Book Cover Sausage

Hello my fellow, er, fellows.

I am elbow deep into my second attempt to take a wacky idea in my head, superglue it to some paper, put on a shiny bow and then share it with the world.

It's going slightly better this round, mostly because I know that I've already done it once before so the second round can't be that much worse. Right? Right?

Already the tale of two toasters that find love across a junkyard (or something about swords, I forget now) held up to the first test; I read through it all for the first major edit and I didn't hate the story. I even kind of liked it and laughed at some of my own jokes (it's also why I take a daily dose of six pills now).

So now it's off to my super secret advanced reader to see what she (or he or maybe it, right Radioactive Engineered Advanced Device Enjoying Reading?) thinks of it, if it makes any bleeding sense or if I should give up now and use what I've gathered to line chinchilla cages.

Normally my next step would be to fret, put the writing away to never look at it for a few months and forget I ever even entertained the idea that I should try to put down over 90,000 words on a single subject.

But I had a wacky idea and eve though winter decided to tumble down the chimney and pound on our kneecaps for a while I took two of my favorite props in the house for a little photoshoot to start work on a possible cover idea.

This is the picture I began with:

Plain, jane, train, vein. So it needed some obvious help with Mr. Photosop. The first was the addition of some texture for the background, books love texture, it helps with teething.

I also found an excuse to pull out my bottle o' blood and used a paintbrush to go all Dexter on a blank sheet of paper. Perfect overlay of gore and violence and other reminders that it isn't Pat The Sword On The Wall.

A little texture is nice, but how about some more? More I say! Give 'er all she can take! Oh and slap a title on for a visualization. That part's still all up for debate (hours and hours of font choice, colors, sizes, placement, passports, insurance, yada yada yada).

 For a touch of realisim I tried adding some bark back to the staff but I'm not wild about how it turned out. I might leave some, play around, just lots more work for me and my poor groaning software.

And here's the final play so far, that went from quick shot frozen picture of sword overtop staff to this:

Much like my words, the cover needs a lot of nitpicking but I'm rather proud of what I have so far.

Now to finish the map (I HATE MOUNTAINS!) finish some internal book art and try to remind myself every other day that I can do this and maybe someone will even think of reading it.

Ah creativity, that harsh mistress who'll dangle the carrot of promise and then whack you in the head when you go for it. This is why I break into tears anywhere near carrots.