It turns out I continue to lack the energy and will for daily blogging (to the surprise of no one), so we’re going to try instead a digest of each week’s covers that have been approved before the vendor takes off for the weekend. My new Gallery page is updated with new covers as soon as I finish them, and they’re linked to the seller after they’re listed for sale. You can also bookmark my “Gallery of Art” there to check what’s available whenever the mood/need strikes you.

This will be a long entry, since it includes covers I had to sit on over the break for the American Thanksgiving holiday. Click the images to go to the vendor if interested.

Up first is my ginger friend (I call him Gordon), who is ready to either embark on a quest for vengeance or whack that crow for defiling graves.

Next, a cover that gives me Blade Runner vibes a little bit. That orb might be magic or malignant tech or an alien artifact, but it’s sure to cause nothing but trouble.

This cover was inspired by the woman’s “Reader, there was only one bed” expression. They’re begging for some snow-induced forced proximity, I think.

I’ve loved sky pirates since Final Fantasy XII and heroic criminals since… forever. Seems like they’re always related to the real bad guys and rebelled by choosing crime over evil.

This Mad Hatter cover is bananapants even with the omission of the doll-headed scorpion I wanted to include. (Here’s the original of that real-life Cheshire Cat‘s face to prove I didn’t alter anything but the eye color.) Thoroughly unsellable due to its specific weirdness, but it would be great for a dark Wonderland-themed anthology.

After spending a day on something thoroughly unsellable, it’s wise to turn to more marketable projects, which often involve smooching (or close to it).

And the last usable contemporary couple in my romance file at the time. These covers need extra room around the edges for “bleed” (the allowance for imprecision when covers are cut for paper books), so photos of people chopped off on the top and either side are often unusable because their important parts aren’t in the safe zone. Dude here was missing just the very top of his head, so he’ll have a face even if he gets cropped later.

I had some fantasy romance stock saved for myself, but since I’m no longer writing things I don’t get paid for while I’m doing the work, no sense letting it go to waste! I like this delicate-looking pink queen with a will of iron better against an outer space background, anyway.

Rogues, thieves, and assassins tend to fall under the same heading as sky pirates and thus have my affection. I just don’t know if the wolves are guarding her or the fortress.

The last two covers were rejected by the vendor for reasons I have no intention of changing. Click the images to visit their gallery pages for information about buying directly from me. Both covers have been sold.

You would not believe how many photos of couples are eliminated upon closer inspection because they have not-so-subtle “honey, erectile dysfunction happens to everyone” energy. During a photo shoot for stock, nobody knows for what purpose a future buyer will want those images, so they’re just as likely to project “pharmaceutical intervention required” or “we need couples counseling” as the warmth and intimacy I prefer to see on a romance cover. This one picture from a series of this couple made the cut.

 

I had a different photo of this model (in color, with purply-red hair) set aside but thought this black-and-white would be a fun painting project instead. Uncolored tattoos always give me coloring-book urges.

 

That’s it for this week (and a half). I’m maintaining/exceeding my personal cover-a-day challenge. We’ll see if I can manufacture motivation to continue through the end of the year.

Since I’m no longer writing (at least visibly), it’s silly to have a site dedicated to my books, so for the remainder of the year, I’ll be gradually purging most writing-related content and adding book cover-related content, in the absence (so far) of a separate site dedicated to that. (Premades only. Custom orders have sucked every last drop of customer service out of me.) The venture is off to a rough start with one vendor (I picked Server Migration Day to jump in, nothing has worked after the first 24 hours, and now they’re taking off until after Thanksgiving…), so there’s no rush to get up and running here, but I’d like to plod in that general direction before any traction I may eventually get takes effect.

If you’re subscribed to blog updates, you can fish the email that notified you of this update from the trash and unsubscribe so you’re not bothered by cover posts (which will probably be daily for at least the rest of the year thanks to a cover-a-day challenge) that aren’t the kind of content you signed up for. Or you can unsubscribe when the cover posts bother you! Whatever works for you. I don’t want to make assumptions and purge the whole subscriber list myself on the off chance someone is dying for a premade book cover fix.

For that one person, here are the highlights of what I’ve made over the past week or so:

Keen-eyed observers will notice I gravitate toward bright and happy themes. *snerk*

I’m not thrilled with most of the typography, but I’m posting these to a DIY site with limited typefaces, effects, and colors and zero embellishment, so the text will never be up to my custom-cover standards. All I can do is suggest the least-bad option available. The artwork is the only thing I can control.

So that’s the online biz for the foreseeable future. Thanks for following along up to this point. Sorry things didn’t work out better on the previous track.