How I Made my Cover for F.A.I.R.I.E.S.

I thought you might be interested in how I did the cover for my book, F.A.I.R.I.E.S.: Baptism by Fire. I'll show you the before and after pics that I used.

A long time ago, my mother gave me a bunch of her ball gowns. I've taken several pictures of friends and family in these gowns. Here's are two pictures of my mother in the gown in the 1950's:

This is the main picture of the heroine, Mellie Good Wind...posing is Lily Kidd:

I played with it...extended the sword and part of the dress. Eventually, I removed her feet. It just looked better that way. Although, I really debated about keeping them on the cover, since Mellie was barefoot in the beginning of the story. However, when she wore the red dress, she wasn't barefoot. So, I lopped them off. Sorry, Lily! You do have cute feet!

Next is a picture of me painted up as Lilith:

Then, I played with it in Photoshop:

And inverted the exposure and played with it some more:

To create the wing-like effect behind Mellie, I again played with it in Photoshop:

If you are very diligent, you might see the eyes of I.M.P.S. (redcaps) in the fire on the back cover. There are nine pairs of them! They are all of my son, Keegan's eyes. Here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot:

I then tweaked them in Photoshop:

Here's a zoom-in of the eye section on the book cover:

I also created the fire on top of the font for F.A.I.R.I.E.S. and the cloudy fire background for Baptism by Fire all in Photoshop.

The result is this cover: