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Some Covers…
Just For Fun!! Since I might have had the hardest workout today moving since I ran that marathon in November, I have no brain for anything tonight, so since I had not displayed Smith’s Monthly #51 covers yet, thought I would do so. Cover for #51 and #52, as well as all five short story covers. #51 is the July issue and will be out shortly, meaning the next day or so. The move pushed it back in the month. All short stories each issue will be up for sale about the time the next issue comes out. And The Big Tom short novel is also now in a cat…
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Short Story Covers for #50…
With The Help of Angel… I did these five short story covers for the short stories in #50 in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. April demanded some pets along the way and some attention and there is a new picture of her after the covers. Turns out four of the five covers were tough art choices which also took me a little longer. All stories are in my regular series, so I went back to styles I had done before and stayed in cover style. Of course, tonight all five were in Smith’s Stories branding form. Sorry these came in so large. Something messed up here in my media…
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Smith’s Monthly Magazine Covers
Doing Paperback Layout for #48 Yesterday and Tonight… That is the April Issue. So I had to do a cover for #49, the May issue, because, you know, coming-next-month kind of thing. #49 is the May issue and I still haven’t figured out what I am doing for #50. But got some fun ideas. #49 issue will have the full novel Bottom Pair: A Cold Poker Gang Novel. It will go out to the Kickstarter backers in April and then in early May will appear in Smith’s Monthly. So had to do the cover. So figured tonight, since it is Saturday night, I would take a moment to show you…
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Covers for Issue #48 of Smith’s Monthly
Short Story Covers… This for Smith’s Monthly #48 which is the April Issue. I did these five covers tonight, took me about an hour and a half total, again the longest time was looking for the art. Just as with every month, the short story covers are all different in the issue. That’s a good thing. There is an original Marble Grant story, which has a different look to the cover using Pop Art. The other four all used the template. I have original stories from Bryant Street, Sky Tate, Cold Poker Gang and a reprint of a Pahket Jones story from the cat anthologies. So five very, very different…
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Some Short Story Covers
Just Having Fun Tonight… Yes, I will do a wrap-up of the 15 days of tracking time, but next week. I want to do something else now. So since I am laying out the paper edition of Smith’s Monthly #47 that will be out in a week or so, I had to do the covers for the five original short stories in the volume. And since I was still in a keeping track of time mode from the challenge, I can tell you that including finding the art, these five covers took exactly 1 hour and 45 minutes with InDesign. And cost me exactly $5.00 in real cost. Four were…
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Short Story Covers In #46
Laying Out the February Issue of Smith’s Monthly And I need short story covers. There are five short stories in Smith’s Monthly #46, so I started about 11:30 tonight after Allyson saved me earlier in the evening from my own stupidity with DepositPhotos. So from 11:30 until 1 am, I did five short story covers. Four are in my Smith’s Stories branding look, and Poker Boy stories have their own branding. But I had templates for both, so the longest time it took was for me to find the art that would fit the story. And in the Poker Boy story, the branding. The hardest story was the story titled…
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Started On #45
Actually Started Interior Layout on Smith’s Monthly #45… Ran into a few problems that I will solve tomorrow with a little help. But minor. The real issue is going to be getting all the ads and such I do throughout the book for my own books, rebuilding a lot of them, making sure the art is linked, and so on. That will take a few days and it will get easier as I go along with every issue I am sure. So tonight I decided to fire up my rusty short story paperback cover skills. Been most of a pandemic since I had done too many of them, if any.…
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Very Impressed…
The Covers From the Covers 101 Workshop… The writers who managed to get through to the last assignment of the covers workshop produced some stunning book covers. The Covers 101 Workshop is a step-by-step process workshop in design and layout of covers. I just got done earlier tonight going through Assignment #5 in the Covers 101 workshop (first time it was offered) and basically all were professional covers that would sell books. I showed Kris a few and she just said, “Wow!” A couple writers, as expected, thought they could write sales copy for the back cover without training and failed, horribly, but this wasn’t a sales copy workshop, it…
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Sometimes Just Fun
Keeping the Blog Streak Alive… Something like day 2,626 of blogs without a miss. So tonight, since I have been reading stories and such, I felt too tired to write much or post another chapter in the Trademark book, so figured I would just show you one of the covers from my Make 100 Paperbacks. Working my way right through them and having fun. So here is a new short story cover from issue three of Smith’s Monthly. Cover is front, back, and spine. I used the same art that was in the issue originally for the story. 5 x 8 inch trim. This one is the first story of…
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Cover Workshop Starts Wednesday!!
BRANDING SCIENCE FICTION COVERS WORKSHOP… Allyson Longueira, the publisher of WMG Publishing has offered to design a cover and help brand a science fiction series for a limited number of writers. For those of you who don’t know her, Allyson is an award-winning designer who also happens to have a masters degree in design. Over the years, Allyson helped writers with cover design in coast workshops here and for a short time we did a basic cover design workshop to help writers learn how to do covers. But this one-time short workshop on branding science fiction covers is different. Working with you, Allyson will design a brand for your books and give you…