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Cover Girls
I don’t believe in ambiguity when I edit a stock photo for a book cover, because African American women have long been under-represented in this area. Because I put together a number of cover models (from the many wonderful stock photos from some great photographers) I’m able to play match maker to see which models work together to help tell a story. Here are a few of my upcoming ebook covers:
Interracial couple – African American and Asian (edited stock photo) 
Interracial couple – edited photo – 
Young Adult romance 
Nathelie Childress and Tanner Joseph become an unlikely couple in the NA mystery romance The Saint of BOYSTOWN Click the photo to read an excerpt 
Nathelie Childress falls for Tanner Joseph, in the ebook The Saint of BOYSTOWN 
Couple cuddling – more IR couples can be found in the WSC Romance Image Gallery -
Of Supernaturals and Sequels
While I love contemporary romance, I also enjoy writing historicals and scifi. But I really enjoy putting romantic leads together and describing their journey to couplehood. With sequels it’s important (imho) to maintain the love affair but still tell an engrossing story. As I prepare to release Razher II among a few other sequels, I hope readers will enjoy the twists and turns I’ve taken with the characters and their various stories. I’ve added a short excerpt from The Player at the end of this post.
I’m also introducing another continuing serial, one that deals with big cats and the fight between several royal houses to take the throne. I’ll have a GIF up shortly and also the first chapter. For new readers, please understand that I use my book covers as promotional materials. The same thing applies to the free excerpts on this site and the excerpts that have more chapters which are listed on Amazon as Sneak Peeks. These are just a few ways I’ve found that help readers discover WSC books.
I’ve added another character to the continuing college serial The Men of Hilton Hall. I’m introducing Rae in the next chapter of TMOHH that I will have up this week:
Now for the new offerings. I’ve been working on my digital editing skills in order to have covers that are a bit more stylish as well as sexier:
Higher Ed:
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Living for the weekend
Ahhh . . . a three day weekend. I’m working on new, diverse book covers with Asian leading men and readying QUEENSREALM for release.
Love and political intrigue ETA: If you’re a self-pubbed author and you don’t know how to use Photoshop or Paint.net( free software), or Adobe elements, try to get someone to teach you. Stop by a local college art department and offer to pay someone to tutor you. It’s an investment that will save you money over the long run. Covers do matter, especially when faced with showing a heroine of color. The ability to manipulate an image to more closely resemble your book’s characters (if your female lead is brown in the book, then she should be close to that color on the cover. IR readers do notice and many are becoming quite vocal about seeing cover models with more variety in their skin tones and hair texture). The model below is actually a blending of two stock images I bought:
Human rights lawyer Jada Guyett from the erotic suspense ebook HERE and NOW I think its very important that minority writers not fall complacent enough to think we can’t stumble into “othering” another racial group, or fall into the trap of making our own culture the exotic. There was an interesting discussion on Dear Author regarding the use of food to describe minority characters, in a way that is sometimes different than the description of white characters. I’ve seen this in a number of books and some readers don’t care for it, so that’s something I keep in mind when writing.
I tend to use Saturday as the time to work on covers and promos. There are a number of scifi novellas I’d like to release this summer:
ID- They put a barcode on her ass and a bounty on her head. -
BLACK is the new black
Oh how I love the look of black and white photos. I even love old black and white movies.
Here’s a GIF I created that (hopefully) shows what’s so special and rich about black and white pics:
Here’s the finished ad (minus the dissolve):
Another GIF I created (link is now active):
The male photos are on the book covers I’ve created:
You Give Good Love. Bodyguards to bickering teen stars fall for each other. -
On A Mission
A big reason why I like self-pubbing is because I get to create my own covers and promotional materials. The cover below is a work in progress, because I’m experimenting with just how much of this YA scifi hero should remain be visible. Now that I look at it, I’m thinking about having the letter Z get pulled down by his fingers, so I’ll probably end up editing this today. As I think that letter should look more like vapors. So his fingers will get more clarity.
Mock up of a new scifi hero, part of the Millenials Series Mock up number 2:
Haze scifi novel mock up 2 This is part of a bigger push in my own books, to focus on minority males, specifically African, African American and Asian as leading males.