And so it goes...

And so it goes... Another day, another new cover. I now have four to choose from, but I think this one is the best. It has actual figures and coaches in the scene. It represents an actual scene from the story without too much artistic licence. And it still has the sense of sweeping space that I wanted to impart. 

Another cover for Beneath the Lanterns

This is likely the final version of the cover, save that I will probably lighten up the sky a bit.

A New Cover for Beneath the Lanterns

Here is my latest attempt at a cover for Beneath the Lanterns, “Caravan to Traefara.” I think this one is better than the last, if only because it represents, more or less, an actual scene in the book – unlike the last one. I still have time to try something else, so this may not be the final version. Stay tuned.

As I no doubt said before, I’m not an illustrator, and my talents in both art and writing are rather narrow. In art, with this type of thick acrylic paint, I’m pretty much an impressionist landscape painter, and that is pretty much what this painting is – an impressionist landscape enhanced in Gimp with a filter to add the black outlines. 

This is something like my fifth or six attempt to produce a suitable cover. I run into a number problems making my covers. The first being that I can’t really picture a scene in my head, at least as a complete scene. Hopefully you can from my words. The second is that I have a lot of trouble with “camera angles,” which is to say, how to frame a scene into something that I might be able to paint. The third is, as I said, I don’t paint realistically, though I’m better at that type of painting with watercolors, but even then… And well, it would be too inconsistent with my other covers. (And these days, I probably lack the patience for detailed work anyway.)

They say that covers are a very important part of selling a book. Maybe.

With my covers, my first priority is “branding.” All my covers have the same design – just like those old Penguin paperbacks with the orange color and one standard design.

My second priority is legibility as a thumbnail. I’m not selling books on bookstore shelves, so it is important to have the book title and author legible in a small format. I see many books were the title and author are lost in the art. 

My third priority is that they should look, if not professional, at least neat and original, and not too amateurish. I am not a graphic artist, and know just enough of Gimp to produce my covers. You can buy covers or hire designers, but not on my limited budget ($0), so I have to work within my skill level and resources. The result is a book cover stands out from the great mass of books in their categories. Whether people try them because of the covers or in spite of them is an open question.

Beneath the Lanterns (Beta version)

The beta readers' version of Beneath the Lanterns is now available to anyone who wishes to read the not quite final version of the book with a down and dirty epub conversion. If you are interested in reading it and giving me feedback (during the month of August 2018) or if you just want to read it before its final release, just email me for a free copy. The finished book will be published, as always, for free on Smashwords, iBook and Kobo. It will be Amazon's decision to match those prices or not, but free is my desired price point. I haven't set a final release date, but it should be somewhere between the middle of September (2018) and the middle of October. In any event, if you just can't wait for the final version, and don't mind a few mistakes and perhaps some awkward formatting in the ebook edition, drop me a line at cmlitka@gmail.com

A Map for Beneath the Lanterns

The map for Beneath the Lanterns. It can be downloaded and printed out. I did not include it in the ebooks because I find it awkward to jump back and forth in ebooks. 

The Free Audiobook version of Beneath the Lanterns can be found here:

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/C_Litka_Beneath_the_Lanterns?id=AQAAAED8026TgM

Beneath the Lanterns Cover Ver 2

This is my second attempt at the cover art for Beneath the Lanterns. On the plus side, it is an attempt to illustrate an actual scene from the novel. Once again we are in the city of  Lanterna, and ahead of us we see its famous Lantern Tower. I think that I still prefer the first version, with some tweaks. While the lanterns in the title refer to the celestial bodies in the sky, and the Yellow Lantern would be the sun, so that I could use a day scene as well as a night scene, I think that the lanterns in the title would suggest a night scene. However -- I think I will at least attempt one more painting, going back to my landscape roots with a wide bright day scene on the steppes. Stay tuned.

The complete unedited version. I would be using the left side for the back cover of the paperback edition.

Beneath the Lanterns Cover

This is just a rough mock up of the cover from the one painting I have done that is of a city in the story. Everything is just eye-balled, I didn't measure anything and the painting is just a sketch, more or less. (It will get slightly more detailed, if I use this one.) As with all my covers, they are more for the mood than illustrating the story. This is a scene from Lanterna, but our heroes were there in the dark days, and this is a painting from the light days... I still have plenty of time to paint something else, but I'm not holding my breath. This is like the sixth attempt at a cover painting.

Here is the full painting without any effects added in Gimp: