Recently, we tried looking at the idea of putting the individual shorts up on Amazon, but we were worried that alongside the existing stories, the sepia toned covers just didn’t look right.  Thus, we asked Kimirra to try a hand at recoloring the original two works that we had commissioned.

First up, let’s show what she did with The Littlest Kobold.

Originally, they were in a forest, but you couldn’t really tell what time of year it was, the quality of their dresses, and so forth.

In a slightly updated version, you could see that we were looking at autumn.  The colors were a bit more crisp, and you could see that their dresses were a bit more colorful.

The final version was a lot bolder, and the characters almost seem to pop right off the page.  Kimirra did a really cool job with this variant of the cover.

Our Russian artist also did a second cover for us for a story called Remembered in Gold about a man who wins the lottery and gets more than he bargained for.  Here was the original cover:

As you can see, the sepia tone leaves you wanting a little bit more again, since you can’t really tell what exactly that goop is at the bottom there.  You also can’t really tell the difference between their garb… Cascadia, the woman in back, should look much more luxurious than our hero.

This variant showed the gold a lot better, as well as the difference in their clothing.  It was just a much richer cover, and Kimirra did an awesome job with it.

Hope you like what you saw of Kimirra’s work.  We know we’re happy to have worked with her again!

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Since the first trilogy in the Tellest grand series is out, I knew that I wanted to put together a bundle for readers – something that they could get for a bargain that let them get their hands on all the stories at one time.

To get to that point, we needed to wait for the covers for the individual novels to be completed.  Leo worked tirelessly on The Bindings of Fate, As Darkness Falls and The Enemy Within, and we landed with three spectacular pieces of art.

After that, I went to Paul, who is just so adept at putting together components into a nice package, and wrapping it with a nice bow. We decided to make a nice 3D Box image that we would see the spines of the books within.

Our first mockup is very rudimentary.  It had the basic package design in place, complete with the Tellest logo and tagline up at the top.  That’s great for a website, but the motto doesn’t really hold to this particular boxed set.  We also had the books out of order, and the spines are a little boring by themselves.

Another small adjustment that we tried was adding a sword to the front cover.  It fills the space, and it’s simple enough that it doesn’t hurt the spine artwork.

This update was more complete, and more indicative of the final package.  You can see that the books were reordered chronologically, and the spines were adjusted so that the more interesting aspects of the full covers were seen – obviously this wouldn’t be possible with a physical book set, but since this is digital, we were free to make it look as awesome as possible.

The front cover was redesigned a little bit, too, with Child of the Stars Trilogy taking up the biggest piece of real estate.  The motto was dropped and the logo was moved up too.

And here’s the final piece.  We centered the title a little better and Paul worked his magic on some finishing touches.  In the end, I think we had a great product that we could deliver to new fans of the world of Tellest!

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Sometimes, when you’re working with an artist, everything just works right from the start.  I’ve been working with Leo, and while every time he delivers a stunning product, there have been a few times where it seems he just knows exactly what’s in my mind, and puts it right to page.  I think that’s one of the tough things about being a writer with no real artistic talent.  It can be difficult to have this impression of something in your mind and not be able to get it out properly without conveying it to people in words.

When I told Leo what I wanted to see for the cover of The Tinker’s Tale, this was almost exactly what I expected:

Leo is also getting used to the layout of the Tellest logos, titles and authors – For Son of the Storm, we had to get a little creative.

And despite how cool it could have been, I had to say no to this version:

The Tinker’s Tale of avoiding flying death.

Sometimes you just have to say no to dragons, even in fantasy.  If Maximus had come up against them, you can be sure I would have allowed them to share cover space with him.

Around this time, we decided that Seramore was a very important part of the story.  Though the countryside aspect had some impact, especially early on in the tale, it wasn’t as integral as this massive city that Maximus would be discovering.  So we came up with this:

I can’t even watercolor 1/10th this good.

It was a big improvement on the message that the story conveyed. There’s something about the urgency here that you didn’t really get when you were in the woods.  You can also see that our protagonist is progressively getting less scruffy here.

Once Leo knew how pleased I was with this concept, we moved on to the final piece.  Again, I can’t begin to express how easy this cover was to work on.  Leo did an amazing job.

This just pops.

At the end of the process, we had something that was so simple, yet so evocative.  The turn around time was ridiculous, too.  I think Leo managed to get this to me in less than a week after the original sketch.

After that, we just had to put together our final touches, including the logo, title and author, courtesy of Paul Davies.

And, voila!

It really could not have been easier.  I’m very pleased with the final product, and I’m hoping that when it releases on Amazon next week, its potential readers find it expressive and attractive enough to agree with me!

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