Cover Art

I forgot to shout about it, but I contracted another book this week with Total-e-Bound.com that I entitled "Heart & Soul".

This will be my eighth story published with TEB.

There's no release date yet (of course) and it's too soon for edits, but I had another assignment tonight - to fill out and return the cover art request form to TEB.


Ummm, this cover looks familiar (see my side bar). It's the cover to my most recent release, "Wild Fantasies" at Total-e-Bound. It's my fifth story published with TEB.



Now I'm not an artist (I leave art to my daughters), so I don't know all the ins and outs of cover art. For interesting descriptions of how cover art is actually created, visit TEB's head cover artist.

As the author, I get to describe what the hero and heroine look like, give a blurb and tag line of the book, and tell them what I do NOT want to see.

Of course, I have to give good descriptions of the hero and heroine or I could end up with something very different than I picture.

Being vague isn't much help to the artist, so I can't merely say the hero is "tall, dark, and handsome" or even "built". Instead, I need to specify what type of build, how tall, color of the eyes, hair, skin tone. If the hero has a mole or a scar or tattoos or piercings or gold teeth, I need to describe what they look like and where they are.

Speaking of "where" they are, I really hope the cover for "Heart & Soul" will feature the hero and heroine cuddling under the setting sun whilst they're boating on the Ohio River. (Did I mention I was a river rat? You'll see that in one of my former posts). I'm a sucker for moonlight and water, beach, rivers, lakes, or pools - it doesn't matter.

I thought I'd be a big help and find photos of people who reminded me of my heroes and heroines. You know, regular people like Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Reese Witherspoon, Patrick Dempsey, Carrie Underwood... :)\

However, after reading a post by the cover artist, it's not that easy. Cover artists, it seems, can only use certain photos in the public domain or that they purchase the rights to. Seemingly, finding a similar person in the stock photos to the ones I sent, aren't that simple. Not at all.

Since my daughters are artists, the oldest one in particular (she has a degree in graphic design), I've always admired artists. But I didn't know just how tough making a cover would be until I read Lynn's blog. She's talking about gruesome things like decapitating people - I love it! (Well, not in real life).

Pardon me while I segue for a moment. Since I mentioned Monica, let me post one of her pictures (copyright by Monica H.). This one's done in pencil, before her college days. As you can see, she loves anime.



Back to the cover talk, here are some of my favorite covers of my Ashley Ladd books.



The cover for "Civil Affairs" is supposed to be on the Biloxi, Mississippi beach under the moonlight where I have SEVERAL wonderful memories. The artist did a beautiful job. Every time I gaze upon it, I feel like I'm back in Biloxi, falling in love on that beach, all over again.


Of course I've never made love on a dragon, or even ridden one, except in my fantasies. But boy, wouldn't I love to like Becca and Lobo are doing on the "Make-Believe Lover" cover above.



I can't take credit for the beautiful cover of "Alien Encounters". New Concepts Publishing, probably Andrea, came up with the concept for this one. If I had better resolution, you could see that the woman is superimposed over a nebula and stars. It's absolutely gorgeous, sheer genius.

Hopefully I'll have many more cover art request forms in my future so I'll get the knack of making my requests picture clear and easy for the cover artist. My fingers and toes are crossed.