Today I’ve got a guest post from a young author, Ashley Hill. She blogs over at Paranormal Sisters. Ashley is here to talk about the artwork for her short story, The Harvesters. This is possibly the most effectively creepy book cover I’ve seen this year.
CLICK FOR THE TOUR SCHEDULE
Want a little taste of what’s inside the book?
He laughs out. He waters his lips and continues “I love it when they try to escape. It really,” he gestures with his hands, “gets the blood…..pumping. Which works well. It’s keeping the organs fresh.”
Yikes! Read on for Ashley’s post. Take it away, girl.
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Guest Post:She’s missing her brain
I’ve gotten lots of great feedback on my cover and on the request of my lovely host today, Emma, I’m going to talk about how this cover came to be today.
It’s actually pretty simple, at least in my eyes haha. So, back in 2011 I found out about indie authors and the one author that showed me this world was Keary Taylor, Author of The Bane Trilogy and Fall of Angels series. Following her post inspired me to start my own blog (which then inspired me to blog about books instead). Along this journey of blogging and writing, I learnt a lot of stuff about the indie world. This encouraged me to self-publish my own work.
At the time I hadn’t finished my short. I finished The Harvesters early 2012, two years after I started. Around this time Keary started to explore more into the world of designing. She’s done all her covers and I love them! She then branched out in turning this hobby into a design job. I was so excited that the woman who inspired me to go indie was offering her design services, at the time I really didn’t see a lot of other cover designers, now I’ve seen more.
So I jumped to her design site and checked out the prices. They aren’t too bad, $115 for a cover. On her site she broadcasted that she uses images from Shutterstock. Never heard of it so I clicked to go check it out, I love this website by the way. I can be clued to this website for hours. Anyways, when I was ready to publish later last year I finally went looking for something that was both eye catching and told my story. I looked upon picture upon picture, always looking for something horror as this is a horror short story. And finally after hours (probably days) of searching I landed upon this series called Fine Art Photo Of The Series Beauty And Beast by Conrado.
I absolutely love this series and wished the artist would do more! 🙂 Here’s the original. Creepy man holding her brain, yeah exactly what I was looking for! So being new to this world and a little star struck, I went to Keary. She’s a sweetheart and was very good at being there and listening to my ideas.
The only thing I really asked from her in the beginning was to brighten the color. She cropped it, brightened it, and placed the title and my name beautifully on the picture. But some things were off. On the carved out title, I felt like it needed a bit more blood or at least the picture did anyways. She did it but with us both agreeing not to go overboard on it :). Then on my last mock up, you get three from her, I decided to brighten the girls eyes to match with my main girls. Ashley has blue eyes, plus that color just makes the picture pop even more, don’t you think? (I think it’s wicked creepy, Ashley!!)
After that last change, which I caught Keary at the very last second, I felt like my cover was now complete. It’s utterly perfect and exactly what I wanted. Omg, I just couldn’t stop staring at it! 🙂 Even now I can’t stop staring at it. And I’m glad to hear from my readers that it’s just as eye catching as I thought it was! Makes this gal proud of her work even more!
P.S. the process with Keary only took a couple of days, I was quite surprised by that. But am very happy with the end product (though, I’ve learned there’s cheaper prices out there with exactly the same amount of talent) and I couldn’t stop happy dancing every time I looked at it or showed it to my family and boyfriend :).
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The Harvesters (Harvesting Series #1) By Ashley Hill
Publication Date: November 28th 2012
Genre: Young Adult/ New Adult Horror
When she finds her boyfriend shackled to a white metal table Ashley feared for the worse.
On a small trip of dropping off a package for Jason’s father, the young couple never thought they would be running for their lives. Running away from supposedly friends whom in turned to be a family of harvesters.
Human harvesters and they are looking for something specific. And Ashley just might be the perfect match for that something.
Goodreads Amazon Barnes & Noble Smashwords
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About the Author
I’m a college student still trying to get a handle of the adult world. When I need to get away from it I lose myself in books, my own writing, and in spending time with my amazing boyfriend which he supports me to no end.
Finding my passion in books has led me to finding a passion in writing my own fictional stories back in 2009, I have turned this into a dream career and going one step further I would love to open up my own book store.
Ashley’s Blog: http://www.paranormalsisters.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PnormalSisters
Goodreads:http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6604539.Ashley_Hill
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Paranormal-Sisters/327714850596230
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Keary did a fantastic job on the cover. You know I love the artwork. Good luck with the rest of the blog tour, Ashley.
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I wrote Under the Desert Moon as a standalone novel all the way back in the summer of 2007. It went through a few drafts since then, and when it was published last year, I thought that was that. Erin’s story had been told. But I started wondering how Erin would get on after high school graduation. Would her twin brother, Nick, make it out of the sleepy town of Copperfield alright? Would Erin find another guy, or would she find herself thinking of the vampire James every now and again? Well, I stopped wondering and started writing.
Emma's Ramblings on Supernatural Fiction 