Another Year...

Another year. They seem to be passing with speed that’s on a logarithmic scale. It feels like tomorrow I’ll be wishing everyone a happy 2015, but common sense tells me that time has not sped up, just my perception of it. It’s scary.

Sorry my blogging has been so erratic. My whole life has been erratic to tell the truth. I’d like to think that this year, things will settle down, but it’s not looking promising so far.

On the good side, I did get that one book published in 2014 and the website I started in the hope of selling book covers has grown and is getting a satisfying number of hits each day. I’ve been privileged to create covers for some really great books. I’ve also done some maps and of course more troll illustrations for the wonderful Smelly Troll books by Rosen Trevithick.

Photo manipulation

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will know that I spent some of the money I’ve earned through book covers to buy myself an Intuos Pro, a drawing tablet from Wacom. I already had a Bamboo tablet, but it was tiny and I found it very restrictive. This is huge and I absolutely love it. If I’d had lots of money, I would have bought a Cintiq which allows you to draw straight onto your picture on the screen. But I didn’t have lots of money, so the Intuos had to do – and it’s proving pretty good. I love being able to do the whole illustration from sketch to finished product straight onto the computer. No messing around with pencil and eraser, no trying to scan the drawing to a satisfactory quality. Just straight onto the screen, multiple layers and then all sorts of lovely effects you can get through Photoshop.

Original art plus photo

One thing that has become clear to me over the year and with using the tablet is that my penchant really is for children’s book covers and fantasy covers. Photo manipulation is fun, but I just love being able to create the whole cover out of my head or turning photos into my own artwork. I don’t suppose that surprises me. I’ve always loved creating fantasy/illustrations, but I wonder if there’s a market out there for original artwork covers? Something for me to find out this year: how many authors are actually willing to pay for full rights to an original cover?

On the writing side, I have a work in progress – a novel based on “Orlando’s Gift”, the short story I had out on Amazon for a while. It’s very different from the short story because I’ve devised a whole other tale to intertwine with it and that’s rather taken over, but from the reaction I’ve had on Critique Circle to the chapters I’ve written so far, it’s going down all right. I just need to knuckle down and keep writing. I already have the cover done, just to keep me motivated! I'd love to show it to you, but that would spoil the effect later, wouldn't it? I still don’t have a title. I’m waiting for it to hit me as I write.

Original art 

To all of you who read this blog, a very belated Happy New Year…unless you celebrate Chinese New Year, in which case, I’m a few weeks early! Here’s to a year of getting done what you want to do, surrounded by supportive friends and family. 

When work is not work.

Have you ever read a book and thought, I’d love to design the cover for this (or write the screenplay, or whatever your creative bent might be)? I have. It was when I read “Tollesbury Time Forever” by British author, Stuart Ayris. It’s an unusual book. I don’t normally go for ‘literary’ books, but it caught my interest, so I downloaded it and read it while waiting for my husband to have tests in hospital last year. It says a lot for the book that I didn’t mind the six-hour wait at all and even felt a little miffed that P came out before I’d finished. My review of the book is here (and it took me a long time to find because it has a lot of reviews).

A couple of weeks ago, Stuart asked on a forum we both belong to, if anyone knew of a book cover designer who could re-do his book covers. He asked it during the day in England which, of course, meant that I was fast asleep. He’d been given suggestions by the time I saw it, so I watched a dream sail out of the window. Then I grabbed it by the tail and hauled it back in. Cheekily, I sent him an email. I’d no chance if I didn’t try. Wonderfully, he replied with a ‘yes please’. So I have spent the last ten days designing three covers for Tollesbury and the sequels (The FRUGALITY Trilogy).

Here’s the results –

Purchased at Depositphotos_23308274_1

Someone said how clever I was to use vectors. Truth is, I didn’t. I used this stock photo as a basis, resized it to fit the book and went from there, laying layers over the top. I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed doing anything quite so much (and those who know me know how much I enjoy doing my art work). The hours I worked on them just melted away. I only hope the covers help Stuart to sell lots of books, because believe me, they’re good!

Soon (hopefully) I’ll be launching a new website solely devoted to book cover design. My big dream at the moment (apart from a trip to Scotland/Ireland) is to be able to earn enough to stay home and work here – with writing, illustrating and book design. So I’m working on some pre-made covers to get people in and hoping that those who have used my services already will like them enough to spread the word. I’ll let you know when it’s launched! 

Tollesbury Time Forever

E-book Cover Design

Original cover idea -rejected

Breaking news: I have a new book coming out on Kindle. That’s the cover for it there, underneath my other books. I finished writing it last year and have toyed with the idea of trying to get it published the traditional way, but if truth be told, I’ve lost all confidence in traditional publishers. Penguin’s recent move to e-publish unaccepted authors at an exorbitant cost confirmed to me that traditional publishing is on its way out and being able to do it yourself is the best option. How long that will last before the Big Six take over the e-shelves, I don’t know. But for now, I’ll publish my own.

Anyway, I spent a lovely two days designing the cover. I’d come up with something a few weeks ago, but when I put it up on my favourite Goodreads group for opinions, it was met with a lukewarm response. So I started again. My first idea was to go with a simple dragon’s eye. But I decided that it really didn’t say much about the story and had probably been done before.

So I went back to the original and started playing about. The girl, it seemed, was seen as ‘sneering’. I didn’t see her that way, but if that was the response, she had to go. But I liked the castle (or prison as it is in the story) so I kept that. Then I had an old leatherbound account book that my mother had given me a long time ago.  The main character’s father is an academic who has spent his life filling books with sketches and research, so it seemed relevant. I had sketches of a hawk and a chameleon (which I warped into a dragon-like creature) for the pages of the book. Add in a locket given to me by a teacher long ago and a dragon in the sky, colour it in vibrant colours and voila! I’m pretty pleased with the result and glad I asked the group's opinion before I published.

A discarded idea.

Another discarded idea

It’s quite an art, getting an ebook cover right. Not only do you have to have a design and colours that draw the eye, the title and author have to be legible in quite tiny versions of the jpeg.  It’s definitely not a matter of slapping a picture and title onto a page. It’s something I absolutely love doing, though. It distracts me from writing, yes, but once I have that cover done, I’m so keen to get the book out that my enthusiasm for writing is revived. I think I could quite happily become a full-time author and cover designer.

If wishes were fishes…

New Cover for Treespeaker

A few days ago, I put Treespeaker on Victorine Lieske's blog Why is My Book Not Selling to find out why it wasn't selling (well, obviously). The general consensus was that it might do to have a new cover and a tighter blurb. So I've just spent a couple of days messing about on Photoshop (such a hardship - you know how I hate messing about on Photoshop) and this is what I've come up with -

I was rather fond of the old cover, but those who hadn't read the book seemed perturbed by the 'blue thing' and the busy background, so we'll give this one a try and see if it makes a difference. I like this one too, really. Well, I must, mustn't I? Otherwise I wouldn't be using it. Actually, I like it a lot, but it's always hard to let your first-born go! However, there's no point in asking for advice (and Victorine is very generous with her help) if you're not going to take it. So...

I still have to work on the blurb, but I'll get to work on that tomorrow. Meanwhile Smashwords is now regrinding the whole book. I hope it makes it through for a second time!