old hobbies and interests re-awakened and sadly a passing of a beloved Aunt.

I've been keeping myself busy. Been loving my vegetable garden and as a result of my bountiful produce my love of cooking has re-emerged. Tomatoes! Loving the Tomatoes and Zucchinis and the herbs *sigh*. It's been such a nice balance to the amount of time I spend sitting at this computer.

Also, it will be the end of an era for me as my youngest will be heading off to big school next year. I'm not sure if I will need to go and get myself a job or if I will be lucky enough to expand my cover artwork business. I'll no doubt be spending a few more days at our family business so this might fit in well with my cover work.

But anyway, enough of me :D Here's a swag of my latest covers that I've been saving up to post in one big lot.

All the very best for the New Year!

Latest Covers for September

2009-09-17T13:11:00.006+10:00

Here are my latest covers.

Stand and Deliver by Scarlet Blackwell is a gay historical. I had a bit of fun trying to find the right guy's to put together but I think it came out quite well.

Seduced by Moonlight by Lexie Davis is a the first book in a contemporary paranormal werewolf series - Exotic Wolves. It's not often that I actually find out the names of the models that I use on my covers. But I am very pleased to introduce you to the very sexy Jimmy Thomas and modelling partner (sorry .. didn't find out her name LOL!). Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for more Jimmy!!

Finding Love by Simone Anderson, another gay contemporary novel. Love the dramatic lighting on those bods! AVAILABLE NOW!!!

Imperial Topaz by Kim Dare is book 2 of the Collared series. This is quite a striking cover and worked really well towards this novel. AVAILABLE NOW!!!

Last but not least is Bastards and Pretty Boy s by K.Z. Snow which is another of the popular gay contemporary novels. You'll see a different E-Publisher this time - Liquid Silver Books! AVAILABLE NOW!!!

Peeved!

2009-08-06T11:16:00.006+10:00

Today I'm a little peeved.

I went into Istock to purchase an image that has been floating around there for ages. It was only a matter of time until it suited a cover I was working on.

However it seems Istock have added a brand new feature to their site. Vetta images. This is where certain images are selected for their artistic quality and are awareded the little gold camera icon. So images that once cost the buyer 4-6 credits now cost 40 credits and higher!!! I kid you not.

Just to give you an idea of what this means in real $$$. To purchase 26 credits it costs me $51.50 AUS (give or take a few $ depending on the price of the dollar at the time). So to purchase enough for just ONE of these images I'd have to buy 50 credits at a total of $95AUD.

Now for someone who can use up to 4 images in a cover. I'd have to hope like hell that none of these images have that little gold camera next to them.

So coming back to my peeved state. Do I have a right to be peeved? I mean I don't deny the photographers their lot. In fact the images selected ARE the better ones on the site. However, the small time freelancer like myself just can't afford to purchase these images. It just happens that 90% of the images that I've earmarked in my lightboxes now have these damn little gold camera icons next to them :(

So, I've opted NOT to include Vetta images in my searches. I just hope that I can still provide you with good quality, attractive images. I'm not sure if these images are exclusive to Istock only. It wouldn't surprise me if I could go to Dreamstime or Shutterstock and get them at the normal rate. I must go and have a squiz.

Anyway, that's my peeve for the day. Hope to add some more covers very soon.

Covers and Bits and Bobs ...

2009-07-12T20:09:00.008+10:00

COMING SOON TO TEB!!!!

Geez! How long has it been since I've posted anything here. Here are the latest covers. There are a couple waiting to be put up on the publishers websites, so I'll wait till they are up before I post them here. Silk & Shadows would be my favourite cover in this group. Oh and the guy's hair is actually my daughters hair LOL!

Things have slowed down a bit unfortunately. I really need to approach a few more publishers. The few I have approached have not responded to my emails, so I guess I just keep plugging away. Sending emails and hoping for a response.

Anyway, to fill in my spare time, I've gotten back into my gardening which is a fantastic excuse to get away from the clutches of the computer. I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience although with it being winter here in AUS things are a bit slow to get going.

I've just put in a big order with Diggers Seeds (passionfruit, comfrey, Beneficial Insect Attracting collection, blueberries, zucchini, pyrethrum, cucumber, capsicum, beans, spring onions, nasturtium, bortolli beans and an heirloom lettuce mix). I'm so excited I can't wait till they arrive. I'm also considering getting a few layer hens for the yard. A couple of Sussex and Wyandotte's would suit us nicely. I like the idea of the pure breed hens. While they don't lay as prolifically as the hybrids they do lay over a longer time span (6-7 years instead of 3-4).

Now I just have to build a coop and run for the girls which will be an interesting experience LOL.

Latest Covers for May

2009-05-09T22:11:00.006+10:00

Coming Soon to TEB!!

Here are my latest covers that are coming soon/released with Total-E-Bound.

Latest Covers

2009-04-06T20:45:00.005+10:00

COMING SOON TO TEB!!!

All these covers were pretty straight forward. If you want to know how any one particular cover was created, just let me know.

I'm finding it hard to comment on every cover atm.

Turquoise & Leather

2009-03-02T10:43:00.006+11:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Turquoise and Leather is the first book of the Collared Series by Kim Dare. This is a gay/BDSM novella.

I started off by trying to find a guy in leather looking pants. This image fit the bill nicely and it had a nice dark quality to it which appealed to me. The Author requested that the model be wearing a turquoise collar as mentioned in the book.

It was simple enough to create the collar. I tracked down a rough chunk of turquoise and simply popped it over the leather looking cord. I think this guy may have been wearing a necklace so I just shortened it and then painted over the chain to give it a leather look.

I usually up the contrast on all my images which can add a more dramatic effect.

As you can see I used three different fonts. Two is always preferrable but the 'AND' looked better in a lower case, which the Trajan Pro didn't allow. I also added a turquoise glow around the fonts to tie in with the title.

Fire Update

2009-02-14T16:03:00.002+11:00

What a week it's been here in Australia. Disasterous bushfires in Victoria (181 confirmed dead with hundreds still missing) and at the other end of the spectrum, major flooding in Northern Queensland. Add that to the big freeze over in the UK and the tornados in the US I think we've almost covered all the elements!

It's amazing to think that there can be any 'feel good' moments coming out of the Victorian Bushfires. But I thought I would share with you the story of Sam the Koala.

Sam a wild female Koala, was found wandering amongst the charred remains of her bushland home. Scared, bewildered, burned and dehydrated. Check out this rough video footage:

And here she is a few days later. Looking much happier and she's even found herself a boyfriend!! You can't keep an Aussie woman down for long!

Support our wildlife by donating to RSPCAVIC

Victorian Bushfires

2009-02-09T10:52:00.005+11:00

I just can't believe the devistation from the Victorian Bushfires.

108 people DEAD with 100 unaccounted for! Some of those dead were children.

Over 700 homes lost.

Whole communities burnt to the ground.

See here for more info.

Please if there are any Aussies out there reading this blog, send off a donation.

There are a few options you can take:

* Visit www.redcross.org.au for an online donation.
* Phone 1800 811 700
* Visit any NAB, ANZ, Westpac or Commonwealth Bank branch
* Visit any Bunnings store
* Make a direct deposit to the Victorian Bushfire Relief Fund - BSB 082-001, Account number 860-046-797

Myer Bushfire Appeal
* All proceeds to the Salvation Army. Donate at any Victorian Myer store
* or visit the Salvation Army online.

And of course where would we be without the CFA volunteers (Country Fire Authority). These guys and gals are heros! Don't forget to support your local Volunteer Fire fighters. Who knows when you will need them.

Lonely Hearts

2009-02-04T17:42:00.005+11:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Lonely Hearts by Aurora Rose Lynn.

There were two main requirements for this cover. Firstly the Author didn't want a dark cover and secondly they wanted a snowy road scene.

So the background of the snowy road set the scene for the rest of the cover. I came across a couple that I liked and felt were sexy enough for the book.

I desaturated the image of the couple and played with the contrast/brightness to lighten them up a bit. I also had to brighten the snow scene to blend in with the couple at the top.

I went for a font colour to compliment the rest of the cover and used a lower case to give it a contemporary feel.

All in all I think it came together nicely and does stand out from the other darker covers it is displayed with.

Cover Award!

2009-01-06T09:48:00.011+11:00

Woohoo!! What a start to '09!

I'm very excited to announce that Conjuring Cal won the Best Ebook Cover in the Fantasy/Futuristic/Off World Erotic Ebook Cover category of the Night Owl Romance Awards 2008.

Yay Cal!!

I must say it's a thrill to see a cover acknowledged. There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears that go into a cover, although sometimes it may not appear so. I've always felt that Cover artists hold the Bridesmaid roll in the publishing industry. It's our job to make the Author stand out amongst the crowd by providing them with the most eyecatching cover we can.

Many Authors can rely on their name alone to sell books but for the remainder the cover can be their greatest asset. It is what catches the readers eye. Piques their interest enough to pick up the book and read the blurb on the back (or in this electronic age, click on the cover to read an excerpt).

If we can achieve that then we've done our job. The rest is up to the Author.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2009-01-04T10:11:00.009+11:00

Hooray!! 2009 is upon us. I thought 2008 would never end. What a crappy year that was. BUT a new year means a new start and I'm all for new starts.

So to wrap up 2008 and move into 2009 I'm going to load up the final covers from 2008.

So my computer is on it's last legs. I think it may have a bug in it somewhere. I don't know. It's just SOOOOOOO slow these days. I know I need to get a new hard drive as mine is VERY small apparently. Still I don't think this should be affecting my working speed. Again. I don't know. All I do know is that people can seem to run a plethora of programmes at once and I'm lucky to run Photoshop and Outlook without the thing grinding to a halt.

I have the option to upgrade it (again) but I'm thinking it might be time to replace this old beast. I'm also considering changing over to an Apple Mac. I believe I can run my PC programmes on a MAC with a bridge programme. I'll have to suss this out with my Computer guy first though. I hope I can do that. I can't afford to be buying Creative Suite again!

Christmas already???

2008-12-22T10:27:00.006+11:00

O.M.G!! It's 3 days till Christmas!!!!!

I can't believe how quickly the last month has gone. I've had sick kids one after the other and then to top it off I got sick. I don't recall being that sick in a very, VERY long time.

I was literally in bed sleeping for a week. The Dr's, who are quite useless in in Country Australia might I add, could only tell me the usual. Viral infection. And even then I'm sure there was an invisible question mark hovering there somewhere.

So I'm on antibiotics but I now think I have an middle ear infection brewing. No doubt another trip to the Drs. Grrr!!! Which reminds me, I need more pain meds. But I digress.

Finally got a chance to get some Xmas shopping done. Let's just say it's not something that I enjoy doing in the first place, let alone 5 days before Christmas! Plus due to all the sickness in the house I didn't even get a chance to put up the Tree or any decorations (yes I can see myself getting Mother of the Year Award - NOT!). I'm using the excuse that we're heading off down to Sydney for Christmas with the family to avoid digging around in the critter infested garage looking for the tree box.

Oddly enough the kids haven't even mentioned that we don't have the tree up. I swear we build a rod for our own backs when it comes to these holidays and traditions LOL!

So. Now that I've had my little moan I would like to send out my belated Christmas salutations to everyone (sadly the Christmas cards didn't get sent out this year either. No use doing something by halves, I say ;) ).

Wishing everyone who stumbles across this blog, and those poor few who have actually bookmarked me a VERY Merry Christmas and a SAFE and HAPPY New Year. May 2009 be better than 2008! Cheers big ears!!!

And just something a little extra. I always remember hearing this as a kid. It always makes me laugh and I thought I would share it with you all. It's very witty. You've got to love the Irish sense of humour.

Lust Bites 2009

2008-11-14T19:13:00.011+11:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything. There's been something screwy going on with my Firefox application. It won't let me insert images and if I go to IE everything is black and white. God I hate computers! Nothing is simple. There's ALWAYS something going wrong. Anyway, looks like it's all working at the moment, albeit veeeeerrrryyyy sloooooow. So here goes ..

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Lust Bites by Various Authors. As you can see these covers are set up for various authors but all come under the the one Series. We tried for something a little different from last years Lusts Bites covers. Something a bit brighter with a modern edge.

As the series flows into all genre's the covers needed to change to reflect the books contents. So hence the different versions.

The hardest cover would have been the menage cover above. This cover had two stock images - the couple and the extra guy. I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. I always stress over these meange covers. They take so much time in searching for suitable stock and then putting them together.

It took a little time to find someone that was going to work with this woman. We weren't sure of this guy at first but we came back to him and I think he fits in okay.

And last but not least we have our fellas. I won't bore you with my gripe on the lack of affordable male gay couple stock. So I've had to 'manip' a couple of bods. Again I almost had an aneurism trying to find stock that would work together but in the end I think I managed to pull it off. Thankfully the other cover was a simple single male image, and a very nice one it is if you don't mind me saying.

Live for Today & Danielle and the Wolf

2008-11-02T12:37:00.009+11:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Live for Today by Carol Lynne is the 12th and final book of the Campus Cravings Series. This book revisits the original two characters from Book 1 - Coach.

The artist request form mentioned a forest cabin and the original two characters. Unfortunately there were limited stock images of the original two characters and they weren't that appealing. So I decided to go with the 'lop their heads off' approach with a couple of brawny and nicely stacked guys.

As for the cabin in the woods. Well it turned out to be a timber Mansion in the woods LOL. Very different from the original image I sent over. Think 1950's hunting shack LOL!

Either way. I'm happy with the result and am kinda sad to see the last of this series.

Thanks for trusting me enough to do all 12 of these covers, Carol!

Danielle and the Wolf by Wendy Stone.

I really enjoyed doing this cover. There's always something 'liberating' about doing a fantasy cover. I guess it's a genre that I am passionate about and where I feel most comfortable using textures.

The castle in the background was the image I wanted to work with as the storyline had a white castle that loomed over the village. There was mention of forests and wolves and of course our ever gorgeous Hero.

The black wolf was easy enough to find. I upped the contrast and lowered the brightness of the image to make him appear darker. I've recently realised that the Brightness/Contrast function is an extremely useful tool. I will find myself using it in almost every cover I do these days.

I played around with a few different Hero's and we finally settled on this one. Then I just had to fit the wolf's head in so that it wasn't obscured by the Title and was able to be seen against the dark background.

I used a stock image of alpine forest tree tops as the texture which I used over the castle image. You can see a hint of them in the dark bottom corner if you look close enough.

Engaging Deception & Passion of Madeline

2008-10-27T16:44:00.013+11:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Engaging Deception by Summer Jordan is the third book in the Wives-R-Us series.

This cover used three different stock images in this cover.

Firstly I replaced the woman's face. Unfortunately when I cropped the image her nose looked a bit odd. I'm getting quite used to chopping bits and replacing them these days. The hardest part of this is getting the right angles and the right skin tones.

Next I touched up her hair, giving it a reddish tone and added a diamond engagement ring which ties back to the to the story.

The layout is the same as for the previous covers. Although this one is a sexier edge to it.

Passion of Madeline by Robin Gideon.

Gee I played around with a LOT of different stock options for this cover. Historicals are so limiting when it comes to stock. There's not a lot of stock available with models in period dress. Well, not stock that I can afford.

So while this cover looks more Contemporary Western, it is in fact an Historical.

I tried adding sweeping landscapes to the background but it was all starting to get a bit crowded. So we agreed on a plain black background and added some sepia/brown tones to the overall effect.

True Blood

2008-09-23T17:44:00.013+10:00

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

2008-09-21T14:09:00.006+10:00

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.

Wanted!! Heart & Soul

2008-09-11T19:17:00.009+10:00

AVAILABLE NOW @ TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Wanted! by Aurora Rose Lynn is an Historical Western.

In this book the Heroine is the Sheriff and the Hero the Outlaw. Yay for the women's movement! LOL

I do have to admit that I shudder when I see the Historical covers pop up in my inbox. Usually because it means endless hours trawling through the stock sites for any images that I can pass off as 'historical' looking. OR it just means a lot of cutting and pasting - corsets, heads, guns, backgrounds, cowboy hats, crinolins, etc, etc, in an attempt to get the right look.

So that's why I love this cover. It's so simple. The couple are passionate (just pretend her bra is a white camisole - no doubt only hussy's wore black undergarments in those days,LOL!) while the Font, aged paper and Sherrif badge hint towards the Western storyline.

Just some cutting and pasting in this one. I changed the hue of the couple to blend in with the gold tones of the paper/badge.

Sure you'd be hard up working out which one is the sherrif but I guess that's what the book blurb is for.

COMING SOON ... Heart & Soul by Ashley Ladd.

This cover was quite simple. I think this was my one and only attempt at this cover. The only change made was to remove a grungy looking love heart that I'd had behind the text.

So lots of cutting out of 'Characters' in this one. I liked the girl at the bottom. She was a nice change from the norm. I feel a lot of the covers start to look the same after a while. But then that could just be my lack of knowledge to make them more interesting each time. So having her down the bottom filled that urge for a different look.

I matched the font colour to her lips and just added a glow to make it pop out from the background.

Seducing Damian

2008-08-21T09:23:00.004+10:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!!

Seducing Damian by Aliyah Burke.

Something a little different with the Egyptian Theme. I used five different pieces of stock in this one cover. Probably cost me more in stock than I get paid to do the cover LOL! But who's complaining. It's something I enjoy doing.

The hardest part of this cover was adding ancient Egyptian style make-up to the woman. Not that you'd really notice it LOL. I also had to darken her skin which was easy enough by using masks and layers. The guy, meh! Easy enough. Just a cut and paste.

The background - hieroglyphics on stone, pyramids and sunset .. all very Egyptian.

It was looking a bit flat and un-interesting so I decided to add a bit of texture by using the Eye. Just gives it another dimention whilst keeping with the paranormal/Egyptian theme.

I must say that I am finding it harder and harder to give a run down on each cover. I feel like I'm repeating myself each time LOL. I hope I'm not boring you all to tears.

Gee it's been hard this month to get my head in the right place to create my covers. I've had quite a few other things going on so my ability to focus has been stretched to the limit LOL! I'm hoping I can get myself out of this rut before I start getting too far behind.

Oh, did I mention that I have started learning Salsa dancing?? hahaha It's really a lot of fun. It's only me doing it, hubby stays at home with the kids. I'm finally starting to get a life outside of the house and kids, which is nice. They've got a few social dances coming up but I don't know if I'll be up for that just yet LOL.

Anyway, that's it from me for the moment. I've had some other covers released and will try to update as soon as I can.

Single White Knight

2008-08-14T11:43:00.004+10:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!!!

Single White Knight is an erotic Time Travel written by the talented Brynn Paulin.

This cover was challenging in the fact that I needed to bring together a medieval knight and a modern day guy.

Originally to keep a sense of history I had a castle in the background but we felt we needed a more modern background.

There were two versions of this knight that I was playing around with, the front view that I ended up using and a side view. There was some juggling involved because the front guy was difficult to work around, with his arm up like that. But I think I've managed to get it all in without it looking too cluttered. The original knight images were actually black and white so I had to change it to look like it was colour.

A simple mask and hue change were all I needed there. Luckily there were not too many colours involved. Just the armor and the skin. The guy in the front was a simple cut and paste although his 'angles' were awkward to work around.

I made the font follow the line of the guy's body. Whether that is graphically correct, I don't know, but it seemed to look better to me LOL!

You may notice some textures hidden in there somewhere. I found a nice sketched medieval battle scene and thought that would add some interest to it. It's hard to see on the cover but on the cover flat which incorporates the back it looks quite good.

I've been playing around, creating my own textures lately. I take my own photos and then just play around in Photoshop with them. Adding textures can really make an image 'pop' and it's fun seeing what you can do with them.

I've also been invited to write a monthly blog over at TEB's Hot Spot! This month's post is a breakdown on the Men of Tokyo: Sudden Surrender.

Theron's Return

2008-08-07T15:16:00.005+10:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Theron's Return by Carol Lynne is Book 11 in the Campus Cravings series.

The covers in this series, as I have noted before, are all very much the same. Just a change of images.

A bit of cutting and pasting, juggling of images, etc. The hardest part is searching for the right images.

This one had a Psychiatrist in it, from memory. Hence the leather sofa at the top. With the top image I usually try to give some hint of the storyline. While the bottom image centers on the Characters.

I used a total of four stock images in this cover.

Send Me An Angel!!

2008-08-03T10:06:00.006+10:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!!

Send Me An Angel by Alysha Ellis.

Yum-o! LOL!

A nice straight forward cover with minimal stock. It's quite striking but that could just be the blue/white theme. Oh and the God-like model on the front! Ha ha ..

Anyway, it was pretty simple, despite being the second version. Just for something a little different I'll attach a copy of my initial idea. As you can see the theme is quite similar

So only three pieces of stock in this cover. Background, man and wings.

The wings were just a cut and past with a bit of softening and 'Fluffing' around the edges with the smudge tool.

The original model had a necklace on which I had to paint out. I'm not 100% happy with it, because I can still see where I painted. Of course others possibly wouldn't notice .. but now that I've brought your attention to it .... LOL!

Oh and Alysha I hope that drool didn't effect your keyboard! LOL! I'm glad you liked it though :D

Sorry things have been a bit slow on here lately. I've been a bit distracted by real-life LOL. There are a couple of covers in the pipeline and my next batch will hopefully be sent through to me any day now. So more covers to come soon. Thanks for being patient with me :D

Duet in Blood

2008-07-24T18:34:00.005+10:00

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Duet in Blood by J.P. Bowie is the 3rd book in a Vampire series.

The previous two covers were done by another cover artist with TEB so all I really had to do was find the images. The set-up was the same for all three covers.

I've been wanting to use the dark guy in the background for ages. He's got a real dark, broody look to him. I wish there was more stock like this for the darker genres.

So a very easy cover yet relatively effective. Nice shot of Paris down the bottom :D

I've been finding it soooo hard these last few days to come back down to earth after my little trip to Melbourne. It's reminded me that there's another world outside of my little computer desk. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing in all honesty. I'll have to wait and see if this itch subsides.

Now, I must get back to my covers before I get sacked!! LOL

I'm Back!!!

2008-07-22T10:23:00.009+10:00

Hellooooo ... here I am :D *Waves to Dakota and Amarinda*

Been busy with covers and just waiting for new ones to be released before I put them up here. So it has been a while :D I've also been getting up to mischief. Took a few days off to head down to Sydney and Melbourne.

Caught up with Family in Sydney and then left the kids with Mum and hoofed it off to Melbourne to see the So You Think You Can Dance Australia Tour. What an AWESOME weekend. The girls I met up with were fantastic and I have a feeling we'll be friends for many years to come. We're already talking about catching up on an annual basis. Next year we're talking of going to a Spa to get pampered for a weekend. Can't wait!

Now. As for the SYTYCD tour. W.O.W! The show was fantastic. We screamed and generally upset those people around us. But I paid for my tickets too, so I was going to enjoy myself LOL! We generally acted like Groupies and screamed the house down when ever Jemma and Rhys came on stage LOL. We were there with Jemma's mum which was pretty spesh - what an amazing lady. She then surprised us with backstage passes so we got to go back and meet all the dancers.

I finally met Rhys and Jemma. My two favourite dancers. Got pics with all the dancers - even Jack, who won the series. They were all so nice and accommodating. I'm not sure if I'll be as emotionally attached to the next series. For some reason these two dancers really got under my skin. Can't wait to see where their careers take them now.

Here we are with Rhys (I'm the blonde next to Rhys) and then there's the not so good one with me and Jemma, LOL! I'm hoping one of the others got a better pic :D

So I've met some fantastic people over the last week. It was nice to step outside the 'Mummy' box. I'm thinking I might have to do it a bit more often LOL. Well, I'm back to the real world now. Got some more covers to work on so I better get to it.

Red Stone of Passion

2008-06-26T09:26:00.005+10:00

Coming soon to Total-E-Bound ...

Red Stone of Passion by Tuesday Morrigan.

I've had a sudden rush of covers released. Can you tell? LOL.

Red Stone of Passion is a Menage book, obviously as there are two bodies and a head on the cover.

I just had to lighten the woman's skin tone to a 'coffee colour' and give her a bob hairstyle. She also had orangy-gold lipstick which clashed with the red diamond so I just changed the hue to something more suitable.

The guy's were straight forward cut and paste. There was a bit of jostling for position but they fit in quite well. It's funny how something as simple as a belly-button can cause me to re-work a cover. Originally the middle guy's belly-button was framed by the 'd', making it stand out too much for my liking .Of course now that I've mentioned it, everyone will be looking at it. It's still a bit prominent, isn't it. It looks like a bullet hole.
Oh, hey AJ! Does the fellow in the jeans look a little familiar LOL!

The diamond was a simple colour change from blue. I like the vibrancy of the red. I also played around with a few different fonts for this one. For the title itself I've used three different fonts.

Now for something a little different. Jacquelyn Frank is holding a raffle were you get the chance to win some truly mouth-watering prizes and all for a good cause! So if you're a pet lover, head on over and see if anything takes your fancy. Best thing is she's happy to post WORLD WIDE! Godiva Chocolates, ladies ... an advanced copy of NOAH, the final book in her Nightwalker Series, AND a load of fantastic reads from some carefully selected authors. So get on over there and have a squiz, buy a ticket and support the Animal Compassion Network!

Men of Tokyo - Sudden Surrender

2008-06-25T13:13:00.010+10:00

Coming soon to Total-E-Bound!

Men of Tokyo - Sudden Surrender by Sedonia Guillone is book 3 in the WhiteTigers series.

This is the first cover I have done of this series and damn if it wasn't a tricky one LOL! I honestly thought that body tattoo was going to be the end of me as a cover artist. Seriously!

Anyway, because I'm pretty chuffed with how it turned out, I thought I'd share with you how I managed to pull it together.

First things first. I needed to find the characters. In all honesty there's not a lot of Asian/Oriental guys available out there. Well. I don't think chubby business man is quite in the 'Erotic Cover' league, but someone might yet surprise me.

Anyway, so I managed to find some nice bods. The guy on the left worked perfectly for the Character he was to portray. The Guy in the middle though, looked like he'd sucked on a lemon so I decided to lop off his head and give him a new one. Oh, if only it were so easy in real life, eh?

The original head I chose was a bit too 'cranky' so we went for the guy on the right. Sweet!

Okay, so now with lots of cutting and pasting of heads we have our two characters ready to go. Now for the hard bit.

The character over on the right called for a full body Yakuza tattoo - white tigers and cherry blossoms. O.M.G.!

Now I'm pretty adept these days at adding a tattoo here and there and getting them to look relatively natural. BUT a whole body tattoo??

So the search began. Firstly I trawled through the stock sites. There were a few things I could have thrown together but in all honesty the amount of stock required would have killed me. However, in my searches I managed to stumble across this image on the right.

It had the tiger AND the blossoms. Bingo!

Unfortunately the tiger was yellow, but thanks to the desaturate tool I was able to leach out the colour and produce a white tiger. Next, it was obvious that this image was not going to fit on the big guy's body without looking a bit odd. Plus the larger I stretched the image, the poorer the quality became. So I was going to have to keep my images small.

What I ended up doing was creating a new document and copying and pasting parts of the image around the tiger, gradually expanding outwards. I'd blend the edges of the image so there was no obvious seam by erasing with a large, soft brush.

This gave me a broader canvas to work with. Also ensuring that I would not notice the edges of the cut & pastes in amongst all that busy background.

So back to the big guy. Using the expanded tattoo design, I enlarged it enough to cover his chest. I had to dabble with the perspective so that the angles were correct. Then using a displacement map of his torso, I was able to distort the tattoo so it fit to his chest. I worked like this in sections all over his torso, upper & lower arms and shoulders. Cutting and pasting, blending and merging sections of the basic design until I was happy that his body was covered.

As you can imagine there were quite a few layers. At least 20 just to cover his torso, arms and shoulders. Once I had him covered I copied those layers and then merged them into one. I changed the layer to Multiply and fiddled with the opacity until it looked more natural. Phew!

My next challenge, but obviously not so difficult was to try to find an image of the Kanji for Suzuki. I did manage to find one but it was of poor quality. So I had to recreate it in a new document. I hope to god it is correct LOL! This was just a 'normal' tattoo that needed to go on the background guy.

The hard bit out of the way all I needed to do now was bring the design over from the previous ones of the series. Pop the the guy's together, blend them in, fiddle with contrasts, shadows, highlights, etc and then go and find myself a nice quite corner to huddle in. LOL!

Of course there was a lot more fiddling involved, but I don't want to bore you all with the details. This is just to give people the gist of what goes on behind the scenes.

Hershies Kiss

2008-06-23T09:52:00.007+10:00

Hershies Kiss coming soon to TEB!!

Hershies Kiss by Carol Lynn is book 10 in the Campus Cravings series.

This was a pretty basic cover. Again it sticks to the series theme. From memory one of the characters is a Chef or at least likes cooking. Hence the pots at the top.

The two fellas say it all really. Simple cut and paste and a bit of contrast balance and shadowing.

I hear that this book is pretty hot!

Got myself another book to read. This time it's Damien by Jacquelyn Frank. The Nightwalker Series. I so easily get sucked into these series LOL! I'm almost finished it - of course. Books don't last long in my grasp. I'm hoping that by the time I finish this one, the next in the Sookie Stackhouse series will be available in Paperback. Although I doubt that will be the case by tomorrow LOL!

Once I've read that book though I will have to wait a good 12 months before the next book in any of these series come out. Actually, no I lie. Noah comes out in September 08, but that's in the US. Although I could pre-order it I guess. We'll see.

I think I'll be pretty busy in between books though. I really do need to set myself up with a desk diary so I know what I'm doing these days. That includes fitting in housework around covers, computer time and reading LOL! I really do need to set aside quiet time for my reading though. I often find I'm reading my book whilst trying to get the kids breakfast or when I'm cooking dinner. I'm so impatient when it comes to my books. Still, it would be better if I could concentrate without the constant interruptions. I'm sure I'd enjoy the books even more.

Ride 'em Cowboy

2008-06-21T18:09:00.009+10:00

Another cover, coming soon to TEB!!

Ride 'em Cowboy by J.P. Bowie.
(can't add links atm, so I'll come back to those)

*sigh* Cowboys .... yum!

Okay. Thinking, thinking. We can all thank Claire for the image of the sexy cowboy in the back. He was originally leaning up against a barbed wire fence, but I cut that out. Obviously ;)

The guy in the front I made blonder to suite the city boy character. Actually, he kinda reminds me of a Lesser from JR Wards Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I don't know if that's such a good thing, now that I think of it LOL!

The background was a bone of contention and it took a bit of back and forth before we found the right image. All the pretty country images showed mainly run-down, dilapidated old sheds. At least with this one the shed looks like part of a working property, instead of a ruin in the middle of a deserted paddock.

Had something interesting happen this week. I'll sit on it for a bit to see what comes of it before I share.

Now speaking of the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward. I just finished Lover Enshrined. That would be Phury's book for fans. I can't believe I've finished it already. No. I can believe it. I absolutely love this series. I can honestly read one of these books within 24 hours. Anyway, I've finished it and will now have to wait another 12 months for the next in the series. God I hate that. I think it's Revhenge's story from what I've gleaned from the forums. Which will be interesting as I don't know how he's going to do the deed unless he's matched up with another Sympath. The old 'fish-hook' thing wouldn't help matters in the bedroom. WHAAAT? I hear you cry LOL! Oh well. I guess you'll have to read the books to find out ;) Still. It will be interesting to see what JR has planned for Xhex and John.

I finally got around to doing Amarinda & Dakota's banners - Yay!! Can't figure out why they're not changing though. Maybe one of the girls can give me some tips.

Having it All

2008-06-15T18:20:00.005+10:00

Coming soon to TEB - Having it All.

Having it All by Jamie Hill is Book 3 in the Unexpected Love Series.

Geez, this one was a while ago so I'm having difficulty remembering what I did. It was pretty straight forward from memory. I just cut out the characters and fit them onto the cover.

Of course it's never THAT easy. I need to blend them so they don't look like paper cut-outs. This can entail adding shadow and highlighting or a few strands of 'fly-away' hair to soften edges. Colour matching the characters or adding a bit more contrast, etc.

Then I need to juggle the size of the characters so they 'look' right. I like them to fill the cover, whilst not overcrowding it.

I've kept to the same style with this book, as you can see below.

So I've been totally sucked in by Facebook. There are loads of fun games that you can play over there. Who knew! I'm already addicted to PackRat and Scramble. You can play anything from Sudoku to Majhong. PackRat is a game where you collect sets of themed cards either by purchasing them with game credits or stealing them from your friends. The collector in me is in heaven with this game. Unfortunately it has become an obsession. Thanks April!!

Heatwave V2

2008-06-11T20:25:00.003+10:00

Here we have another version of Heatwave.

This cover was put together for a couple of M/M stories that crept into the mix for the Heatwave Anthologies.

Yummy!!

The Harder they Come

2008-06-08T11:15:00.004+10:00

The Harder they Come coming soon to Total-E-Bound!!

The Harder they Come by Kaenar Langford.

Yay!! It took some mucking about but I finally found my biker. Oh, I'm sure he's been well and truly used around the publishing houses, but he was all I could afford LOL!

He comes as is. I chopped off his thumb, which stuck out like a .. well, a sore thumb I suppose you could say. I think Claire asked me if he was holding a spoon or something in his hand LOL! So, off it went. I then added his luscious long hair to get our bad-boy, younger man biker.

The bike I had from a previous cover (yay! I'm finally starting to re-use some stock). I'd saved it as a PNG file so that I didn't have to cut it out from the background again. I do that with anything that I cut out - people, objects, backgrounds. Just in case I need to use them again.

The Cafe in the background took a bit of searching. I had a picture in my head of what I wanted, but of course that just doesn't exist, but this one worked out surprisingly well.

So, yep. After the initial mucking about and three covers later. This was the winner.

Thanks everyone for your support on my Writing post. As it turns out I haven't had much time to sit down and focus this past week. I've had some covers come in, but hopefully I can get onto it and start trying to get myself organised this week. I'll keep you updated.

How do you do it?

2008-06-04T16:34:00.016+10:00

Geez this writing business is damn hard work.

Okay. So I have this story that I've been dabbling with for a good 3 years now. I've named it Dragon Lord and as you guessed. It is about a Dragon Lord. Yes, my own creativity leaves me baffled and open mouthed in wonder. But I digress.

See, I've been plugging away at this - this THING. Leaving it and coming back to it. Adding. Subtracting. Heaven forbid re-writing. Until I've come to the point where I now have DL WIP 1, DL WIP2 and numerous versions of DL WIP3.

I've kept text that I'd removed and popped it in it's very own special document, just in case I wanted to come back to it. (I was so over remembering that I wrote something only to find out that I'd deleted it, so hence the Deleted Text document). Then there's the character charts, Idea documents and vague attempts at Plot lines and world building.

So of course I've totally confused myself to the point that I can't even remember which DL WIP 3 I was working on. Yes. I opened them all on the same day. *smacks head*

So. Over to the right there, you can see that I've put up a little progress meter. It shows progress on what is obviously Dragon Lord version 4. Yep, yep. I'm an idiot.

But this story wants to be told. I just don't know how to tell it. I thought that by starting from scratch it would be easier to pull together. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. I can't totally turn my back on what I have previously written (17,000 words). There are some good bits there. Somewhere. In amongst the mind numbingly boring bits involved with getting from point A to B.

In all honesty I'm starting to go stark, raving BONKERS. This then sees me disenchanted with the latest version so I return to the previous one, telling myself that it wasn't that bad to begin with. Which means that I shelve the new one I started BUT there are parts of that that I quite like and may just be able to slot into the storyline, so it get's it's own little document. (can you see a pattern here?)

Also. I've noticed that V3 and V4 seem to be written in two very different voices and the characters are a bit different. For example in V3 my Hero is quite defensive and manipulative but in V4 he's coming cross as caring and a bit pathetic.

Plus, when I go back and read what I did in V3 I sometimes find myself stitting back and wondering. Who wrote that? Surely I didn't write that? But I did. See. Somewhere in there there are little hints of genius. Well, maybe that's taking it a bit far but there are things there that impress even myself.

Oooh look. Yummy. There's my hero *drool* It's as sexy as a half a head can get I suppose. ->

So. Where do I go from now? I probably shelve the whole lot. Because this is what I do every time I get in the mood to write. I start, get confused, get bored with getting confused and then put it all away. *sigh*

I think I have commitment issues.

I need to find myself a small Critique group that specializes in Romantic Paranormal Fantasy, or there abouts. I need to discuss my work with other writers. I need to learn so I work out how to get the Heroine to invite the scary Hero into her house ASAP so we can can get the story moving. Now keep in mind he will be naked and she will be sporting a wound thanks to him. Oh and then there's him changing into a Dragon thing. Geez, talk about baggage! Who in their right mind would invite THAT into the house? Honestly.

*sigh* I need a bex and a good lie down.

Heatwave

2008-06-03T11:53:00.009+10:00

Oooh lookey, Heatwave's been released. Coming soon to TEB!

I was beginning to think that this cover had been swept under the rug. It's been a while since I did this one.

TEB made a light change and moved the Author's name down to just above the Title. Makes sense as in my version it's covering part of the woman's face.

So. It was a pretty straight forward cover. Changed the couples colouring (hue) to match that of the sunset a bit more. Then just blended the two images together using a layer mask.

The font was one I downloaded and from memory I just added a glow to the text.

I like how this came together. Let's hope it works for the Authors.

Not much else been happening. Been finishing up some more covers.

Don't you just hate it when you do something that you kinda know you shouldn't be doing but you do it anyway? It was suggested that I contact one of my authors to discuss a cover I was doing. The first version was vetoed and I needed to get more of a feel for what she was after. So I'd mocked up another cover and sent it to her for approval. I also sent that version to the publisher. Fine. Dandy. Not a problem. However, I stupidly created a 'option' version and for some reason sent that along as well. The publisher came back preferring the first version and of course the Author came back preferring the 'option'. Argh!

Stupid. I felt so bad. So there was a bit of bending over backwards to make up for my mistake. Claire was SO understanding. God she's awesome! Anyway, it all sorted itself out in the end. Mind you I ended up with THREE covers for them to choose from because I felt so awful LOL! I guess that's why contact with authors should be left to the publisher. Suits me to a tee. Too many cooks ... yeah, you get the idea :D

Oh. Did I mention my husbands van was written off the other night? A young fellow on his P's and driving dad's car hit it head on. He said a dog ran across the road in front of him and he swerved to miss it. I appreciate that he didn't hit the thing but I always remember being told not to swerve to miss an animal. Aaanyway, no biggie. The insurance will cover the cars and no-one was hurt, except maybe his pride. His young girlfriend was in the car at the time LOL! Oh well. We live and learn.

Edited to add: Hubby wasn't in the car. It was parked out the front of the house! LOL Thought I'd better add that so I didn't sound more worried about the animal than my husband. As tempting as it can be sometimes :D

Taking Control

2008-05-29T15:25:00.005+10:00

Taking Control by Jamie Hill. Coming soon to Total-E-Bound.
Jennifer Steele is plagued by memories of a violent crime. Desperate to pull herself together, she's dealt another blow when her boss hires a new employee for her bank branch. It's Jen's job to do the hiring, and she'd never have chosen a man so handsome—and arrogant. T.K. Knight is a striking part Native American who seems more at home on a ranch than in an office. Jen's not completely sure of his motives, but can't resist his charm or the pure lust that takes over whenever he's around. When Jen discovers T.K. might not have been placed in her office by chance, their already heated situation gets even hotter. The truth can be hard to face, but Jen finds she has to take control of the past, to make way for the future.

Two stock images in this cover. Actually three if you count the background on the back cover which isn't shown here. I guess I could always post the cover flats. We'll see how I'm feeling LOL!

I've had this couple for a while and have actually used him in another cover. It was nice to be able to re-use an image. I don't do that very often so it was a saving on my part LOL.

I darkened his skin a smidge to give him that swarthy Native American feel. I can't believe the amount of covers I've had lately requiring a Native American hero. The stock is soooo hard to find. This fellow is more European than Native but he's dark so that saves having to change hair colours, etc.

The Bank Vault door is pretty obvious, considering the story is about a bank.

The stock situation is really starting to bug me. I've been in the search for a sexy guy on a Motorbike this week. Who'd have thought it could be so hard? Oh of course there are some images available but as you can imagine they've all been well and truly used by other artists/publishers. I swear someone out there needs to start up a stock image site that caters purely to the e-book publishing industry. Oooh could you imagine a whole site with a plethora of gorgeous people all themed out to the max - cowboys, vampires, bikers, pirates, guys & gals who actually look smoulderingly dangerous *sigh*. I could so do dangerous atm but that's another blog ;)

God I'm so tempted to do a photography course and start up my own site LOL! Yeah, like I'd have the time to do that. Anyway, I don't know if my husband could cope with all the beautiful people hanging around. Certainly wouldn't see me complaining ;)

sigh ...

2008-05-25T19:08:00.004+10:00

Have you ever been totally consumed by a book or series of books? So consumed that you dread seeing those final pages creeping up on you, knowing full well that last handful are purely blurbs of other books, past and present. So consumed that returning to the ‘real world’ has you almost hyperventilating to the point where you just want to curl up into a fetal position and hide beneath the sheets.

So consumed that a level headed person such as yourself is praying that all things Paranormal really did exist and that bad boy Vampire warrior would honest to god, end up on your doorstep?

Yep. I’m in one of those spirals ATM. I have been in between books, eagerly waiting my next book in my Sookie Stackhouse series. Yep. The one where I’d purchased book 7 but not book 6. Anyway, for some reason I picked up my JR Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood books again out of sheer boredom. Not really thinking I’d get so absorbed this time considering I’d already read them. Wrong.

I swear my husband thinks I’m having an affair, I’ve been so tuned out. I’ve read 5 books in about 3 days. Not good on my poor old eyes but I just can’t put these books down. I’ve totally zoned out and am walking around in a daze. A horrible, yearning, resentful daze. I know it’s not healthy. Here I thought my depression was under control. Perhaps not.

Pathetic. Really, really pathetic.

Strange thing is I have the sudden urge to write too. I don’t have a story in my head. Just the urge to write. I could go back to my poor old WIP’s and see what I can do to those but I’ve hashed and rehashed those so many times I don’t know if I’m coming or going anymore. I don’t have the staying power that’s required for writing. I used to have lots of ideas and images racing around my head. It’s like someone’s pulled the plug. Dead. Gone. Kaput!

Sometimes it’s just easier to read what someone else writes, isn't it?

Yeah. Not a good place today. Tomorrow will be better. I hope.

Day at the Races

2008-05-19T12:51:00.018+10:00

Not a lot to report I'm afraid. Been sick with a cold this last week. Feeling pretty crappy but well enough to do what's required of me.

Went to the local Races yesterday. They had a family day. I've never been to the races before. It's not an industry that I particularly like. I tend to get a bit annoyed when the jockeys start whipping the horses and have been known to grumble something along the lines of 'put that damn whip where the sun don't shine'. And that's to put it mildly.

However, I must say that I quite enjoyed myself despite having to stand in line for 40 minutes to get the kids faces painted. It's been a while since I've been up close to those gorgeous creatures. The horses, not the kids.

I'd forgotten how damn big they get and watching a 17 hand thoroughbred full of beans head out onto the track certainly makes you take a step back from the fence. Especially when they're only 1 foot away from you LOL!.

I took some photo's to try out my new little happy-snap camera that I got myself. I couldn't work out how to find the fast speed setting so most of the 'action' shots came out a bit blurry. But then my talents don't lie so much in photography. I'll let you decide:

(blurry)

(oops .. too slow LOL!)

(not so bad if you're in an Arty frame of mind)

Oh, and I fell in love ...

(with the horse, not the rider. Sheesh!)

So yeah. We had a good day, despite the wind and the kids LOL! Nah, the kidlets were pretty well behaved and both slept through to well past 8am this morning. So I'll say we'll be going to the races on a regular basis LOL.

Oh and I'm a happy fan-girl today. I got a lovely signed photograph of Rhys Bobridge in the mail. *sigh* Oh he's a gorgeous boy! And a big thank you to Rhys' mum who organised that for the KBC girls. He's now got pride of place next to Johnny, right above my computer. This is where I work from in case anyone is interested :D

I've booked my flights to Melbourne to see the SYTYCD show. Accommodation is booked and we're in discussions as to what else we are going to get up to. Chapel Street was mentioned which I believe is a bit of a mecca for shoppers. I'm not much of a shopper so let's see if I'm impressed.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

2008-05-11T09:40:00.008+10:00

Happy Mothers day to all those mums out there in the world!

I was awoken to the delightful sounds of 'winge, winge, winge - Mum! Get out of bed! - winge, winge, winge'. *sigh* After telling my 3yo to go out to the kitchen and see dad they soon returned with coffee and pikelets covered in maple syrup and cream.

Okay. Winging forgiven LOL!

I was very pleased to see a gift card from Big W (much smaller version of Wallmart?) for $100. In my mind it's already been spent on a new happy snap camera. My daughter got me a lovely necklace and matching earings from her school Mothers Day stall. Very impressed and will not hesitate in sending money with her next year.

So not a lot planned for today. The V8's are on (car racing) and I don't mind sitting down and watching a bit of V8 madness. We're a Ford family *ducks for cover* LOL. You're either on one side or the other here in Aus - Ford or Holden. I think that's what makes the V8's so much fun. There's always that rivalry between fans. Funny how I've always found the V8's comforting. It always brings back memories of my childhood with the V8's on the telly and dad snoring away in his chair LOL!

Here's a little glimpse for all you rev-heads out there:

Okay. I'm a bit peeved with myself ATM. I finished book 5 in the Sookie Stackhouse aka Southern Vampire Series last night only to realise that I did not purchase the next book in the series. I have book 7 but not book 6. Grrrr. Now I'll have to order it online and it will take a good 3 weeks to get here. Damn I hate that. I have nothing else to read (well, nothing that I'm in the mood for) so I'm going to be like a bear with a sore head until I get my next fix of Sookie. LOL.

I could always go to Dymocks but why pay $20 when I can get it online for $11. Yes, there's postage to consider but if I purchase a few other books at the same time, the postage doesn't change. Anyway, I don't want to risk the 40 minute drive only to find out they don't have it in store anyway.

This is what really tempts me to get a e-reader. I could purchase a book and have it within minutes. I wouldn't be stressing about the growing pile of books on the floor beside my bed because there's no more room in the book cases and cupboards. I'm a book hoarder. I don't like to get rid of them. Although I must admit to having sold a few series of late. The ones where each book a repeat of the previous, just with a few names changed around.

So that brings me to the question. Which e-reader? If I get an e-reader I don't want to be limited to only one e-book provider (eg. Amazon = Kindle), yet I want the flexibility of genre's that Amazon offer. Do you have an e-reader? What would you recommend?

Speaking of all things technological. I've found all of a sudden I want an Ipod. I don't know why. I've never wanted one before. In fact I couldn't see a place for one in my life before this. I wonder what happened. Must be related to my mid-life crisis that I seem to be having ATM.

I might just get the smallest, most basic (= cheapest) one for the time being as much as the ones with all the bells and whistles call to me.

We'll see.

Let them eat rice!

2008-05-10T19:45:00.007+10:00

The wonderful Denise Rossetti posted this on her blog a little while back. I've been playing it ever since and I think I've now managed to feed a third world country LOL! It's nice to know that I can make a difference while having a bit of fun. Just click on the banner below.

How does the FreeRice vocabulary program work?

For every word you get right, FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to help end hunger. Here are some facts from their FAQ.

FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In between are thousands of words for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people… everyone!

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 60 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 50.

Who pays for the donated rice?

The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry). We commend these companies for their participation at FreeRice.

If FreeRice has the rice to give, why not give it all away right now?

FreeRice is not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 20 grains at a time. Here is how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.

Does FreeRice make any money from this?

No, it does not. FreeRice runs the site at no profit.

Who distributes the donated rice?

The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. We encourage you to visit the United Nations World Food Program to learn more about their successful approach to ending hunger.

Will the rice I donate make a difference?

The rice you donate makes a huge difference to the person who receives it. According to the United Nations, about 25,000 people die each day from hunger or hunger-related causes, most of them children. To a mother or father watching a loved child die in their arms from hunger, the rice you donate is more precious than anything in the world.

So it's Mothers Day tomorrow. The kids are quite excited and have a bounty of home made pressies lined up for me. No doubt I'll be getting the book that I bought myself the other week or one of the cracked coffee cups from the cupboard. All nicely wrapped of course ;)

We have ANOTHER appointment with the dentist this Wednesday. This time, hopefully with the gas. The poor kid has had a horrible week, pretty much stuck in her room the moment she get's home from school. I've been using her homework as an excuse to get her out of her room, but you know what? She's been an absolute ANGEL despite the punishment LOL! Might have to send her to her room a bit more often.

She has a bit of a cold atm so no doubt that will herald the beginning of the 'sick' season in our home. Yee-bloody-har. NOT!

Miranda & the Prince

2008-05-08T13:04:00.008+10:00

Coming soon to Total-E-Bound: Miranda and the Prince by Wendy Stone.

Isn't she pretty *sigh*. Something a little bit different this time. I must say, it was a nice sidestep away from the man-titties and perky breasts LOL! I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen standing in the check-out line at Big W with this one, is all I'm saying ;)

Okay. So where do I start. The girl was pretty straight forward except for her shawl. It had little silver spangles on it which didn't suit the theme of the 'Pauper' girl so I overlayed it with a tartan texture which gave it a more earthy, hand woven feel. The background is the beautiful Lake Bled in Slovenia. My husband's best mate married a Slovenian girl and he had the pleasure of going over there to the wedding to be best man. I stayed at home and looked after our baby daughter. He owes me big time.

But I digress. The ring was possibly the most fiddly part of the cover. The original ring was a yellow topaz so I tracked down a nice image of amber and cut out a chunk and stuck it over the top. A bit of blending and touching up and I think it came out pretty well ;)

All together there were four stock images used in this cover. There was a bit of trial and error with the font and font colours but other than that this was a relatively easy cover to do. There was talk about having the prince in the background but I'm glad we went with this one.

The plans are coming along for our Melbourne trip. Oh, and my camera died yesterday. Damn! Now I'll need to get myself another one to take down to Melbourne with me. I'm not going to miss that photo opportunity LOL! I had wanted to save up for a really good camera but I may just have to go for another 'aim and shoot' for the time being.

Um. I burned the back of my finger the other day. Got a lovely two inch blister running down the back of it. Funny the stupid things you do, isn't it? Who in their right mind would test a pot on the stove with the back of their finger? I do it all the time though. I flick the back of the steamer pot with my finger to see if it's on (only because I can't see the contents). Usually it just feels hot and I know things have started. But this time my damn finger stuck to the pot! Eeeeouuuch! Turns out that I'd had a blond moment and forgotten to put water in the pot so I burned myself with steel that was on the verge of meltdown.

Anyway, I think I've learned my lesson ;) The blister finally popped yesterday. Ick! I'm not quite sure what to do with it now. I'm just keeping it covered so I don't have to think about it LOL.

I'm so hard on my hands. I stubbed my middle finger on my right hand the week before so now it swollen and I can't bend it very well. Add that to the 2 inch burn AND the nice scar from the Vanity incident and there goes any visions of being a hand model *snort*.

Dentists Suck!

2008-05-06T18:46:00.011+10:00

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do.

My daughter has a hole in her lower back molar. Actually she also has a smaller hole in her top molar. Same side. I took her to the dentist. He asked her 'Would you like me to fix it' and she said 'No', so he said 'Okay. Here's the number to a dentist who uses the gas'. What the? Since when does a 6 year old call the shots?

So I make an appointment with the Dentist with the Gas (har de har). When we get there it appears that they didn't book me into the room with the gas. Grrr! This time she got as far as having had the needle. Yes folks. She Had the needle but then refused to let the Dentist drill. *sigh*

So our third attempt was today. The above dentist palmed us off to the local Dental Clinic at the Hospital. 'Oh she'll be fine' says the receptionist, 'Our staff are very experienced with young, problematic children'. Hmmm, yeah right I think to myself. You haven't experienced MY daughter. So I give them the benefit of the doubt. As expected they re-emerge 15 minutes later. My daughter crying and my husband shooting daggers. Honestly, I just wanted the ground to swallow me up.

Once more nothing got done. We have one more appointment with Dentist #2. The one with the Gas. Hopefully they'll use it this time. If that doesn't go to plan then we have to put her under a general anesthetic.

Meanwhile my husband is so damn cranky with her she's been grounded for the week. Poor kid. While I don't totally agree with her punishment, I really am at a loss as to what to do next.

Now. I have a mouth full of fillings. I don't EVER recall going to the dentist and coming away without having had a procedure that I'd been booked in for. I can't EVER recall refusing to have something done and getting away with it. I do recall doing that at the local GP's when I had to get a needle. But I still ended up getting it. I think they sat on me LOL!

The thing is she's now had three positive results from her carry-on. How on earth are we ever going to get her the proper treatment she requires if everyone throws up their hands at the first sign of tears?

I'm on the verge of saying 'Stuff it. Let the tooth rot out of your head'. But I know I won't do that. I'll keep plugging away. Taking her out of school, wasting our time and the Dentists...

Lord knows how much money this is going to cost me.

Keep writing ladies. I'm going to need the covers.

Tasting Pleasure

2008-04-28T19:40:00.009+10:00

Tasting Pleasure by Marie Haynes coming soon to Total-E-Bound.

I like the simplicity of this cover. Sometimes less is best. I love the contrast between the black/white and Strawberry Pink. Nice and easy cover to pull together. I've had my eye on this photo for a while and was just waiting for the right book to come along.

All I really had to do for this one was cut out the shoe & hands and place them on a gradient background. The background was originally white but it was a bit too stark. I added the strawberry for a subtle hint of the storyline and then the text. The text box just breaks the cover up nicely. So there we have Tasting Pleasure.

Okay. I'm a tad disappointed at the moment. My favourite dancer from So You Think You Can Dance Australia came runner up. It's a sad day for the KBC0 (Kinky Boot Co - long story), but we're strong. Congrats to Jack the winner. He'll do us proud. He's a fantastic dancer, so watch out Broadway!! Jack's on his way LOL.

<- Rhys Jack ->

Don't know what our boy Rhys' plans are. Hoping us girls will find out some more when we all get together for the Melbourne leg of the SYTYCD tour. It's all very exciting actually. I've never been one to get too wrapped up in Reality TV shows, let alone the forums attached to them. It's been nice to chat to people with similar interests and I honestly look forward to meeting these fantastic ladies.

I so need a life at the moment. I need to know that I'm still my own person, that I can still do something on a whim and do something because I WANT to. Not because I have to.

The tour isn't until July and there's going to be quite a bit of planning in between then but I'll keep you all posted on my mid-life-crisis LOL!

LEST WE FORGET

2008-04-25T21:44:00.006+10:00

It was ANZAC day here in Aus today. A very special day for all Australians and even more so for those of us who had loved ones in the forces.

I've had a long day and it's late so I don't have the patience to put a moving blog together. Amarinda has done that for me, so drop by her blog as few could have done a better job.

My Grandfather fought at Gallipoli. He was an ANZAC. He survived. I don't know how but he did. He died the year I was born so I never got to meet him but I am ever so proud.

Cheers Pop!

LEST WE FORGET

This was a pic from last years ANZAC parade. A much nicer day and my camera was working better then.

Conjuring Cal

2008-04-22T09:56:00.005+10:00

Conjuring Cal by Buffi BeCraft-Woodall is coming soon to Total-E-Bound.

I love this cover. It's definitely up there as one of my fav's. I've been dying to do something like this for a while and I will admit that it was heavily inspired by Denise Rossetti's - Gift of the Goddess cover by the incredible Syneca. I added a few brushes to give it that magical feel. I mucked around a bit with the dragon, all the while berating myself for not having done some more drawing/painting lessons. I ended up resorting to some dragon stock available at DA and in the vain attempt to not take credit for someone else's work, I maniped it to add another head. As required by the story.

I added his hair, again with brushes and was surprised that it was allowed through. I didn't think it looked quite real enough - but hey! I'm not complaining LOL.

Oh, I so need to practice my hair and painting skills. I also really need to start making some of my own brushes. DA has been a fantastic resource, but I'm hesitant in mentioning it because I don't want just anyone going along and thinking they can take things for themselves. There are rules set up by the owners of the stock there. Some allow commercial use, others not.

I guess now that I have Illustrator and CS3 I have less reason to say I can't. Now it all really just comes back to time. Time to focus. Time to experiment. It's frustrating to turn around 3-4 hours later and have nothing to show for it. Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a winge post. So Hurrah! Conjuring Cal has been released :D

Ooh .. quick update on the So You Think You Can Dance AUSTRALIA. It's down to the final 4 and Rhys is one of them. Yay! for Rhys LOL. Love him to death even if he does bat for the other team. He danced with Jack on Sunday night. Jack is the fav to win the comp. He's good. Damn good, but I still gravitate to Rhys. Anyway, here they are (Rhys is the one on the right of the screen, slightly to the front):

Phhwwaaaarrr .. is all I can say.

Ta daaaa ...

2008-04-21T14:10:00.007+10:00

Well. There we have it. Despite the intervention that some of you had planned, I made Butter!!! LOL.

Wasn't as hard as I expected. Mind you I can't believe how hard it was to find Organic double cream.

Our local IGA has quite a reputation for stocking a lot of alternative ingredients, so I assumed that Organic Double Cream would be there amongst the Tofu and Organic Yoghurt. Sadly all they stock was the Pouring or Thickened Creams. The same you'd buy in any supermarket. Considering they have everything else in Organic form, I guess it was silly of me to assume as much. I quickly ducked up to the 'full on' health food store up the road and they only get their organic cream on a Wednesday (of course, why am I not surprised). So back I trundled to IGA and just got some thickened cream. It was on special at $0.99c for a 300ml. A 600ml was usually about $3.20. Still a good deal cheaper than the $5.18 for the tub of butter.

So when I got home I whacked it in the food processor and watched with baited breath. I can't believe it actually worked LOL! I drained off the buttermilk (which I then used to make some buttermilk pikelets - is that scary or what? LOL) and rinsed the butter in cold water. I then whipped in a bit of salt and some light olive oil to make it easier to spread and voila! I have butter.
It was interesting to read what ingredients were used in the bought butter - Cream, Vegetable Oils (Antioxidant (320), Butteroil, Salt, Buttermilk Powder, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Flavour, Vitamin A, Colour (160a), Vitamin D, Milk Fat 38% and Canola Oil 21%.

Geez. Seems an awful lot of 'stuff' for a pretty natural product. All I used was - Thickened Cream (which contained Vegetable Gums 407 & 412) and 35% milk fat, Light Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and Sea Salt.

I'd ideally like to get organic cream or a good double cream with minimum additives. Funny thing is that we're surrounded by dairy farms. Sounds like I may need to chat up a few farmers and see if they sell any products direct.

So. All in all, it was a productive morning. I wonder what it will be next week. I already do my own breadcrumbs. Hmmm ... what will it be? Soap making? Candle making? Bread making?

Ah yes, I know. Just call me Martha :D

Where for art thou Muse

2008-04-20T09:58:00.006+10:00

Okay, so I'm over my little spat with the computer. I ended up dropping it off at my computer guy. Turns out that my disk drive didn't read DVD's. 'Fix it' I said and it was done. So everything is working (for the time being). Now if I could just find some inspiration I'll be set.

Speaking of Inspiration (aka Muse), well, he's done a runner on me. In other words I don't have any. I've offered to do a banner for someone who wants a Fantasy theme with a hand-painted feel to it. Unfortunately I'm not confident (or good enough for that matter) to digitally paint something so I'll have to do a manipulation and give it that hand painted feel - aka whack a filter over it LOL.

Anyway, the thing is. I can't for the life of me come up with anything. I've dabbled but there's no spark or interest what-so-ever. It's just so hard to come up with something? Why is this?? I'll get a picture in my head but it means a lot of dabbling, learning and general mucking about. I just don't seem to have the time to dedicate to dabbling, learning and mucking about. I don't recall it ever being this hard before. I spend so much time at the computer already, perhaps it's a guilt thing. My mind is constantly telling me to get away from the computer - you're putting on too much weight, you need to move, you need to hang the washing out, you need to do something with the kids, the house is a mess. DO SOMETHING!!!

Ooo .. I did do something this week. I went horse riding with my daughter. Woohoo! We went on a 2 hour bush ride (or trail ride for the non-Aussie folk). It was a bit of fun although I was a bit torn between wanting to go for a nice canter and stick behind with my daughter and be a responsible parent. LOL! I got a bit of both which was nice. The guide, Sue kept an eye on my daughter while I went for a bit of a run. So now my legs are aching but I love it. I missed the feel of being on a horse. It was hard work though. My boy was always so responsive. I basically had to lean forward to go and sit back to stop. He'd turn with the pressure of the reins and to canter I just had to put one foot back a smidge and we'd be off. The trail horses are very much the opposite. You need to boot them to go, pull them to stop and push them every step of the way LOL! Still, it was a bit of fun. I do miss my old boy though.

I did a quick grocery shop at our local IGA (Idependent Grocers of Australia). I like real butter. None of this pretend margarine crap, no matter how good they want to tell me it is for my health. So. I went to grab a spreadable version that we go through at ridiculous speed. $5.18 for a 5oog tub! What the hell? It was only $3.90 not that long ago. Oh-0h, somethings going to have to give.

So this morning I had a bit of a domestic moment. Why don't I make my own butter? So off to the computer I trot to look up recipes for home made butter (yeah I know what's in it, just not how to do it). I really don't know what I'd do without the internet. Honestly! Anyway, I looked to see if there were recipes for home made spreadable butter, which of course there were. So I'm all set now for recipes. This afternoon I'm off to IGA to pick up some heavy cream and have a go at making my own butter. No doubt it will end up more expensive to make than just buying the tub LOL! But what the heck. I'll give it a go and report back.

Why me?

2008-04-17T16:11:00.010+10:00

I. HATE. COMPUTERS.

Why is it that whenever I get something new for my computer I get all exited? I know that whatever it is I am trying to do won't work. Why do I always think, surely this time the computer gods will be watching over me. Right?

Yeah, they're watching alright. Laughing their collective beards off!

I'll fill you in.

So my CS3 Design pack arrived in the mail a few days ago. Yippee! I did a little dances because this means that not only do I now have the latest version of Photoshop, but I also have InDesign, Illustrator and a few other bits and pieces that I'm not overly worried about atm. Because I got the student version I needed to apply to get my Serial number so that I could run the programme. No problems. I got that today. Me-2, Computer Gods-0. Things are going well.

So I open up the pack. There are 3 disks (gone are the days of downloading 30 disks, YAY!!). One says Application, one says Content and the last says Video Workshop. There are NO instructions anywhere, what-so-ever. So I pop in the Application disk, purely because it was the one on top.

Now just because I've purchased a computer programme doesn't mean that I instantly know how to install it. I assumed from previous installations that I just put in the disk and a install wizard would pop up ... ha ha ha, she laughs sarcastically.

Nothing. I try the Content disk. Nothing. (me-2, computer gods 1) Damn, the bastards are catching me.

Of course, why am I not in the least bit surprised.

I decide to visit the Adobe web site. Surely there are some basic instructions on how to install my disks? It may be there somewhere but obviously it is buried in amongst the 'techy' language that my eyes automatically skim over. So of course I'm getting more frustrated by the minute. All I want to do is load my programmes and play. (me-2, computer gods-2) Agh! We're even now.

I then spend the next hour or more reading every word on the disk box, the dismal flyer inside that tells me what I'll be able to do with the programmes (providing I can get the damn things to work!) but still no installation instructions.

Do I need to activate something? Register? Silly me thought that the disks would prompt me to do these things. (me-2, computer gods-3) Typical!

So here I am a good 2 hours later and I still haven't worked out where I'm going wrong. I've left a message with my computer guy, I've left a support message with Adobe AND I've joined the CS3 forum to try to work out what the problem is.

I am so deflated and frustrated that I just want to cry. Why can't something just go to plan for once. Why does anything relating to my computer always take endless hours for me and a few minutes for everyone else? I swear to god (obviously the wrong one) that this happens every time I do something to my computer, whether it's internet installations, upgrades, new programmes or new bits of hardware. I mean, something as simple as my wireless mouse/keyboard. I have to change the batteries in my mouse EVERY DAY! Yes they're rechargeable but WTF? My brother-in-law's last for a good six months!

I just don't get it.

Computers suck!

The Set Up

2008-04-16T08:12:00.004+10:00

Now released over at Total-E-Bound

The Set Up by J. P. Bowie. A relatively easy cover to do. The only time-consuming part of this was finding the 'right' character to portray the Native American Indian movie extra. I chose a different image of this guy but apparently it had been used quite a bit so I had to find someone else. Turns out this image is the same guy LOL! Just a different photoshoot. Unfortunately he had some quite ridiculous glasses on his face so I had to chop off his head. I must say that the did give him that air of 'budding LA Moviestar', but, the glasses had to go. Oh, and I also had to add the long hair.

The other fellow was pretty straight forward. I touched up his eyes to make them a darker blue. I tried something a little different with the font this time. A dark colour got lost and a light colour seemed to be too much. So I added a 'style' which is available in CS2. I'm pretty happy with it.

Aaah .. it's been quiet around the blogs with a lot of the Authors that I frequent heading off to the RT convention. I'd love to go to one of these conventions one day and meet all these wonderful people. I doubt that I'd be heading off to the US or UK though, it would have to be a home grown Romance Writers of Australia get together LOL! Maybe when one comes to Sydney or Brisbane I could escape for the weekend. Gee, I wonder if Total-E-Bound needs an Australian liaison officer LOL. Probably the ONLY way I'd make it to one of these shin-digs.

Got the kids home on school holidays. YAY! (not). We're off to the Dentist today. All three of us. YAY (not). Then we'll hit the shops to buy some much needed shoes for the kiddies. So all in all it's going to be an expensive and very frustrating day.

Wish me luck!

Orphaned Works Legislation

2008-04-13T09:08:00.016+10:00

I've always had trouble understanding legal jargon. Sit me down to read a legal document and I'm off on another plant within seconds. Just doesn't sink in. Doesn't interest me in the least. Even if it works to my advantage. I just have one of those brains I guess.

So, I'm going to post a link on The Orphaned Works Legislation for you to listen to. (here)

Please listen to this. Pop it on in the background as you do other work on the computer. Yes it takes a good 50 minutes, BUT it is very interesting. Especially if your an artist or know someone who is an artist. Actually, interesting isn't the word to use. SCARY would be more appropriate.

Basically what it is saying is that this law will effectively remove all rights of ownership to ANY artistic visual that you create.

So. For example, let's say that I doodle a picture of a tree. I post it up on my blog saying 'Look how clever I am'. Someone spots this and decides to us it for an add campaign for a kids cough syrup (yes a bit far fetched I know, but bare with me).

Suddenly someone is making money off my work. I decide to demand compensation for the company's use of MY artwork. However, under this new legislation it is no longer considered to be my artwork. It's been deemed Orphan. Why? Because I have not registered it with a privately run Register.

Now, at the moment there are no limits on how many registers there could be. There could be 5 or there could be 1000. AND may I add that these will be run by the private sector. So you may have 5000 images that you create a year. You will need to register EACH AND EVERY PIECE OF ART YOU CREATE. And if you really want to cover your butt it will be not once but possibly 1000 times. Yeah, like the starving artist can afford to do that.

SO. Back to the story at hand. All the Company needs to do at this stage is state that they 'had made a concerted effort to find the owner of the image'. They may have only searched 5 of the 1000 registries. However, because they could not find your image (because you could only afford to register at 3 of the 1000), all of a sudden your artwork is considered Orphaned.

Plus. What if they did find that particular piece of artwork registered. With so many other registries available they could easily pretend that they didn't find your work. Still claiming that it had been Orphaned.

As usual, the Artist is left high and dry without any form of compensation, despite having registered the artwork in the first place. Big Business is the winner of the day, because they can afford to be.

Anyway. I hope you see where I'm coming from with this blog today. It's certainly something the art community should be seriously looking into. So if this doesn't effect you please link it to someone you think may be interested.

Here are a few more links to get a more detailed overview on the situation:
Illustratorspartnership
DeviantArt
OrphanWorks Blogspot

There are lots of good links within these articles as well as some Petition links.

Also, big thanks to Melissa Findley (or as we know her over at DA, Mercuralis ) for the use of her poster. She gives permission for it to be used on blogs, etc so we can spread the word.

The Big O

2008-04-11T12:05:00.003+10:00

Another cover released over at Total-E-Bound.

The Big O by Lyn Cash is the 2nd book in the Kinky Kruising series.

Another sunset and more boobs! LOL. The hardest part was the life preserver. I needed to cut it from the background and change it's perspective, add writing to it and hang it on the rail. It still looks a little off to me. Yes I can see the spelling inconsistency. Shhhh ... don't tell anyone ;) I really should go in and fix it.

I've noticed that I'm starting to dislike some of my previous covers. I guess as I grow, my tastes change. It's funny that it seems to be the covers that I spent the most time on. I was quite proud of those covers at the time. I guess I felt a sense of achievement. Now I seem to look back and think they're overdone. I wonder if that will continue or if I will 'find a happy place' with my covers. Don't know.

That's about it for me. I've got the guilts because I need to get stuck into my Assignment for my Graphic Design course and I've got a few banners to create. All I feel like doing is reading my book Dead after Dark by Charlaine Harris. Well. I guess I'd best get on with it :D

A Bikers Vow

2008-04-10T09:12:00.005+10:00

Another cover has hit the TE B 'coming soon' page.

A Bikers Vow by Carol Lynne is Book 9 in the Campus Cravings series.

This cover required a Harley Davidson on the cover. However, as many of the Bikes available as stock tend to remove the badges (for copyright reasons I presume), it was a bit of a guessing game. I ended up with something that looked 'Harley-ish'. As a reader looking at a cover, a bike is a bike is a bike LOL! I get the idea. If it isn't a Harley I don't think I'd throw the book down in disgust.

Aaaanyway, the Tatts and Piercings were a big part of this cover. Thank goodness the Tattooed male came as is. I really only had to add his long hair and nipple ring. Not that you can really see that. The little fellow at the back was more tricky. He had to be 'small' and slim but well muscled. He also had to have nipple rings and a belly-button piercing. Not much thought process used in these covers as I'm limited by the series template. Just a lot of fiddling to get the characters to look right.

Been a busy month for covers. My publisher/editor at TEB is heading off to a conference so I needed to have the months covers back to her early. I've only got one to go, so I'm on track. I also had to re-do some older covers that will be going to print very soon. Originally I used to create three separate files (cover, spine, back) instead of the one cover-spread that I do now. So I just had to pull all the parts together into one file. It was all pretty straight forward thank goodness :D

And as you can all see I've been getting my Blogger account back up to date. I think I've worked out the kinks and I've managed to add some personal touches. Thanks so much to Amarinda Jones for helping me with the slideshow!!

I'll be working on some banners that I've promised people once all the covers are out of the way. I haven't forgotten ladies!! :D

Back with Blogger

2008-04-07T14:07:00.004+10:00

Okay. I've donned my battle fatigues and am back with blogger LOL!

I've been working out the kinks, copied over a few of my posts from Wordpress, got some snazzy little widgets happening and all's good.

Let's hope there's no more moves :D

Hunting Diablo

2008-04-07T13:59:00.002+10:00

So I spent most of my evening checking out the available Blogger templates. I want a 3 column template with a custom header. Apparently these don't exist. Well, I did find some but for some reason Blogger can't read them. Kinda makes the search for Free Blogger Templates pointless. I might have to resign myself to a 'classic' blogger template/layout, which I seem to recall being one of the reasons I hightailed it over here to Wordpress. *sigh* Man this internet thing is SOOO time consuming.

Of course I say to myself 'Damn-it woman! You should be able to put a simple template together'. So I start fiddling around and the next thing I know it's midnight and I've accomplished NOTHING other than getting myself extremely frustrated. Yeah, so I'm no closer to getting my Blogger account looking professional so we're still here for the time being.

Anyway, on to other things. Hunting Diablo has hit the 'Coming Soon' line-up over at TEB.

Ellies other covers by me ;)

Hunting Diablo by Ellie Tremayne. Ellie has done a little sidestep away from the rugged British highlands and thrown us into the Carribean full of Pirates!

It's actually be quite a while since I did this cover and I was beginning to worry that it may never be released LOL! I was rather pleased with the outcome. I love the colours. Can you tell that the couple are actually two different stock photos? I'm pretty chuffed with how they came together. Actually I think it may have been 3 stock photos in this. I think I added someone's chest hair and shoulder so that their heads weren't just hanging there :D

How nice would it be to spend a week on that little island, eh? Provided Mr Pirate up there was waiting on me hand and foot ;) LOL.

I seem to recall there was a lot (a LOT) of cutting out on the ship. Not something that I want to repeat within the near future. However, it came out surprisingly well. I just had to add the Jolly Roger flag and get the ship to sit in the water without looking odd. I think I managed it, provided we don't look tooooo closely ;)

Hmmm ... very odd. I've come back to finish off this post and something's changed. I've all of a sudden got a personalised Dashboard. There also seems to be a few bugs. I can't put in any links for some reason. I like the new look but I don't like being able to do what I want, when I want. Also I don' like things changing without a bit of fanfare. If something is going to be up-graded I want a small note saying something along the lines of 'Look what we've done'. So I'll finish this post off because I can't really do any more to it. Let's see if it is going to be difficult next time around. If so, Blogger, here I come!

Worth the Risk

2008-04-07T13:58:00.000+10:00

Phew! Another cover has been released in the 'Coming Soon' section at TEB. I was beginning to get antsy as I had nothing really worthy to blog about. Well, other than the mundane grievances of life LOL!

Worth the Risk by Jamie Hill is the second book in the Unexpected Love series.

I tried to keep the same 'style' to the covers and think I managed it pretty well. Took a while to find the right mix of models and I particularly like the woman and was quite determined to use her. Very straight forward . Not too much blending or adjusting.

Just ordered myself a couple of books online - Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris. Yeah, it's taken me a long time to get around to reading CH. It seems it's a must that everyone who loves Vampire books will have read this series. My interest was piqued by the fact that there's a new TV series coming that's being based on these novels called 'True Blood' . Yay! Another vampire show with an Aussie, Ryan Kwanten amongst the leading characters :D Mind you we'll probably only be teased with the first few episodes and then the network will just stop airing it without a 'don't mind us'. And yes, I'm still ticked off about Moonlight!

I'd love to see Sherrilyn Kenyon or JR Wards series on the TV but that may be pushing the friendship a bit.

Happy Easter!!

2008-04-07T13:56:00.000+10:00

First things first ... HAPPY EASTER!! (yes I'm a bit late for the Aussies)

Just whipped this up because I couldn't find a suitable image on google LOL!

Oh, and get a load of this!!! The Belgian chocolate made the chocolate egg with at least 50.000 bars.The egg measured 8.32m high.Twenty-six craftsman worked altogether 525 hours to build the easter egg. They needed 1950 kg of chocolate.Alderman Urbain Vercauteren of the city of St.Niklaas said the egg wasn't meant to be eaten.He said: "After a week outside in all weather conditions, I don't think it would be very tasteful."

So, now that we've indulged ourselves, I can tell you that not much happening in my small part of the world. I've done my covers for the month but they're just taking their time being released. I'll post them here as soon as they're released over at TEB.

School Holidays are looming in a few weeks. Don't know how I'm going to entertain the kiddies. Luckily my son will still be attending Preschool for his 3 days a week. The idea crossed my mind to head off to Sydney for a week, but it's such an upheaval with all the packing and the 5+ hour drive down there. It's hard when it's just me in the car as my son still get's a bit car sick. Although he is quicker to grab the 'chuck bucket' these days.

So I might take my daughter horse riding and shopping. Maybe we'll visit the movies and she's been mentioning Ice Skating but I'm not sure how my old bones would hold up to that LOL!

Speaking of my daughter, she had a sleepover at her cousin's last night so I'd better head over and pick her up before she wears out her welcome. Oh, and I must drop in and apologise to my neighbour as I forgot to set my alarm this morning (6am) for our morning walk. It was nice to sleep in though ;)

Mistress Mine

2008-04-07T13:51:00.000+10:00

Here's the latest cover to be released over at TEB.

Mistress Mine by Lyn Cash is the first book in the Kinky Cruising Series. It was an odd combination - a cowboy, a dominatrix and cruise ship and because of this I wanted to try to get all elements in the cover. I did muck around for a while, trying different things but this combination seemed to work the best. I added the leather cuffs to the woman and hair to the guy, removed some tatts. Oh, I also gave him a shave LOL! Something I haven't done before but apart from that it was all pretty straight forward.

Pleasing the Messenger

2008-04-07T13:50:00.000+10:00

Oooh ... that was quick! Pleasing the Messenger cover has been released over at TEB.

Pleasing the Messenger by C.S. Chatterly is Book Three in the Uniform Behaviour series. Can you tell? LOL. I am hoping this is it for the series because I'm starting to have trouble finding suitable male faces. The hardest part of being a cover artist is finding stock. Then to add to my stock woes is my personal taste. All these guy's I find extremely attractive. Yes. There were other men in suitable poses but I just couldn't bring myself to use them because they didn't appeal to my taste. Sad really. But that is how the cookie crumbles. *sigh* One day I'll get myself a good camera and perhaps (perhaps) hire a couple of models to create my own personal stock. Stock that hasn't been used to death.

Anyway, back to the cover. Took a little while to find the male model. The first guy I had was a bit young but Claire and I managed to scrape up this handsome young fellow. Hmm .. nice jawline.

Then came the battle to find a suitable scene on the bottom. The story is set during an ice storm in Eastern Texas. I tried to keep the terrain as realistic as possible, hence a Texas mountain image (mind you I have no idea if there are mountains in Eastern Texas) Ah the joys of artistic license LOL!. Unfortunately no sign of ice/snow but I guess we can't have it all. Right? :D Anyway, I think it works well for the series. Two covers with the 'snow' effect would have been too much I think.

Well. I'm off to try and come up with a worthy Blog entry for Hitting the Hot Spot on Sunday. OMG! I have no idea what I'll blog about. Well, covers of course. Duh! But in what context, I'm not yet sure. Any ideas?

Office Advances

2008-04-07T13:49:00.001+10:00

Here's the latest cover released at TEB!

Office Advances by Carol Lynne is book 8 in the Campus Craving Series so there's nothing new to the layout. This one is based more in the business sector, hence the city backdrop and the guy's in suits. That's actually Sydney up there - had to support my home town LOL! The guy's were easy enough. All I had to do was add some curly hair to the guy at the front but it's hardly noticeable. Yeah. So after the initial searching for suitable stock that had the guy's giving off the right vibe it all came together rather easily.

Port Stephens & Sensual Spell

2008-04-07T13:46:00.000+10:00

I'm back! Had a very nice time. The house we stayed in was right on the bay. Here's my lazy attempt at a panoramic view LOL. I took looking out from the back door. Unfortunately it was the day we were leaving and the weather was crappy - typical! Every other day had been gorgeous. But you get the idea.

We fed the pelicans, watched the dolphins, went swimming, got sunburnt *rolls eyes*, ate well, drank well. *sigh* Yes. We had a good time :D It is good to be home though. I was a bit over the upheaval of all this recent travel.

Aaanyway, so back to the real world. I've just punted the kiddies off to school and preschool. Hallelujah and pass the gin! Would you believe they almost didn't make it. Of course with all the rain we've been having here the bridge went under last night (flooded). It was lapping at the bridge when I drove the kids over this morning. Goes to show how desperate I am to get them out of my hair! LOL. Yeah, I know. I'm not much of a mother. Hubby and Grandpa are over on the 'other side' so it's not like I've just dumped them and headed for the hills ;)

I have another four covers lined up with TEB so I'll be working on those this week. In between trying to track down a new vanity for the bathroom :D YAY!! OH, and it seems hubby is feeling rather generous at the moment (must have been the week off work ;)) He's ordered me some new flooring from our shop! At the moment we've got old lino (or Linoleum for non Aussies) in the kitchen/dining and filthy, filthy carpet in the lounge.

With two kids endlessly vomiting, spilling red drink and many other things, drawing, traipsing mud in well you can imagine what it looks like. It's to the point where I'm too embarrassed to have someone come in and professionally clean it. And then there's the nice little flea ecosystem that has set itself up in there, thanks to our two cats. Yes carpet, it's time to GO!

So life is good or will be, once the work is done :D

Alright I have a new cover just released as 'Coming soon' over at TEB ...

Sensual Spell by Rachel Carrington - I enjoyed this cover and it came together pretty easily. This is pretty much what I had in mind from the start, although the heart sparkles are looking a bit weak now that I look at it. Still, I think it's effective :D It really is getting hard to find stock models with expression on their face. This woman is what I wanted, cocky, sure of herself, cheeky and content (well, who wouldn't be considering what's in her arms). Most of the stock models look like they've had an overdose of Botox. Ugh! I'd better not bore you with my 'stock' gripes.

Well it's pouring down again so it's not looking good for 'kid free' time over the next few days. Then again, if they get stuck over the 'other side' with dad & grandpa ... well, let's just say that I won't be too heartbroken ;)

Nothing to lose? Hello!!

2008-04-07T13:44:00.001+10:00

Well we're off to Port Stephen's in the morning. *sigh* I really don't want to go. Not that I don't want to catch up with our friends, but I'm just over all the upheaval, packing and driving. We're basically driving back to Sydney! LOL. Oh well.

Guess I'll leave you with the latest releases over at Total-E-Bound:D

Nothing to Lose by Jamie Hill. This was one of those covers that I just couldn't get into. I think the whole 'handyman' thing threw me and I got too wrapped up in the 'renovation' picture that I had in my head. Didn't matter what I did it looked wrong so had to take a step back and simplify it a bit. I also had a different guy in a singlet top. He looked a lot more 'handy-manish' but also a bit boring LOL! So I replaced him with Mr Sack-of-Potatoes and ta-da ... schmexy cover ;)

Hello by Dakota Rebel. Simple and straight forward this one. This is pretty much the image I had in my head from the start. I'm happy with how it turned out. I think I originally had a white background but the red, white & blue gives it a whole 'Do it for your country' thang going for it LOL! Even her fingers remind me of the stripes on the American flag .. ha ha! The model originally had blue tinsel wrapped around her so I had to cut that out and paint in her fingers and add the phone to her hand. Worked out pretty well if I do say so myself :D

Well, time for bed. Will catch up with you all next week. Cheers!

Melting the Minerals

2008-04-07T13:40:00.002+10:00

Oh dear .. what a sad day it is for the Australian Film industry. Actor Health Ledger found dead in his NY apartment of an apparent drug overdose. Silly, silly boy *shakes head in disbelief*. He was 28! What a wasted life.

Well I'm not going to dwell on it. He was a bit of a strange one but that was probably the drugs. What a dreadful time it will be for his family and young daughter. It's hard enough dealing with these sorts of things in private, let alone having it all splashed across the world news.

Oh well. RIP Heath! May you have learnt your lessons in this life. Onwards and upwards and all that.

Okay on a lighter note here's the latest cover to grace the pages of TEB's out soon page.

Melting the Minerals by C.S. Chatterly (Book 3 in the Uniform Behaviour series). I really like the style of these covers and have been really happy with how they've all come together. Again this one was quite simple although I did have to add the guy's head to the woolly jacket LOL! I used a similar technique to create the snowy effect as I did for the fire in Daring the Underworld. I just removed the colour :D So there it is, a simple yet effective cover.

Now I also want to congratulate Total-E-Bound on getting 5th place in the P&E awards. 5th out of 107 publishers and they've only been up and running for approx. 6 months! The team at TEB are just so helpful and professional. It's a fantastic team to be involved with so why don't you head on over and check them out!

The TEB Chat over at Nightowl yesterday was fun and very encouraging. Everyone seems really happy with the standard of covers which is great. It's nice to know we're on the right track LOL!

So Dakota was thinking about taking a week off, however, seems her muse has other ideas http://vampsmut.blogspot.com/ and just why is Amarinda walking around the neighbourhood with her clothes on inside out, prey tell? http://amarindajones.blogspot.com/

Cupid and Karaoke

2008-04-07T13:37:00.000+10:00

Two more covers released over at TEB ...

Karaoke at the Tumbleweed by Carol Lynne

Gee, don't you wish all Barmen looked this good?? LOL

This one was needed quite quickly. I had the idea of what I wanted pretty early so it was just a matter of finding the right models. I'd been eyeing these two off for a little while now ... well, one in particular ;), and I'm surprised how well they came together. She was hanging off another fellow but he was wearing too many clothes ;)

Okay, so what have I done here ... I removed the poncy buttons from his cardie and of course added his tatt's and longer hair. I thought she looked a little odd just hanging there with no bottom half so I searched around and found her a hip *rolls eyes*. Yeah, I know I've practically covered it over but I don't like missing body parts ;)

Also her skin was a bit mottled. Actually she looked dead, so I airbrushed a bit of life back into her. I also managed to scratch up a bar/pub background and fussed around with the fonts to get a Neon feel and Voila! Karaoke at the Tumbleweed :D It is a nice change for Carol who usually writes M/M, so I hope she likes it.

The Cupids Kisses covers a couple of short stories - hence the Title & Author. This will cover Dirty Cupid by Lexie Davis, Attitude Adjustment by Bobbie Russell, To Catch a Cassanova by Erika Scott and Redemptions Incubus by Brynn Paulin. The sexy guy with the bow and arrow was pretty straight forward. I went with some rose petals for that Valentines feel. Not one of my better covers but it get's the job done, I guess.

On the count down now. I haven't done any packing. I've been on this computer AAAALLL day. My daughter is thoroughly disgusted with me as she wants to get onto NickJR and play games. Fair dinkum! The house is full of toys. I have one that I'll admit to ;) - my computer. So why am I forever fighting the kids and my husband off the damn thing? It seems that ever since I've become serious about forging a career in Cover Art, which requires endless hours at the computer, all of a sudden everyone else in the household want to get on it? Before I started my cover art no-one came near the bloody thing! Sheesh! Can you tell I'm stressed LOL!

Well, better keep going. Two more covers to try to get done before tonight and then we're off.

Oops .. almost forgot to add that I was interviewed by the lovely Amarinda Jones so go and check out her blog!

Cheers!

Quick Breakdown of The Price of a Sword

2008-04-07T13:30:00.002+10:00

Thought I would share with you quickly, how the final cover draft for The Price of a Sword came about.

Okay. So first things first. The Price of a Sword is an Historical, so this in itself was going to limit stock possibilities. You would really think that some forward thinking photographer out there would realise the need for attractive models in period dress. Considering that the publishing industry is a big time user of stock sites. But that is a whole other post and I digress ..

It was decided that we'd just go with the Hero on the cover, so after trawling through the stock sites, I managed to pull the following together. The sword isn't in his hand at this stage, but I'm sure you get the idea ;) Oh, and I've also added some perspective to the targe (shield). Now, for some strange reason I thought that this book was the second in a series. So I originally set the cover up like Prince of the Three Mountains where the Hero was chopped off at the waist by the title banner. Claire quickly set me straight and suggested that perhaps we could use the Hero's full torso in this one.

Now that I have the Hero partially together, I moved on to the background. The story is set in a Castle on the moors. So with a bit of cutting, pasting & blending .. ta-da .. and we have a castle on the moors. Sometimes I might match the colour of the objects so they blend better but I don't think I did that here. I quite liked the glow that the castle had to it and the lighting on the model seemed to mirror that 'sunlight' effect.

Next I'll place the images together to get a feel for placement, lighting and suitability. If I'm happy I will continue by adding more detail to the images. The Hero had some Greek blood, hence the dark hair and Greek writing in his tattoo arm band. I've also added the sword by this stage. There was some additional lighting on the model's right shoulder/arm that I didn't want, so I've painted that out. I'll usually then finish off by touching up shadows and highlights.

Then it's on to the Titles. This is probably where I have the hardest time of it. Deciding where to place the text without detracting from the cover. Sizing, fonts and colours are possibly where I fall down the most. I've only just recently started working on the full cover spread in one document. I used to have one file for the cover, one for the spine and one for the back. While it's taken some getting used to the full spread is probably the easiest to manage. Plus there's less files to have to send to Claire ;) Which I'm sure she is happy about :D

So here we have it. The final full cover spread with titles. :D

Dreamy Highlanders

2008-04-07T13:26:00.000+10:00

Latest 'Coming Soon' covers released over at TEB!

Sweet Dreams by Dakota Rebel. I have to admit that I was feeling a little bit of pressure doing this cover. Only because Dakota had put so much trust in me. It is her baby, after all ;) Anyway, the first thing that jumped out at me from the cover request form was the Hero's green eyes. I was having trouble finding the 'right' model so decided to experiment a bit. I'm glad I did. The eyes really do make you feel like the Heroine is being watched over in her dreams. Now for the Heroine, I'd been wanting to use this image for quite some time and it just seemed to fit this cover perfectly. I kept the green colouring right throughout the cover by adding a green silk sheet (originally red). The first cover draft didn't have the textured background but it was a bit stark and boring. So I added some texture and voila! Sweet Dreams :D

The Price of a Sword by Ellie Tremayne. I've actually created a special 'Cover Breakdown' that goes into detail on how this cover was created. Go check out my next post.

Lusty Goddess'

2008-04-07T13:23:00.002+10:00

Well, it finally happened. Wednesday I went to finish the Christmas shopping. I get paid on a Wednesday, you see. Anyway, I was so good. I picked up only what was needed as I knew that I had to do the groceries before I went home. So there I am at the grocery checkout and how unusual, the groceries cost more than what I have in my account. Yes, this is quite normal for me. However to save embarrassment I ususally whip out the Mastercard and pay with that. Well, yes you guessed it. This time there was no money available on the Mastercard, I had no extra cash in my wallet (again, not unusual) so I then had to find $84 worth of groceries to hand back. What a bloody nuisance! I really needed the majority of the things that I had to hand back. I don't know how everyone else in the world is finding the finances these days, but christ! $100 does not go very far *sigh*.

I'm so annoyed with myself for letting the Mastercard get away from me like that. I purposely have a low limit because I know how quickly it can build up and I am thankful for that small mercy. So, it seems I've already spent my next couple of Cover cheques LOL! Nothing like getting some enjoyment out of your hard earned cash, eh?

Anyway, enough of my whining ;) 'cause another two covers have been released over at TEB.

Tribute for the Goddess by Brynn Paulin. This was probably my first real attempt at replacing a model's face. The model with the hair didn't look quite innocent enough, but I'm really happy with how this worked :D I mucked around a bit and was able to re-create a water effect by using textures and motion filters, then added some cloud & lightning brushes for the background. The guy I really liked, except for the lighting, however, I managed to make it look like it belonged there by tinting the background to match the aqua lighting. A couple of hair brushes for him and we were complete! I think this was the second draft. The first had a full body shot of the Goddess. She was holding a flower but I had to paint that out because it was irrelevant to the storyline.

Unholy Lust by Iona Blair. This cover went through a few drafts, trying to get the right feel. I had troubles getting this one for some reason. But that's it. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, the covers don't come together as easily as you'd like. This could possibly be why I've just done the dark background & swirl brushes. I did like the couple though, and was quite intent on using them. Still, all in all it's not too bad ;)

Coming Soon

2008-04-07T13:21:00.001+10:00

Hmm .. Prince of the three Mountains Daring the Underworld LOL! Sounds intriguing ;) Okay! These are the latest two covers that have been released over at Total-E-Bound :D

Daring the Underworld is second in the Uniform Behaviour series by C.S. Chatterly. I had great fun trying to create fire for this one! It's turned out pretty damn good too LOL! Is it just me or does the guy have a George Clooney look about him?

Prince of the Three Mountains by Ellie Tremayne was a bit more time consuming. The original stock photo was cropped off at the biceps and was off-centre. To even him up, I had to paint in his arms/elbows, only to crop them off again for the final cover! LOL. Still, it was a bit of a challenge ;) Don't you just love that background though?

More Covers

2008-04-07T13:20:00.000+10:00

Gawd! It's been a while since I've posted anything here. Been busy with covers, courses and family life :D

Here are a couple of covers that have now been released.

All very different, eh?

Tempting the Law is probably my favourite in this group. Although Conquered is a very close second ;) Broken Pottery is another in a long series so I'm feeling a little restricted when it comes to these. Still, I must say that it was nice to try something different from the musclebound bodies. Believe me I NEVER thought I would say that! LOL. I was also able to try a few different techniques. I got the idea of the tartan background from April Martinez's wonderful tutorials. It's difficult to see since I've added the gun and cuffs but there are folds and material textures in there somewhere. Its funny how something as subtle as using the Irish Murphy tartan (the character is a Murphy) can make all the difference .. well, to me anyway. I'm sure no-one else will even notice LOL!

Every one of these covers has been a personal little journey of discovery. I absolutely love it! It's the best job that I've ever had.

Most Relevant Cover!!

2008-04-07T13:18:00.001+10:00

Wow. I can't believe it!

I've won the October Award for Most Relevant Cover over at The New Covey Awards. It's really nice to be recognised in this field of work, especially considering I'm still a relative newbie.

Congratulations also go to Lexie Davis , the author of Rain Fell Down :D

Thank you to everyone who voted for this cover *hugs*. and thanks to TEB for giving me a go ;) Sheesh! Anyone would think I'd won an Oscar, LOL.

I'm Moving Blogs

2007-10-30T19:20:00.000+11:00

Aaaww gee. I know it's only early in the piece but I've decided to switch blog sites. I'm heading over to Wordpress. I've had no end of trouble trying to make this space look professional. For some reason I can insert one banner and have it fit but if I try to install another one (exactly the same size) then it's too big and falling off the page. I really don't have the brain (or the time for that matter) to work out CSS and codes. I want it to work straight up without having to spend endless hours fiddling.

So. I'm off. Follow if you will ;)

New Header & Cover Breakdown

2007-10-29T21:01:00.001+11:00

So, I've given myself a bit of a face lift. Thought it was time that I started to put a more professional persona out there ;) So in this little lapse between covers, I've been busy creating banners and avatars.

I've also been trying to create a CSS Journal for my DeviantArt page but have given up in disgust. I have a feeling that no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to understand the codes. I might yet have to palm it off to someone who knows a bit more about it. And here I was considering creating my own web page. Yeah. Right!

Here's a little something that might be of interest. It's a breakdown of one of Lust In Time. If it's a bit hard to read, it can be seen here. Just click on it to enlarge.

First Feature

2007-10-28T16:27:00.000+11:00

So I'm kinda excited. I've been featured over on Dionne Galace's web page. Check it out when you have a sec :D

The thing is. Don't you just hate it when you read back something you've written and even the voice in your head sounds bored? Gawd! I mean whilst I consider myself a cover artist, I also like to dabble in a bit of creative writing. The little snippet I provided Dionne certainly doesn't bode well for me though. Perhaps I should just stick to covers LOL!

Mind you I do have to say that it's been awhile since I've been inspired enough to write. But today, I had an idea and am itching to get it down. Who know's once I get it into perspective I might share a few ideas here :D

The Dreaded Dentist

2007-10-23T08:04:00.000+10:00

*sigh* So, we're off to the Dentist today. After a much needed round of check-ups for the family it was deemed that my 5yo daughter will need a filling in her 6yo molar.

I am still in a bit of a bother about this. How does a 5 you who brushes her teeth morning AND night end up with a hole in her VERY new molar?? Well, I guess you can thank her father's genes for that one. Yes, dear hubby has crappy teeth and it seems my darling daughter has inherited this weakness.

As someone who spent their childhood going to the dentist for endless cleaning, flouride treatments (I still can't stomach anything with Orange flavouring) and the eventual mouth full of Amalgum fillings, I really was hoping that my kids wouldn't have to go through all that. The fillings, that is. Not so much the check-ups. Oh well. I guess you just can't defeat the genes.

I'm really not looking forward to the ensuing confrontation though. I don't like the dentist's chances of getting much done. Even if he does manage to get the needle into my daughter's mouth. I can guarantee she'll go into an instant clamp-down and the needle will have been all for nothing. Lord! I really don't want to think about it.

Oh, and just to add insult to injury. I'm booked in for the following week to have two amalgum fillings replaced. I never used to get the needle, but it's been so long that I can't remember what hurts more. Having the needle or not having it?

**Edited to Add - Luckily my daughter's molar wasn't in too bad a condition. The hole was only shallow so all he had to do was give it a clean and pack it with a shallow filling. No needle and it took 10 minutes! Yay for the dentist :D My turn next week ;)

Breaking the Rules

2007-10-20T13:43:00.000+10:00

Breaking the Rules is Summer Jordan's next release in her Wives-R-Us series.

The concept for the cover was pretty straight forward. The character has dark curly hair and blue eyes so all I had to do here was change her eye colour. The houses were a good find and seemed to fit the storyline well. The card is a carry-on from the previous cover and ties the series together. So there it is - a pretty simple, yet effective cover :D

Got a few minutes spare? Go check out Dionne Galace's recent interview with incredibly talented Cover Artists - April Martinez, Anne Cain, Frauke of Croco Designs & Christine Griffin.

Dionne also asked other cover artists to send in a sample of their work which I did. I got a great & might I add VERY quick response. So it seems that I may just be part of Bam's Friday Showcase! I was asked for a quick rundown on the cover that I sent over. I'm ot very good at that sort of thing, BUT I sent off a little blurb so we'll see whether I look like a right git once it hit's the ether LOL.

Got some more covers coming so better get back to them.

Hitting the Hot Spot

2007-10-12T09:09:00.003+10:00

Total-E-Bound has finally emerged onto the Blog scene and what a fantastic emergence it's been! It's a week long partay folks, so head on over and check it out. Pick up some interesting snippets on your favourite authors, join in the competitions, win fun prizes, read the latest exerpts ... ah, the fun never ends.

See you all there :D

Filing Woes

2007-10-05T15:29:00.000+10:00

It's all quiet on the cover front this last week so I've decided to try and get my files in order. (Ha ha .. sounds like I'm about to write my last will and testament LOL!). I have so many stock photo's clogging up my HD as well as burned discs everywhere. I really need to get a system going so that I can find things easily, without the mess.

The poor old puty is getting slow so I can't ignore it any longer. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to tackle it yet. I love order but I never quite seem to manage it. *sigh* Oh well. Better not put it off any longer. Wish me luck!

The New Covey Awards

2007-10-02T11:42:00.000+10:00

Wow! Author Lexie Davis just contacted me to let me know that her book Rain Fell Down has been nominated in the New Covey Awards. It's one of my covers - how cool is that!

So, if there's anyone out there ..... (echo .. echo .. echo ..) Head on over and vote for us - The New Covey Awards ;)

Hmm ... probably should let people know that I have a blog LOL!

Cheers,

It's been awhile, demon wind

2007-09-26T10:17:00.000+10:00

Here are the covers I've been working on this month.

Demon Wind is probably my favourite of this group, and really tested my skills. The original couple were clothed so I had to paint out their swimmers. Even went to the extreme of painting the woman's nipple, only to be told it might be a bit too sexy LOL! I tried to paint in some wet cloth, but I ain't that talented, so went with shadowing instead.

Whipped probably took the most time as there were quite a few redo's and touch-ups but I'm pretty happy with how it came out.

Da Twins

2007-09-25T13:37:00.000+10:00

Okay, it's been a while, eh? :D So here's the 'twins' I was talking about. Turned out okay, although looking at it now I could have probably toned down/darkened the twins a bit. They seem to really stand out. Obviously it's the same guy, just in a slightly different position.

The woman originally had red hair so I had to darken it to black. Gawd I hate hair. It's probably one of the few things when it comes to manipulation that I dislike doing. There's a fine line between having it look 'normal' and having it look like a wig. Still, I think I pulled it off this time ;) Not so sure about the guy's though.

What to do

2007-09-07T16:04:00.000+10:00

I'm in absolute agony today, thanks to my gym instructor getting me to do walking lunges. O.M.F.G! I have not felt this sore in the legs and butt since my horse riding days. I try to get to the gym 3 days a week, considering the amount of time that I spend planted on my ever expanding backside at the computer. I've been going for a few weeks now, but of course life gets in the way. If it's not sick kids, I have to work at the shop or we get cut off from town due to flooding. Anyway, looks like I'm back into the swing of things and I even took a photo of myself to put up next to the computer/fridge/pantry so that I can see what I 'really' look like. Let's just say 'It ain't pretty'. I'm definitely NOT the svelte, sexy thing that parades around in my head dammit! LOL

So, I've currently got 5 covers on the go. I'm stuck on the first, of course. The damn thing has twins in it. So I guess that by having twins we need to see their faces, which means that I need two images of the same guy but both slightly different. Otherwise it might look a bit clone-ish. So after some fiddle farting around with the fabulous Claire over at TEB we finally decided on some stock that might work. Now I just need to give the guy's curly hair and change the heroine's hair from red to black. God I hate hair! All the more reason to chop off their heads.

Anyway, brings to mind something else that I have been thinking of lately. I have never done a course in design/photoshop/cover art, etc, so there is every chance that I am spending hours on something that could be easily done in a few minutes. I've also noticed that most of the cover artists are Graphic Designers, which makes me feel a bit of a ring-in. I wouldn't mind doing a course in Graphic Design but am not quite sure what it entails or if I'd even be able to qualify. Being a mature aged student and all. Something to look into anyway - It's a bit scary, but exciting at the same time.

No doubt I'll post my journey here too :D

Latest Work & Gay Covers

2007-09-01T08:37:00.000+10:00

My latest cover for TEB.
Which brings me to the topic of gay covers.

M/M erotic romance really seems to be taking off and no matter which e-publisher you frequent you will always find a m/m book in the latest releases. So where do cover artists get their stock from? The usual resources, of course. Istock, Dreamstime, etc, etc, etc. Do a search on gay or homosexual men and you will find the usual illustrations and the odd awkward looking couple but very, very rarely will you find an image that will have an author (or reader) gushing. It seems people don't want to see scrawny pre-pubescent looking gay men on their covers. They want to see real men *rolls eyes* with six packs and boobs bigger than mine (and that's saying something) . So where does that leave us cover artists? Pulling together a couple of 'real' men from different sources and trying to play match-maker and all the while hoping no-one takes a dislike to it.

So when a fellow cover artist tells me a popular stock photographer doesn't want his models on gay covers I thought I'd better look into it. No cover artist wants to have to re-do a cover purely to replace one of the images. Here's an example of one of the stock sites license agreements:

(a) Prohibited Uses. You may not do anything with the Content that is not expressly permitted in the preceding section or permitted by an Extended License. For greater certainty, the following are “Prohibited Uses” and you may not:

1. use or display any Content that features a model or person in a manner that (i) would lead a reasonable person to think that such person uses or personally endorses any business, product, service, cause, association or other endeavour; or (ii) that depicts such person in a potentially sensitive subject matter, including, but not limited to mental and physical health issues, social issues, sexual or implied sexual activity or preferences, substance abuse, crime, physical or mental abuse or ailments, or any other subject matter that would be reasonably likely to be offensive or unflattering to any person reflected in the Content;

Kinda limiting, isn't it. Especially when cover artists and erotic romance publishers alike rely on stock from these sites for their covers. So I guess you could say that we take liberties when it comes to the above license, all the while hoping to god no-one gets offended.

I must add that I am amazed that no-one has cottoned on to the fact that gay images with good looking, well built men are really popular. Hell! If I knew how to use a camera and had access to some good looking gay men, I'd submit some myself!

So spread the word folks!! We need more gay cover models!!!

Prime Suspect & Stock

2007-08-27T17:12:00.000+10:00

This is my latest approved cover. Prime Suspect by KS Augustin. Probably up there as one of my favourites.

I've just purchased a stock subscription so am now madly downloading as much stock as I can :lol: Lord only know's if I'll ever use any of it. Still, it can't hurt I guess. Considering I have a limit of 5 downloads a day, I want to make the most of my money. Lucky I like doing photomanips so if I don't use them on a cover, maybe I'll use them in my artworks.

Anyway, I feel like I'm just writing things to fill a blank :lol: So I'll stop now until I have something more interesting to add ;)

Up To Date

2007-08-25T11:17:00.000+10:00

Final upload which brings me up to date - YAY!. I think I can see some improvement in style as I've progressed. Psychic Detective III is probably my favourite at the moment along with Rawley ( no need to ask why ;)).

I think I'm starting to find a style that I'm happy with. I like the clean, fresh, less cluttered approach. But of course, next week that could change LOL. Looking back at my earlier covers (yes, I know that wasn't that far back), I think I was trying a bit too hard. But you get that I guess. At least I can see improvements, even if others can't.

Cover Backlog

2007-08-25T11:00:00.000+10:00

Here are a few more of my covers. Perhaps another post will bring me up to date on artworks that have been given the go-ahead and then we'll be living in the moment ;) LOL.