Too much to do

I've been so busy I entirely forgot it was my day to blog. (Heard that before, have you?) All right then, instead of a lot of words, I'm going to show you what's been keeping me so busy that I didn't even realize it was getting dark.

Back story here: In 2000 my first ebook, Fire Dance, was published. At that time, my publisher didn't do print copies, and ebooks were still struggling with gaining an audience. The original cover was done by a fabulous artist named Ron Chironna. Fire Dance is still selling well after six years, and even as recently as March this year was reviewed vbery favorably by one of Amazon's top reviewers. So we decided to bring the book out in print. Unfortunately, for various reasons, I won't be able to use the original cover art.

Back when Ron was working on the original cover, there was a change in deadlines, and he was concerned that he might not be able to finish in time for the book's release. So I discovered Photoshop, and through toil, sweat and tears managed to paint up an old engraving of Smailholm Hall in flames. Ron got his cover done and all my hard work went unneeded. But I was hooked on Photoshop. Since then, I've done all my own ebook covers and several for other authors as well.

Fast forward to 2006. New cover needed. I put together my old cover art, a photo of my daughter, who also served as Ron's model for the heroine, and one of my daughter's friend. The photos had to be re-positioned and turned into "paintings", complete with the right costumes, shading and lettering. The work is still very rough, but you can see where I'm heading. Here's my preliminary layout, and along with it, the elements thatr went into the design:

posted by Delle Jacobs @ 11:24 PM