Artistic Endeavors

I've neglected this blog of late. I have finished final edits for Mind, Body, and Spirit and am currently working on a book cover. I've discovered the royalty free graphic images from Ghetty Images. They are awesome. Of course in order to find what I'm looking for, I did a search for 'man woman nude lover' and then had to scroll through many many pages of suggestive and explicit pics. Am I complaining? Not at all. But it did take longer than I had anticipated.

Anyway, I've had some fun with Adobe Photoshop. I've learned a lot about layers and filters and whathaveyou, but everything still looks really amateurish. Personally, the cover does impact my decision to buy a book. Even a $0.99 book. So much home made silly stuff out there. I looked through Amazon's fantasy/paranormal romance section to get an idea about cover art and all the self published stuff just looked so... self published.  I've come up with some decent things but have also enlisted the help of a teenager. Sad really, that I have crossed the line in the sand of technological age.  In most respects my age just makes me a mature woman with a confidence in myself I lacked when I was young enough to easily understand new technology. Le Sigh.

I started awhile back on my second Silk and Stone Novella, Control. Lady Janae is an ambassador for the Allied Kingdoms in the neutral city of the Seraph. She is a very powerful mage, but more known for her diplomatic abilities. Concerned about the upcoming meetings between the Allied Kingdoms and the ambassador for the Sun Elves regarding the question of jurisdiction after the defeat of the High Magistrate, Janae takes an evening for herself. To unwind. To forget who she is for a few hours. Incognito at the Tavern at the End of the World, she meets a powerful sun elf Warlock. He is weary of physical pleasures and more aroused by power, by control. Janae's choice to submit to him, to pretend she's less than she is, only proves to whet her own appetite for dominance.  Between the give and take of power, the draining of mana and the seduction of surrender, the two form a bond that reignites the joy of physical passion.

This story has bdsm flavor without being too outside general market romance. My challenge has been to make the spell casting byplay so sensual in itself that the primal nature of the sexual content is just the icing on the cake. Oh... maybe there should be some icing. Nah. That's another book.

Just for fun, here is a cover I made with the help of Ghetty Images and Adobe Photoshop that I am not going with. Not hot enough.