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