Christmas already???

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

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

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

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

Yippee!! I'm in Vampire heaven.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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




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

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

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

Phantoms' Pleasure & Halloween Angel

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phantoms' Pleasure by Brynn Paulin.

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

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

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

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

Hopefully it will only get easier.

Wanted!! Heart & Soul

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.