Last Saturday, my friend spent nearly six hours finishing up the cover. It’s a long process. Up until that point, here’s how it went: first, she asked for cover ideas since she wasn’t reading the novel. Next, I came up with the initial ideas, sketching them out and realizing how horrible an artist I’ve become. (Seriously, the Pokemon I drew when I was younger didn’t look this bad.) Third, she took my ideas and did a preliminary drawing of what a potential cover would look like. And fourth, those ideas were realized over the course of several weekends as she sketched them out in Photoshop.

After the black and white sketch was complete, she asked me to choose colors for the final painting session, and then she created “flats” of those colors in the illustration. We had scheduled a time on Saturday to begin, but I had no idea we’d get the whole thing over with or that it’d take as many hours as it did. She started by modifying my color selections, and then adding in the details. It’s impressive to watch. And you will be able to, since I got her to record it. Just have to speed it up and upload it to YouTube. I imagine that will be happening within the next week or so. And I suppose that’s when the cover will be revealed, since I’m not ready to do that quite yet.

That’s a bit anticlimactic huh? Reading a post about finishing up the cover and not getting to see it? Well, it’s not exactly done. The illustration is complete, but the title and author still need to be added. I’ve gone through many commercial free fonts to find one that fits the book, and have a list of options. I probably know the one I’m going with, but I’m getting my friend’s help on this one as well. And she suggested leaving the series title of the cover. That’s good, since I don’t even have a final series name yet. Uh oh. But it would look crowded with it on there, no doubt. Whatever it will be.