I have been very lazy with regard
to writing blog posts, lately. In my defence, I’ve spent what available time I’ve had
writing stories. But I realise I need to be more diligent at updating my blog,
even though I don’t really have any evidence that it’s read by more than a
handful of people.
What I'm going to write about in this post is pictures – or maybe ‘illustrations’ is a better word.
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| This is Julia, as illustrated by Mat Twassel |
For the covers of my ebooks, I
usually buy a stock photo which fits as closely to my idea for the story as I
can find. I don’t always manage to get the perfect photo, but I like the vast
majority of them so far.
For Bon Voyeur, I just wanted the picture of a girl’s lower-body through Venetian blinds, but for the sequel (Abuse of Power) I happened across a photograph of a beautiful model who was perfect for the image I have in my head of Sophie, the main character. Other pictures that I knew were perfect straight away for the covers include Web of Deceit, Midnight Mirror and In the Shadow of The Riot.
Actually, for Shadow, I was warned that Amazon wouldn’t approve of the model’s bare bum cheeks, but I liked the picture so much that I ‘photo-added’ a pair of panties on the Amazon version of the cover.
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| Dirty version - with bum cheeks |
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| Clean version - added panties |
For my last story, Operation: Cuckold, I was really happy
with the picture I’d found. The model in the photo was perfect for Michelle,
the hotwife, with prominent cheekbones and thick brown hair. The guy was
perfect for Vinny, one of her bulls who did a lot of pumping (both iron and Michelle). Unfortunately for me,
Amazon weren’t very happy with the pose of the couple, and locked it in the
Adult Dungeon, which means if you do a search for all my stories, this one
doesn’t show up. You have to actually search for the title, and then click that
you want to see all hits - even the ones that are marked ‘adult’.
For my next two scheduled
releases, I had a basic idea of what I wanted for each.
The first is called Unlikely, and is an anthology of five short stories about erotic encounters between couples you wouldn’t expect to get together for… well, an erotic encounter. I liked the idea of a simple, non-offensive cover (after upsetting Amazon with my last one), and with the stories being about unlikely encounters, the image that first came to mind was a square-peg and a round hole.
The second is called Julia 07, and features the story of a
girl who finds herself in the situation where she has a choice to make. I knew
the scene in the story I wanted the cover image to be based on, but couldn’t
find the right stock photo to fit it.
But I was very fortunate because around that time, a couple of different authors I know happened to post things in different forums.
The first was Big Ed Magusson,
who was telling us about the latest project he’d been working on, which was a
graphic novel. Ed's got a fantastic artist called Tzratzk who brings his stories
to life in the form of adult comics – absolutely fantastic. Check out his site:
http://thinknudecomics.com/
The second was a story posted by
another author I know called Mat Twassel. Not only does Mat write very sexy
shorts (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lauras-Toes-Mat-Twassel-ebook/dp/B0037UY59M),
but he also does great computer-animated illustrations to go with them.
I wrote to ask Mat if he’d be interested in doing an illustration for the cover of my Julia 07 story, and he rose to the challenge. In fact, he did more than rise, he soared above all my expectations. Mat had read an early draft of the story, and kept sending me different images from different scenes in the book. In fact, he even sent images from scenes which aren’t in the book! One example of these is the one of Julia at the start of this post.
I wrote to ask Mat if he’d be interested in doing an illustration for the cover of my Julia 07 story, and he rose to the challenge. In fact, he did more than rise, he soared above all my expectations. Mat had read an early draft of the story, and kept sending me different images from different scenes in the book. In fact, he even sent images from scenes which aren’t in the book! One example of these is the one of Julia at the start of this post.
But Mat’s enthusiasm and Ed’s
comics gave me another idea… I could put a short ‘graphic version’ of Julia 07 on my website to coincide with
the short story’s release. Mat has been very generous with his time, and I now have
many images I can use.
Mat has also been ‘tinkering’ with possible
images from other stories of mine. For those familiar with End of the Line, you may remember that Kerry sent some photos of
herself during her ‘sexting’ chats. I’ve included a few of those here.
Mat has also done a few
illustrations based on one of the stories in Unlikely. Now I keep thinking of possible images from all my
previous stories. Obviously they won’t all get done, but it’s nice to think
about them.
He was also kind enough to do
the ‘square peg - round hole’ image I’ve used for the Unlikely cover. Although there were numerous stock photos that
would have done, Mat was able to get the garish, stand-out colours I asked for.
He’s pointed out that this is noticeably different from all my other covers,
but I like it. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone wants to buy it.
