New Cover: Freeman's Choice

After a slow start, I finally worked out what to put against the background. This is the final version of the cover for Freeman's Choice, which is due for release in August.

When Lorellan Cartwright finds buying back the woman he loves an impossible task, he promptly steals her away, but escaping from the criminally minded third duke of Aristoc and reaching a place of safety are two very different things. And stealing from the duke embroils Lorellan and Megan in the politics of crime lords, long forgotten races of fantasy, aliens and interstellar law enforcement. Can they escape the tangled webs woven by others and find refuge? Or will they join the ranks of those who tried before and failed?

Covers, Covers, Everywhere...

...or what I've been doing for the last week. Still a bit snowed under, but things are starting to get caught up and the schedule is coming back into line. We might get some sketching done, yet. In the meantime, I've done a few more covers for short stories, and I will have covers coming up for collections and longer works soon. Covers done in the last week are as follows:

New Cover for White Pinnacle

Here is the cover I designed on Saturday last week, for a fantasy short story by C.M. Simpson.

Cover Creation: Hammer and the Trolls

Hammer and the Trolls was a little difficult to dream up a cover for. In the end, I went with a variation on the opening scene, which involved Hammer, the castle and the drop ship. Because the princess is pretty central to the plot, I also needed a princess, but she couldn't be just any princess. She had to be tough and a princess, so I headed on over the Dreamstime.com and began searching.

I ended up selecting four photographs:

Tomasz Tulik supplied my tough-girl princess:

© Photographer: Zoomteam | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Aleksminyaylo1 supplied the perfect Hammer:

© Photographer: Aleksminyaylo1 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Junichi Shimazaki supplied Hammer's dropship:

© Photographer: Tsuneomp | Agency: Dreamstime.com

and

Igor Stramyk had the ideal castle:

© Photographer: Stramyk | Agency: Dreamstime.com

After that I took the following steps:

1.  Snipped the castle down to book cover size - which was a shame, because I wanted to show more of it;
2. Isolated Hammer;
3. Isolated the princess;
4. Reduced Hammer and the princess in size and arranged them on the cover.
5. Added the dropship.

The cover went through three design changes:

Hammer cover with ship in flight

Hammer cover with ship landed

Hammer cover without the ship

I decided I liked the ship on the ground, but that it needed a tiny little tweak:

Final cover for Hammer and the Trolls

Cover Completed for Hammer and the Trolls

Today, I completed the cover for C.M. Simpson's science fiction fantasy short story, Hammer and the Trolls.

In a world where trolls can invade a castle from the inside, an interstellar prince finds he’s not the only one who can fire a sun-cannon, and the princess discovers she isn’t the only one who needs rescuing.

Covers Created in May 2015

Just the one.

When Liralee buys an orb from the Shawl Lady’s stall, she opens a path to another world, for the orb is not just a pretty glass ball that impresses her friends; it’s a symbol of power that produces magic for enchantments. And it’s wanted by two warring kingdoms and a sorcerer with plans of conquest. When strangers try to take the orb, and her friends gather to aid her, Liralee begins an adventure that could end in disaster or victory. The choice is hers.