The New Covers

I am quite happy with the look of the new covers, as a whole. I like the uniformity of design. I might tweak one or two, but as a whole, they work for me. My cover philosophy is informed by the limits of my talents, which is to say, I'm not an illustrator, I'm a landscape painter, more or less in the impressionist school of painting. The closer I get to realism, the more amateur my paintings look. So I simply look to suggest the mood of the story, and little more.

The artwork for A Summer in Amber and Some Day Days remain unchanged. Like all my paperback book designs, they feature art that wraps around cover, though in these cases I simply reposition the cover art.

The cover art is a return to the art I used for my first cover back in 2015, though I've tweaked the colors.

This is a new cover for the Lost Star's Sea. It uses detail from a painting in a series I had painted using the floating islands motif before I had written The Lost Star's Sea.

Again, this is the same artwork as the previous version, though I have cut back on the "cartoon" effect that adds black outlines to brush strokes. The back cover is the same painting flipped.

This is a brand new cover for Sailing to Redoubt. This is a scene that I painted on the imaginary island of Lil Lon, which is a locale in the story, so that unlike the last version, there is a direct connection between the cover and the story -- though I chose to go with this piece because I wanted lots of color. I flipped the picture so as to use the it to wrap around the cover as a single painting.

Nothing changed for this cover, except that I have the art wrapping around, using the same piece, flipped again.

No paper version of this novella. This might be the cover I tweak, since I don't like how the title box covers the old grain silos. I would have to make the art smaller so that the silos were not covered up., That, however, would mean extending it in several directions digitally, as the original art work is not wide or tall enough to shrink on its own. A project for an idle hour.

I'm reusing paintings I did years ago for this and its sequel covers. I did a series of painting more or less inspired by old Cape Cod and the stories of Joseph Lincoln. The prime locale in this story, and its first sequel are also inspired by old Cape Cod -- a seaside resort community. And being rather cozy mysteries, a pastoral landscape painting sort of works. It is better than the old one, which was on the low end of good enough to any port in a storm quality.

Another landscape with a seacoast. Again, just for mood. I considered flipping the art so that the front cover had a little more to offer, but I sort of like the lonely look of it.

This instalment of the series is set on a different planet. One that I was going for a Gothic feel to it. This painting is not really all that spooky, but it does have shadows, and goes more or less with the set.

Just added the new title box to this cover.

And as a bonus, here is the current front cover of the story I am working on. It will no doubt change.

All in all, the project kept me busy for a week, and I'm glad to say, I'm happy with the results.