What's old is now new again ...

As I mentioned in a previous post, on October 1st the 413 Remembrance Lane anthology will be no more.

http://eroticpen.blogspot.com/2009/08/30-days-left.html

Jude Mason, Jenna Byrnes, D Musgrave and I have all been hard at work reworking our stories to stand alone yet still retain that thread of mystery, that hint of balance in the universe.

I have had the pleasure of so far working on the covers for three of our stories. D Musgrave will hopefully have his story done and ready to go soon, and I can complete the set.

With THE LIFE NOT LIVED (my story) I played around with a lot of concepts before I settled on this one. I knew I wanted it to be very obvious that it is two women. I also wanted it to be a bit softer than my other covers, just because the story definitly is. It's a story of realization that what you thought you wanted really wasn't what you heart demanded of you. And someone you cast away was the person you were meant to be with.

You can see it better on a larger copy, but I added a little bit of swirling mist and some twinkles to the cover, overlaying then on the woman in upper corner, fading her out some.

The font for this about beat me. I couldn't come up with anything that just looked right. Thankfully, the wonderful Alessia Brio was able to suggest one that had a twinkle above the i's (so it brought that element together) and another that was looked very pretty for the words The and Not.

This cover really did turn out absolutely beautiful.

For Jude Mason's OF DEATH AND DESIRE, again it was important to show that it was two men. An aspect she wanted to play a part was the diary and an old quill pen. Since her's is a historical, it mattered to have some aspect of that on the cover.

The fonts, she suggested, so I didn't have to bang my head against my desk while going through 1000+ options, but the exact placement and coloring and layout was still a challenge.

The title needed to be bold. It needed to be dark. It needed to encapsulate loss and not overwhelm the cover. So of course I went with a brown so dark it is almost black. : )

Jude's name I went with a lighter color, picking it up from the background and shadowing it.

Now Jenna's cover, I completely take responcibility for. LOL

When the AIF came across for Jenna Byrnes' LET THE SUNSHINE IN, it suggested a couple of ideas for retro images and said basically that she wanted to request me and that she trusted me.

Whoops! LOL

Knowing the story as well as I do, I wanted to play with it. There are two heros and a heroine, so I will refer to them as "the couple" and "the other hero". The couple suffered a terrible loss, and were trying to recover. The other hero suffered a terroble curse (he's a werewolf) and was trying to live with it. When they meet, it's a second chance for them all.

The story is set in the 1970's, so a retro look was kind of requested. : ) Plus, the underlying concept to the story is that each party brings to the other happiness.

The yellow sunburst image is one Jenna suggested. I wanted to play with the title some, so I blended a couple into the sunburst image. Then I laid a wolf howling at the moon over them, turning it into a wolf howling at the sun.

I tried to get a rainbow font to work, but the coloring just wouldn't allow for it. So I went with a rising sun overlay instead, used Carrington font for the title to give it a 70's feel and twisted it to make it work better on the cover.

I really wish I could have gotten another guy into the couple image, to bring out the M/M/F flavor of the story, but it just wouldn't work.