Wednesday, April 15, 2015

COVER REVEALED!

Final Cover Revealed!
*Drrrrummmmm Rolllllllll!!!!*

We are pleased to share the finished cover for The Blackberry & Other Tales That Creep, which will be available for Kindle and in Paperback through Amazon in just a few weeks.

Shortly there after, the four stories will also be available on Audible as an audio-book.

 The final cover is a cooperative effort. Illustrator Rick Geary, whose line art  was the first step. The book will contain Rick's illustrations for two of the stories in the collection" "The Blackberry" & "Gorak the Gobbler"

Rick's original rough sketch







(The "Gorak" sketches are terrific, and if you want a sneak peek at one of them in rough, be sure and check out this week's installment of the story here on my site.")

Walt's color work in-process

The next step in developing the cover involved Walt Parrish, who did the color work on Rick's final inked artwork.  This is not the first time Walt has worked with Rick's illustrations. An avid and knowledgeable comic art/illustration collector, Walt used to do the color art on the work we commissioned from Rick back when Walt & I both worked for Tacoma Little Theatre.

I love Walt's touch with color.

Once Walt and I were happy with the colorization, he sent me a final file of the colorized art which I worked into the layout for the Kindle and Paperback covers.  These covers, as well as the art for the audio-book have to meet specific resolution and aspect ratio (height vs width) requirements, all of which are different.  I have been doing my own cover layouts (and those of others) since I began self publishing in 2013.  Knowing your way around Photoshop can come in really handy!

I can confidently say that this cover was better because of the contributions of all three of us.  I have no forsaken the virtual photo art of Micki McIntyre, who has been so generous and supportive since the very beginning.  Micki's work is already scheduled for one of this year's releases.  I love the vibrancy of her photographic eye, and shooting pictures in the virtual world means that there are a lot of shoot-end details that she can manage that present me with a lot of options.

Still in the "that might be a fun idea" stage is a conversation between myself and fellow author (and photographer) MJ McGalliard regarding some ideas for this summer's release.

So there you have it.  Again, be sure and check back on Friday for this week's installment of "Gorak the Gobbler" - there are not too many left.  SOON IT WILL BE A BOOK!

Check out my already published works by clicking on the cover images in the left sidebar, or by clicking on the link to my Amazon Author page in the right sidebar.

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