Saturday, December 24, 2011

New Fling Cover

I woke up and a deep need to change the cover was upon me.  I blame Joe Konrath.  It was only days earlier that he stated he had changed some covers 40 times.  What a slacker I am!  I can't even remember what the original cover was to Fling.  Then I got that cute vector art girl.  What could be next?  A nude guy.  But it had to be a nude doctor guy because Jay is a doctor.  Actually so is Jem's mother but I don't want to see Penny without her clothes.  I found a workable image quite easily (and too expensively so I definitely will not recommend the site to you, but I bought 5 images last year and only used 2 so the money is gone and should be used) and put it together quickly because really how much is there to do with a nude torso.  I did tweak it in Lightroom.

I know Lightroom is Photoshop real light.  Anything PS can do, Lightroom can do.  I don't know that there's anything Lightroom does that PS can't but the reverse is very true.  LR only does the image itself, no layers no text no filters.  The strength for me with LR is my lack of expertise in PS.  Sure all these functions are there but where, how and can I understand them (no).  LR just streamlines the processing of an image so beautifully. 

I warmed up the skin tone because the original had a slight blue cast to it.  The story takes place in the heat of the summer so I went with that.



Would Jay be happy on the cover?  No!  Would Jem mind?  Not at all.  Especially when there was a scene where he strips to his shorts, jumps in a pond and swims out to a dock to rescue a woman having overdosed on grass cookies  (no, real grass, not "grass") while Jem and her psychiatrist mother discuss how Jay is so well built.

Am I happy with this semi-nude guy on my cover?  Not particularly.  Altho I did a good job of tweaking the image.  That I'm happy with.  But it's a test and with 6 million more kindles being fired up tomorrow morning, we'll see if that's eye catching at all.  The problem I can't do anything about at the moment is the cover images inside NLM and probably Fling itself.  They should be changed.  I was busy on the cover for the novella yesterday--gorgeous--so I didn't do Fling.  Sorry for the discordance.

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