Merry Christmas!

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!

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.

Duet in Blood

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

Ride 'em Cowboy

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.

The Set Up

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!