Shadsie
Sage of Tales
Since I'm pricing plans/hosting for a self-promotional website for my writing and I've boredly put one of my latest book cover designs on Deviant Art... I thought, "Hey, maybe one or two of the Dungeoneers would like to see and/or give criticism to the book covers I've designed for novels nobody important wants to publish!"
Having some artistic skills and a largely unused Associates Degree in Graphic Design under my belt... I have, for years, been designing my own stupid covers for my own stupid novels - just for fun.
Here is one for a novel I am thinking of just going ahead and self-publishing on Kindle. I've grown tired of receiving rejection from agencies that are obvious form-letters that mean "You aren't already famous and we're swamped so we didn't even bother to read what you sent us." That, and a spirit of "If you want something done right, do it yourself." This novel is actually a good candidate for the self-publish plunge becuase it's a bit too on the short side for most publishing houses to bother with and it's probably a bit too on the weird side. The story is about two young people in a post-apocalyptic world traveling to their nation's capitol with creatures that only they can see. (People in their hometown can see such creatures, but people in the rest of the world, who don't believe in their existance cannot). It's sort off an allegory of faith and spiritual experiences and how people believe in and "see" different things in life. In short, it's weird enough that it's the kind of thing that will only see the light if I push it there myself.
This one is for something I wrote years ago and have revised and edited I forget how many times. I've been trying to get publishers/agents to pay attention to this one for years. It's the story of a woman and her gryphon and their mutual pursuit of freedom. Fantasy with science fiction elements (the gryphon is a genetic engineering experiment, but lives in a world in which gryhons once existed in nature). The back-cover blurb stuff is a bunch of garbage I wrote for fun, a couple of silly praises from fictional characters (a character from Trigun and Dr. Zoidberg from Futrama) as well as fake praise from a real person (Adam Savage from Mythbusters complaining about a lack of exploding books).
I felt the need to do this because I once posted a graphic design class assignment of mine online (a cover for another novel I since abandoned) and the fake praise my teacher required me to put on it got latched onto by one of those "Let's criticise people into the ground!" sites and people, more interested in snark than in understanding basically trashed me all over the forum for having the apparent huburis to think Peter Jackson would want to direct a movie of my book. I figured the only way to make the personal graphic design experiments I do for fun not draw the ire of snarkers eager to call me a terrible person is to make my fake blurb-praise, really, REALLY fake.
In other words, if you think Dr. John Zoidberg from Futurama actually gave my book an endorsement or that I'm deluded enough to think that he really did - *you are a friggin' idiot.*
A hand-painted cover I did for a long novel I wrote set in another world that revolves around many ideas of "human sacrifice" and young people going on quest. My protagonist was a nature-lover who chose to go on a quest to catalogue all of the birds in his world, but it still turns into a harrowing adventure becuase he's just unlucky. I really need to edit this one again before I even think about putting in bids for publication.
Anyway... book covers... I'm not a professional, but I design them for fun.
Having some artistic skills and a largely unused Associates Degree in Graphic Design under my belt... I have, for years, been designing my own stupid covers for my own stupid novels - just for fun.
Here is one for a novel I am thinking of just going ahead and self-publishing on Kindle. I've grown tired of receiving rejection from agencies that are obvious form-letters that mean "You aren't already famous and we're swamped so we didn't even bother to read what you sent us." That, and a spirit of "If you want something done right, do it yourself." This novel is actually a good candidate for the self-publish plunge becuase it's a bit too on the short side for most publishing houses to bother with and it's probably a bit too on the weird side. The story is about two young people in a post-apocalyptic world traveling to their nation's capitol with creatures that only they can see. (People in their hometown can see such creatures, but people in the rest of the world, who don't believe in their existance cannot). It's sort off an allegory of faith and spiritual experiences and how people believe in and "see" different things in life. In short, it's weird enough that it's the kind of thing that will only see the light if I push it there myself.
This one is for something I wrote years ago and have revised and edited I forget how many times. I've been trying to get publishers/agents to pay attention to this one for years. It's the story of a woman and her gryphon and their mutual pursuit of freedom. Fantasy with science fiction elements (the gryphon is a genetic engineering experiment, but lives in a world in which gryhons once existed in nature). The back-cover blurb stuff is a bunch of garbage I wrote for fun, a couple of silly praises from fictional characters (a character from Trigun and Dr. Zoidberg from Futrama) as well as fake praise from a real person (Adam Savage from Mythbusters complaining about a lack of exploding books).
I felt the need to do this because I once posted a graphic design class assignment of mine online (a cover for another novel I since abandoned) and the fake praise my teacher required me to put on it got latched onto by one of those "Let's criticise people into the ground!" sites and people, more interested in snark than in understanding basically trashed me all over the forum for having the apparent huburis to think Peter Jackson would want to direct a movie of my book. I figured the only way to make the personal graphic design experiments I do for fun not draw the ire of snarkers eager to call me a terrible person is to make my fake blurb-praise, really, REALLY fake. In other words, if you think Dr. John Zoidberg from Futurama actually gave my book an endorsement or that I'm deluded enough to think that he really did - *you are a friggin' idiot.*
A hand-painted cover I did for a long novel I wrote set in another world that revolves around many ideas of "human sacrifice" and young people going on quest. My protagonist was a nature-lover who chose to go on a quest to catalogue all of the birds in his world, but it still turns into a harrowing adventure becuase he's just unlucky. I really need to edit this one again before I even think about putting in bids for publication.
Anyway... book covers... I'm not a professional, but I design them for fun.
