New Cover for Just a Whim

I’ve been talking about it for a while, thinking about it, but I finally got that flashbulb inspiration moment today while working on the cover for my new serial. So while we were sitting there adjusting that, I said, I think I know how to fix Whim.

And it turned out that I did.

A few hours later, the lovely artist part of the Kabobbles team came up with this:

just a whim but sci fi now small

Grace and a Historic Painting

So, periodically, when I am working on stories, I go looking for pictures to help inspire them or to help me formulate what a cover for them might be.

A few months back, writing Grace’s story, I went searching for historical pictures, and even though I know that the time period would be wrong if I kept the word suffragette in the text, I couldn’t help kind of falling in love with this piece.

It doesn’t help that it’s out of copyright, either. That meant it was one of few cover mockups I almost could use. Of course, I cropped it for the cover, using just the man in the chair and the woman behind the screen, since her nervousness fit with what was going through Grace’s head at times.

I like the painting as a whole, though, too.

Evert_Jan_Boks_The_Marriage_Proposal_1882

I got it from wikipedia.

Here’s what I did with it, nothing fancy, not at all. Still, it makes a nice cover for the story on my phone.

grace

So, Yet Again, I’m Not an Artist

Remember how I was all proud of what I’d done with the temporary cover for A Perfect Sunset?

It’s still not bad. Really.

So here it is again, as a refresher:

sunset try small

Now…

Take a look at what the real artist did with it:

perfect_sunset_cover

Yeah, so that’s the reason why she makes the covers and I don’t.

Temporary Cover Art for Two Serials

Okay, so I only had a bit of the concept for this first one and the cover artist used her expertise to put it together really quickly, but here’s the temporary cover for A Stolen Name.

stolen_name_cover

Then, because my cover artist had to go to bed, I thought I’d not have one for A Perfect Sunset, but with the help of a cool tutorial that I could only partially follow, I created this:

sunset try small

(Yes, I am absurdly proud of myself even though it’s not that good.)

Want to Be of Artistic Assistance?

I could use some help in creating a temporary cover art for the pages to introduce my latest serials.

I actually made a couple that I really like, but alas, I don’t have the rights to use those images. So I have to create something that will work in the meantime to make them look nice until the cover artist is able to do a full original piece for them.

Anyway, the two stories in question are A Perfect Sunset and The Stolen Name aka Identity Theft. The first is sort of fantasy, and the second is a historical mystery of sorts set about the end of WWI.

So I have a few stock photos I’m thinking of using as a basis, but I need to narrow them down, and so if you want to give me your input, I’d appreciate it.

I have a lot of possibilities for A Perfect Sunset, but most of them feature the queen (I could go cloaked figures for the Nebkasha) but I could use any of these:


Bride

Medieval Dress

Wings

Cage

Butterflies

I had a hard time finding good ones for the historical. If anyone knows of better ones, let me know.


Vintage Pregnancy

Vintage Birds

Antique Car Reference Pictures

I figured I’d better do this to go along with Inheritance.

This is Shadow, aka 1908 Maxwell HC Touring Car:

Shadow is also here.

shadow

This is Scarlet, aka 1911 Maxwell Runabout:

scarlet 2

This is Phantom (in a restored version and different color, paint would look more like Shadow’s):

also known as a 1912 Maxwell Messenger

phantom

This is a rumble seat:

rumble seat 2

Historical Divider Art

Being able to be a volunteer at the local museum has been a rather beneficial thing for me (I’m not so sure I was as helpful to them, even as much as I tried to do my best to transcribe the letters as quickly and accurately as I could.) I have been able to experience many things, learn about different historical events and skills and ways of life.

At the orientation, I wandered around and took pictures of some of the buildings, including this one:

school

That picture enabled the artist to create the divider art for the two historical novels I’ve written featuring Tillie, a teacher. She had to have her school.

divider art school house cs5 rev 1

Upon reconsidering, we knew that the school needed a chimney, but a chimney expert told us the chimney in our reference picture was not right for the time period that I’d set the story in, so this one was added, and this is the end result:

divider art school house cs5 rev 2

It will be a lot smaller in the book, since it will be used to divide scenes/chapters, but it is a beautiful piece of work, isn’t it?

An Art Related Dilema

So I have a bit of a dilemma, a conundrum, a debate with myself.

A long time ago, I thought that I had picked out a perfect divider art for the entire Nickel and Dime series.

It was such a simple concept, and the graphics side of Kabobbles took the concept and made a picture. I thought it was what I wanted, but as soon as I tried to use it in the file, I changed my mind.

I don’t know that a nickel and a dime really fits the story. It’s got a connection: Effie’s store is named Nickel and Dime. Her family’s name was Nickell. There’s a few lines about nickels and dimes. There is even a character named Tennant.

It’s just… I don’t think it’s right.

The graphic artist said she would change it from this:

divider for nickel and dime

to this:

divider for nickel and dime rev 1

and that should help.

I don’t know. I still don’t know that I want it as the divider. Bear in mind that they would be a lot smaller in the book. I’m just including the big versions for comparison and best quality as I try and get some thoughts from others.

Is the writer being irrational?