Time for something new … After a long absence, I am back again, and I have finished a long-delayed project to update and standardize my covers. Some of the covers have been with me for a very long time, and some of them, not so much. That said, I’m planning to do a series of posts showing the old and new covers of each book, accompanied with an overview of the book in question! For the first one, I’m going to start with the book that was most recently re-skinned.
Trials was the very first book I wrote way back in college. It also saw some of the most primitive cover art, with no real cover at all, just text and a colored texture. When I had Laura Pierson do the first character cover, it was a wonderful improvement. Her bold colors and compelling characterization drew the eyes, and the image seems to glow as if lit by black-light. Given the overall state of my other covers at the time, this one was the “belle-of-the-ball,” so to speak.
However, as time has progressed, and I’ve uplifted my other covers, I needed a change to more realistic style. The artist Ilya Royz (https://furaffinity.net/user/royz) has some wonderful interpretations of anthro characters and was kind enough to provide the updated cover you see on the right. I still love and treasure the original art, and placing such a treasure on the cover of a book you wrote is a thrill I always remember. The new art, I hope, provides a beautiful new window into the characters and their world.
Personal Note: If you are reading the dates, you’ll see a huge gap between my last post and this one. During COVID, which is still going on at this point, I shifted my attention to my “day job.” I was grateful to have that, and I realize many have suffered with losing theirs. There was a lot for me that was new during that gap, and not all of the discoveries were pleasant. Sadly, I said goodbye to some good people – many have. Everyone’s lives were disrupted, and disruptions were the kindest it got. Still, we are here and life has found a sort of “new normal.” Things are not back to true normal, and I don’t know how long it will be before they do. In the middle of everything, people continue to read the books and offer kind comments. In the middle of this, I am especially grateful. That’s the primary driver behind me wanting to update the look and feel of the books, standardize them. My hope is that the outsides now reflect the care and attention that I’ve put into the inside of these works.
As always, your reality may be different from mine! After all, this is just … one author’s perspective!
JTL