Seeking Unseen Cover Reveal...Again?

Yesterday, I revealed my cover for Seeking Unseen on my other site*. I couldn't do it here because I had already committed to feature my awesome publisher, Grace Bridges, in a blog tour. But today...

Isn't it gorgeous???

The husband and wife team of Keven Newsome and DeAnna Newsome of Newsome Creative did the cover work. Keven will gladly admit that most of the work was done by De. She is amazing. She came up with the coolest solutions to some of the unique problems with executing such a design.

In other words, I came up with this crazy concept of an old leather journal that has a glowing butterfly sitting on it. Right, you say. That's perfectly normal. Trust me, it's very relevant to the story. But I wasn't sure we'd be able to DO it. But thanks to a team of creative nerds--DeAnna and Keven, of course, experienced input from Grace Bridges, and my own oddball thinking, we did it! We really did it!

And, yes, the book is still due out September 1st. And, yes, I'll have the prologue and first chapters posted soon.

*What other site? you ask. Here, go see for yourself.

And just because, here are two other book covers this awesome team of artists put together:

I Am Ocilla by Diane Graham

And Star of Justice by Robynn Tolbert

See why I asked them to do mine?

Finding Angel was mainly the master work of Grace and me: me doing the drawing and her doing the everything else. But Grace does SO much "everything else" I took this as a win-win--a little break for her and a chance to hog some Newsome talent for myself :).

Anyway, I am so happy with the final cover. My hands are itching to hold a copy, though! Soon....soon...

Grace Bridges, Author of Faith Awakened

Most of you know I'm published by Splashdown Books, which is an indie publishing house owned by a Space Kiwi named Grace Bridges. Did you know she's a writer, too? An amazing one, at that....

How did you get started writing fiction?

When I was nine, my Nana gave me a hardbound notebook. It looked like a real book, so I thought I had better write one in it. I started by carefully numbering all the pages in the bottom corners. Then my Dad started me off with a generic story prompt “Zebra” which I managed to spin into a long-running illustrated science fiction tale alternating between infantile cops-n-robbers in space and ripping off recently-viewed movies.

How do you incorporate themes and purpose into your work, or do you?

Not deliberately. I feel these things need to be organic. Story must come first. You can have a great story and a fun read without a theme, but a themed story can be pretty lame sometimes. If a theme suggests itself then I am happy to exploit it and increase its power, but I won’t add an artificial one just for the sake of it.

How would you summarize your style of writing?

Literary-influenced, deeply personal, descriptive, and characterised by evocative vignettes.

Find Grace:

http://grace.splashdownbooks.com

http://www.facebook.com/gracebridges1

http://pinterest.com/splashdown

Info on Faith Awakened

Ireland as it has never been seen before - in a future where hope is hard to come by. Mariah, living in the dark time after the advent of a one world government, seeks the light in the underground Fellowship of the Awakened. Shortly afterwards, nearly the whole earth is silenced, and she struggles through the shock with a handful of survivors. Yet the danger has not passed away entirely, and they are forced to fight for their lives using an untested technology.

Faith, too, grows up in Ireland, but it has little in common with the homeland Mariah knew. Sometimes she thinks her life is perfect, asking herself, "If this is a dream, when am I going to wake up?" Other times it seems repetitive and monotonous. She experiences much to delight her, but also suffers from inexplicable bouts of amnesia that rob her of the past again and again. Seeking answers, she travels much in the free world, where disappointments and successes vie for the upper hand until she finally finds fulfillment in spite of all her disasters.

One of the trailers from the Faith Awakened campaign of 2007 (filmed in Germany):

Blog Tour Sites:

R. L. Copple:  http://blog.rlcopple.com

Diane M. Graham:  http://dianemgraham.com/blog/

Travis Perry:  http://travissbigidea.blogspot.com/

Paul Baines:  http://www.pabaines.com

Caprice Hokstad:  http://caprice.splashdownbooks.com/

Keven Newsome:  http://www.kevennewsome.com

Robynn Tolbert:  http://ranunculusturtle.blogspot.com/

Frank Creed:  http://blog.frankcreed.com/

Fred Warren:  http://frederation.wordpress.com/

Ryan Grabow:  http://www.egrabow.com/rm.php?e=Prime

Greg Mitchell:  http://www.thecomingevil.blogspot.com/

Versatile Blogger, Am I?

I've actually been wondering what my blogging style would be labeled as. I seem to have found out: It's apparently "versatile."

Special thanks to Fred Warren for tagging me with the "Versatile Blogger Award" (see over there -->) and putting my mind at ease :).

The "award" comes with "rules" and they are thus:


1. In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
(Like Fred, I don't think I can do 15, but I'm game for more than the 3 he chose, so we'll do the average, 9.)

2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.
(Done, as I have already pointed out...)

3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
(Also done, and with "special" even.)

4. In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.
(That will be next.)

5. In the same post, include this set of rules.
(Er, yeah, you're reading them.)

6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs. (That will be last, I suppose.)

So, with no further ado...my Seven Random Facts:

1--I played hand bells at church when I was in middle school.

2--When I was in elementary school, there were exactly two kids who were taller than me: my friend Sharon and a guy named David (who are both still taller than me). I'm now 5' 9 1/2" and I have always resented that I couldn't have at least been an even 5' 10"--or better yet, a full 6'.

3--Height reminded me of this: In Pretty Woman the main character Vivian says, "My leg is 44 inches from hip to toe." Of course that made me curious and I took my own measurement. Guess what? 44 inches.Yep, I share the leg length of a fictional hooker.

4--I hate the band Rush. I mean, with a passion. And I cannot understand how every guy I have ever met adores them when the lead singer sounds like his boys are being squeezed in a vice.

5--I love my lips. (Yes, I stole the Veggie Tales song idea from Fred. But it's because....)

6--When I was around 20, everyone told me I looked like Molly Ringwald. Much of it had to do with my red hair, but the other feature often noted was my lips. (I don't so much look like her these days, btw.) (And bonus fact, inspired by the picture there--I had a major crush on Judd Nelson back then.)

7--I still remember Simon LeBon's birthday every year. NO, I don't celebrate it, but it never fails to pop into my head on Oct. 27th.

OK....more than you ever wanted to know, eh?

And now....my 9 tags:

Robynn Tolbert, because I enjoy giving her annoying things to do.

Caprice Hokstad, because she's always in search of blog topics.

Grace Bridges, because Space Kiwis always have unusual things to say.

Diane Graham, because she is Diane! 'Nuff said.

Becky Minor, because she is a fellow author/artist with a "versatile" blog like mine and a really cool new book out, which will very soon be in print.

Kessie, because she's another author/artist with a penchant for "versatile" blogging and shares my love for dragons.

Heather Titus, because she writes steampunk, and she voted Finding Angel "Book of the Year" for 2011. She's also a new Featured Author on NAF. (Oh, and she loves my book.) She's going to have a baby, too. (And did I mention, she loves my book?)

Christian Miles, because his last post was one of these, too :P.

Keven Newsome, again, because I like to be annoying :).

What I've Been Working On...

The official cover of Finding Angel:

Yep, there it is. The official, final cover image. It's my concept cover, only much improved. Thanks to some ingenuity on both my part and that of my rockin' publisher, Grace Bridges, we have created exactly what we had in mind. The locket is an original drawing by me. The keyhole was the part that gave us fits, but with my drawing skills and Grace's digital skills it all came together. The wood...is wood :P. The font, thanks to Grace's status as text master, I couldn't be happier with!

Three. More. Weeks. I am bustin'.

Art for a Muse

We're closing in on the end of this series. Two more books to go and we've pretty well covered the Splashdown Books current catalog. As a reminder, I started this series because I personally did some artwork for books at Splashdown, including cover elements for The Duke's Handmaid and Nor Iron Bars a Cage by Caprice Hokstad, and interior art for Tales of the Dim Knight by Adam & Andrea Graham. I got to see first-hand the progress of the cover work for Alpha Redemption by P.A. Baines. I find the process fascinating, and wanted to share even those I didn't personally have a hand in, so last week I told the story of Grace Bridges' Faith Awakened cover.

TODAY, I'm turning my focus on the book that led me to Splashdown Books in the first place. The Muse, by Fred Warren. It was Fred's story "Angel Wings" at Digital Dragon Magazine that introduced me to his writing, and I immediately bought The Muse as a result. So, Fred, I owe it all to you, man.

OK--on to the cover art!

I got the details from Grace Bridges, owner and head honcho at Splashdown.

Grace wanted something striking and unique, and opted for a black background to start. Then, as she said, she "messed around" until she got a "suitably spooky glowy text," which shows up quite vividly against the black:

Here are Grace's exact words on the next step, as posted in a blog of her own, back when she was actually going through the process:

"Next I really wanted a picture of Stan, the main character. But who could it be? The answer turned out to be quite close to home, as I ended up photographing none other than my own brother when he came to town for a visit. My housemate at that time happens to own a wonderful fantasy sword, and things just came together after that. Over there you see one pic of many taken during that photo shoot. I was up on the veranda with the camera, and Andrew was down on the driveway so I could get that oblique angle. The black sheet was an aid to later pasting "Stan" onto my mostly black background."

Next is a mock-up with "Stan" in place, in front of a pair of spooky eyes Grace liked initially:

And then with a textured background:

But, ultimately, Grace decided to mess around with the glowy eyes again, enlarging it and making it into a spiral. Here's how it turned out, on the final cover:

All of this, she said, was done in consultation with Fred. And to prove she's on the up and up about that, here's Fred's impression of the process, in his own words:

"In some ways, the cover was the hardest part of the book to finish. It
had to encapsulate the story and capture its mood in an interesting,
eye-catching manner without giving too much away. That's a lot of
weight for two little pieces of paper to carry. Grace and I probably
spent about two weeks on the font selection alone.

Writing the back-cover blurb was actually fun. Grace, Connie Brzowski,
and I spent over an hour in an online chat bouncing ideas back and
forth, one sentence at a time, until we came up with something we were
all happy with. The interesting part was that Grace and I had been
working at it for a while without much success, but when we brought
Connie into the discussion, the ideas began popping like firecrackers.
One more person's input made all the difference."

Remember me going on about the teamwork aspect? I'm not the only one who believes in that!

So, there you have it. I'll admit, I didn't give a lot of thought to the cover when I first bought the book (other than, "dude, that is some hair") because I knew what was important to me was the writing on the inside. But now that I have read the book, and learned about the cover design process, I see how this all ties together. The Muse is a fun book, with vivid characters and a bit of a wild ride in parts. The cover does capture that mood. Do yourself a favor--if you haven't read any of the books I've featured so far, start where I did.

The Art of Faith Awakened

Today, I'm handing the reins to Grace Bridges of Splashdown Books, so she can tell you in her own words the process she went through for creating the cover art for her first novel, Faith Awakened:

A little background on the book: I came up with the basic idea when I was 14, and it went round and round in my head for years until I started writing it at 21. I guess I got about a third of the way through before my career got in the way. It was 2006 before I got back to it, and finished it in its seventh year.

Around the same time I was just getting into the online life and chose Myspace as my first foray. There I met Daphne Sonneveldt, a Dutch artist and photographer living in Spain. She read my blogs about the developing book and completely without any provocation, she designed a picture for the cover. The model is actually Daphne's sister whom she photographed before applying a painted texture via graphic editing and then combining her with a background photo Daphne had taken at sunset in the mountains. It looked like this:

I was ecstatic. It seemed to capture the feel of the story almost perfectly. Almost.
I didn't know a lot about design, but I did know that the colour red is always eye-catching and that the eye should flow from the spine towards the open pages of the book, meaning we should flip the face the other way. I also wanted a piece of the ocean in the image. Here is what Daphne came back with:

After that, all that remained was to ask Daphne to move the face to the right-hand side of the image where it would land on the front cover of the wraparound image. I then cropped it to the exact measurements for the cover template.

Interestingly enough I had attempted a cover image myself with the oil pastels I had on hand. It came out rather messy, but the concept remains very similar to Daphne's - and she never saw my version!

I also used Daphne's brilliant red sky in an image that sums up the prologue for me: a very dramatic scene where Mariah and friends rush into the old warehouse to the devices that could save their lives.

Anyway. I added the text and tweaked it some, which was just as well, because it turned out to be the same font used on Frank Creed's Flashpoint, which I think was released one day before or after mine.

Daphne mostly does photography these days and you can find her at http://srafimdesign.deviantart.com.

I still love this cover very much, the perfect wrapping for the book of my heart, my first literary baby. Reviewer C.L. Dyck said of it, "The compelling jacket design of Faith Awakened is an accurate signpost of the vivid, unusual journey within." That is possibly my favourite thing anyone has ever said about the book, and it's only right that Daphne's wonderful work should be such a large part of it. I am honoured that such a designer wanted to work on my project.

And I can't end this without saying it...."Grace, you rock."

Holly Heisey Covers the Dim Knight

Today closes out the building of the cover for Tales of the Dim Knight by Adam and Andrea Graham.

We were blessed to gain the painting skills of Holly Heisey for the final cover. She is a massively talented up-and-coming artist and writer. She specializes in digital painting, but she's wicked good at pen and ink and pencil drawing, too.

Holly told me she did the entire painting in Photoshop, start to finish. The first version was without helmet or gloves:

And then with the mask, like the one I had in my original drawing:

The problem is, Powerhouse wasn't wearing his helmet in the drawing I did because I was going for comical. If you look, you'll see I drew it so it appears that his helmet has fallen off and he's trying to reach down and grab it mid-flight:

But we LOVE Holly's rocking painting, so it's decided to go with that and just put his helmet and gloves on:

The final touch is adding the text. If you scroll up, you'll see there is text in the earlier drawings, but Grace Bridges (owner of Splashdown Books, if you haven't caught that yet) is a stickler about having the perfect text with her cover designs.

I got to be a part of that process, since Grace sent me images with the text in place asking for critique. The slightest adjustment can sometimes transform the text from "meh" to "just right!"

Again, here's the final cover:

See what teamwork can do? And of course the amazing talent of Holly Heisey. PLEASE visit her at her blog and check out more of her awesome artwork here.

Thank you, Holly! You rock! :D

Character-driven Cyberpunk

I'll admit I've never been a big sci-fi reader. Sci-fi movie watcher, yes, but I tend to get lost in technical descriptions and battle scenes. But I've recently discovered that the problem is my definition of sci-fi. I've been lumping everything together with hard sci-fi. There are a plethora of sub-genres, though, including the one Grace Bridges' Legendary Space Pilgrims falls under: cyberpunk.

For those of you who don't know what cyberpunk is, Wikipedia says that its focus is "high tech and low life"--"advanced science...coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order."

That's Legendary Space Pilgrims for sure. Planet Monday is "high-tech" but uses "low life" ideas such as slavery and government control of emotions. The social order is definitely topsy-turvy, as people are forced to labor day in and day out, and any upswing in emotion sends them off to be mindwiped.

However, one slave--Mario--is visited by a Voice that speaks of hope and escape from the oppressive Planet Monday. He convinces Caitlin, a fellow slave and the woman he loves, to join him. After their escape, they experience the real story--their own personal journeys to emotional freedom.

This is my second trip into the mind of Grace Bridges. I read Faith Awakened a few months ago, which has more of a literary feel. But Grace stays true to her strengths in Legendary Space Pilgrims, offering a well-paced, character-driven story that will get you thinking about your own journey with God.

Visit Splashdown Books for more info and to purchase Grace's books.