Brand New Expired Reality Covers!

After months of hard work, I'm pleased to reveal the brand new cover designs for the three books in my Expired Reality series. These new covers will be showing up on Amazon and other sites over the course of the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for them. The interiors of these books have been slightly altered as well, mainly in terms of font design. You'll also notice that the name of the novella, Picture Perfect, has been reverted to its original title: Drather's Story.

Endangered Memories - an Expired Reality novel

Lost Birth - an Expired Reality novel

Drather's Story - an Expired Reality novella

A Sneak Peek At The New Cover Design for Endangered Memories

For the past couple of months, I have been chipping away at some new cover designs for the stories in my Expired Reality series. This week I want to show all of you a sneak peek of the rough layout of the new cover for the first book in the series, Endangered Memories. As some of you know, this book has had numerous covers over the years, including:

This time around, I decided to spend a little bit of money on some stock photography and go to town on encapsulating the dark and mysterious nature of my story. Aside from some spine work and some positioning here and there, this is what the gist of the cover is going to look like:

I also have new cover designs in the works for Lost Birth (the second novel in the series), and Picture Perfect. My plan is to officially switching the books to their new covers in the next few weeks.

New Cover Design For The LZR Project

Since I've been in the midst of edits for The LZR Project episodes, I figured I'd tinker with the cover design and make sure its something I can be proud of since this series is going to be running nearly ten months once it gets started. While I liked the original cover design....

...I realized that I've had a more colorful cover in my arsenal the entire time. My good friend, Jelani, actually created new covers for my two Expired Reality novels (Endangered Memories and Lost Birth) a little while ago, and even though I decided in the end not to use those cover designs, I realized the cityscape backdrop that he created is perfect for The LZR Project.

So, here's what I came up with so far. There's still some alignment tweaks I'll need to make, but overall this is what the actual cover design for each episode of The LZR Project will look like...

Of Dreams and Faith Proof Copy

I received the paperback proof copy of my non-fiction project, Of Dreams and Faith, last week. After reviewing the proof, I realized there were some things that needed to be fixed, mainly with the cover design. They have since been updated, and I just ordered a second proof copy which should be arriving at some point this week.

Some of the things I found wrong with my cover:

First off, the file became distorted for some reason and when I received the proof copy, there was a sharp white line running across the entire bottom half of the book. I think it may have been an anomaly with the file itself, or something on Createspace's end, but either way when I uploaded the revamped cover design it was gone on the digital image - I am hoping it is also gone on the physical cover when the proof shows up.

Second, I never noticed the space between the F and the A in the word 'Faith'. The font itself does that, as the word 'Faith' was created in another program and exported as an image. To fix this, I just created an 'F' and 'aith' separately and joined them together in the cover image.

Another flaw I noticed once I had the paperback in my hands was the massive distortion around the lighthouse and some of the rocks. Going back into the cover design file itself, I realized the whole image was originally saved at 72 DPI, which is unacceptable quality for a paperback cover. This was an easy enough fix, as the image simply had to be saved under 600 DPI, which brought it out clearer and crisper. Of course, the whole cover wasn't exported as 600, but 300, but the image itself of the lighthouse and the rocks was converted to 600 to clean up a lot of the distortion.

The final flaw ended up being some mispositioned text on the back cover. I already knew the text might come out being a little off because of the cut-off points, but it was an easy enough fix - I simply shifted the text to get it away from the spine.

All in all, the corrections to this cover weren't too difficult. My wife even cleaned up the lighthouse further, taking off the black square, the text above the door, and the little pole poking out of the top. The inside of the book had a few spacing issues here and there, but the chapter titles, text, margins and page numbers all came out looking just the way I wanted them to.

Here's the final cover design:

Of Dreams and Faith Cover Sneak Peek

Of Dreams and Faith will be released soon, and in anticipation of the book entering the final stages of formatting and design, I thought I'd give everyone a glimpse at the cover design.

My wife took the photograph and applied all effects, and I handled the fonts. This project has been - by far - the most challenging writing project I have ever done. Of Dreams and Faith isn't just about my pursuit of the dreams God birthed within me, it's a very candid look at certain areas of my life I would otherwise keep to myself. My hope is that this project will inspire hope and encouragement in anyone attempting to take God at His word when He compels us to chase after the impossible. 

I don't have an exact release date yet, but you can expect this book to be available for purchase both in paperback and ebook before the end of April.

Of Dreams and Faith - Cover Design Sneak Peek

I'm in the beginning stages of the cover design for Of Dreams and Faith, my upcoming non-fiction work chronicling my journey of faith as a writer. My wife has helped me with each of the cover designs for my fictional novels, although this one is a bit different to craft since this is my first non-fiction piece.

One of the two ideas that my wife and I had for the main cover design consisted of two paths diverging, to echo Robert Frost's quote, "“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” The other idea we had was the beach at sunset, to represent dreams (aspirations) and God.

The trail pictures didn't turn out exactly the way we wanted them. Well, that is to say the pictures turned out well, but they wouldn't work well with our cover ideas. The cover would turn out too busy once the book title and author name are added to the pic.

So this leaves us with the beach sunset picture. Plenty of skyline to put the book title on, and when it wraps around to the back cover, we have plenty more skyline to write out the book description. We have many versions of this particular scene to pick from - which I will be sorting through - but here's the general baseline image:

New Expired Reality Covers

With my announcement a couple weeks ago regarding my exit from the young adult genre and the pulling of the young adult labels from my Expired Reality series, I've been at work on some new cover designs for the series - simple, colorful, and easy to create as the Expired Reality series continues to grow over the course of the next decade - at least.

Here's the brand new cover I designed for Endangered Memories (book 1 in the series)

The new cover for Lost Birth (book 2 in the series)

And the new cover for Picture Perfect (a novella in the series)

Black Earth: Exodus Cover Peek

We're almost there, friends. Before Christmas hits, Black Earth: Exodus - the fourth and final full-length novel in the Black Earth series - will be released. If you're a tad confused by the title, it's because I changed it from Black Earth: Bridge to Anaisha to Black Earth: Exodus for a few different reasons, all of which are described in this post here - http://www.davidnalderman.blogspot.com/2012/11/fall-project-goals.html.

Right now I'm in the middle of formatting the novel for paperback, and my plan is to order the initial proof copy early next week. It's a bittersweet process ending a series like this, but at the same time I'm excited because it opens the doors and frees me up to start working on the bridge novella between the Black Earth and Expired Reality series - which coincidentally is my NaNoWriMo project this year!

This means it's time to show off a sneak peek at some of the cover design...

















My editor's son modeled for the pic, and we took it in a tunnel that runs under the street near where I live. My wife added the glow effects and edited the pic to make it a little darker so the fonts for the main title will show up well enough when I add them.

If you're wondering what the glowing wrist is all about, you'll have to read the book. I will give this hint though - if you're a loyal reader of my Black Earth series, then you know that President Stone initiated a mandatory bar code tattoo on everyone living within the sanctuary zones. The glowing mark on the wrist is the opposite of that. Cryptic, I know, but you'll find out what it all means soon enough.

I even did a bit of sketching to come up with the mark. There's symbolism behind it, but to give that away at this point would require me to reveal exactly what the mark is all about.

Soon enough.

Proof Copy of Black Earth: Dark Masquerade

I just received the proof copy of my latest novel, Black Earth: Dark Masquerade, in the mail. Proof copies always make me nervous because if there's one little thing wrong with the book, another one usually needs to be ordered to make sure the correction didn't send ripples through the rest of the book formatting.

This time around, it seems everything inside of the book is in good shape. My problem seems to be the front and back cover.

For some reason, Createspace neglected to include the bar code on the back cover.

I contacted their support team and they said they are going to speak with their technical support department about it and get back to me.

The other issue is the front cover. The intended image -

turned out like this -

You'll notice that the proof copy has the bottom portion (very thin) of the Black Earth title cut off. That's my fault because I didn't enlarge the text boxes in the program I use to create the cover. That's an easy fix though. 

The biggest issue is that the background went completely black, instead of having the texture and shading of the black cloth my wife used as the backdrop when she photographed the mask. I'm not sure what went awry in the printing process that would cause the whole background to disappear and turn completely black. Createspace's support department gave me a cookie cutter answer about how small variances are expected. Thanks.

Fortunately, after showing the book to some trusted sources, we're all in agreement that the front cover image looks great the way it is. The mask vanishing into the darkness actually goes with the title and adds a bit more intrigue to the cover. I know if my wife and I try to tweak the background at all it is going to result in many more proof copies being ordered and possibly weeks before the book can be released. I just don't see the need to fix something that isn't broken, or is broken but looks just as good as my original desire for a cover design.

So, it looks like I'm right on track for the book to be released both in paperback and ebook next Wednesday!

Final Cover Design For Black Earth: Dark Masquerade

As we approach the release of Black Earth: Dark Masquerade - July 25th (less than a month away) - it's time to reveal the cover design for the book. I don't have the full paperback spread yet, but this is the cover for the ebook edition, and the front cover for the paperback.

For those interested in how the mask found on the front cover was created, check out some of my other blog posts detailing the supplies and process used.

Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design Elements

Progress on Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design

Not Much To Say Today

I don't really have much to say today except that I'll be spending most of the day working on the new website design like I have been the past few weeks. Now that I've finally nailed down a direction I want to move in with the layout of the website, I am going to move in it post haste. I also have a doctor appointment I have to take my son to today. Just a basic check up, although it's not going to be fun heading out in 112 degree weather. And then tonight is my weekly writer's meeting with my friend (and cover illustrator for my Expired Reality series), Jelani Parham. So it's going to be a pretty full day.

My goal this weekend is to make some serious headway on the website and draft June's email newsletter. My wife will also be doing some work on the Legion mask for the cover design to Black Earth: Dark Masquerade, which I hope to release the end of this month or early July.

Lots of  irons in the fire. June looks to be an exciting month too with my 33rd birthday and my 7th wedding anniversary! Anyway, I guess that was just a brief update on things. Have a great Friday, and a great weekend, everyone!

Progress on Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design

As you can see, my wife has been making some serious progress on the Legion mask that will be showcased in the cover design for Black Earth: Dark Masquerade.



















Taking the supplies we purchased at Michael's craft store (highlighted in this post), my wife applied glue and the black sand to the white mask, giving it the stone look.

From there, she added the rhinestone design, including a premade string of white gems with some violet embellishment. Out next step is to add the feathers to the opposite side, in the head area.

So far, so good! More updates to come...

Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design Elements

This last weekend, my wife and I went to Michael's craft store and picked up the items we're going to need to create the main focus of the cover design for Black Earth: Dark Masquerade: the Legion mask.

Without giving too much away, I can say that in the story, the main character comes across a mask crafted by Legion - an alien entity bent on destroying all of creation. This mask - one of hundreds, possibly thousands - contains a human soul within.

Crafting the mask is a decent, but doable challenge, because in the book it is described as being made of the same material that forms Legion's vessels - shimmering, black rock.

So first, we needed a mask -

Then we purchased black sand - shimmering sand, no less - which we'll glue onto the surface of the mask -

In the book, the mask(s) are decorated in jewels and feathers, so we purchased a bit of both. This time we went with a purple theme (with a little bit of white), since the color scheme of Book 1's cover was blue, and Book 2's was orange -

And now, I just step back and let my wife work her crafting magic. Once she's finished putting the mask together, we'll start the photography process. For those who are curious, all of these materials, including a couple brushes to apply the glue with, cost less than $20 - and that was without coupons.

Beginning Work on Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design

As much as I absolutely love writing, there are times I don't mind plunging into the design aspects of self-publishing. This includes anything spanning web design, blog design, and cover design. So now that I'm closing in on finishing the Black Earth series - more specifically the third and fourth books - I am looking forward to staring the cover design process for Dark Masquerade, the third book in the series.

About a year ago, I thought I knew what I wanted the cover to look like. That was when the book was tentatively titled Black Earth: The Dark Lighthouse. My plan was to have a dark silhouette of a lighthouse spreading the 'dark light' across the landscape. But as I toiled with the storyline of The Dark Lighthouse, it became clear to me that the title was all wrong. Even though there are mentions of the lighthouses in book 3, they aren't an extremely prominent theme throughout the book.

And then came a scene that had prisoners of Legion - now being used as pawns in a sinister game - crawling out a dark vortex, their faces covered by masquerade masks made of Legion's shimmering black rock. And then came the President's dark adviser, an uncanny supernatural character who pulls the strings and manipulates the President into making detrimental decisions, destroying the United States in the process. And then came a traitor -

I've already said too much. Needless to say, I saw the common theme - veiled enemies. Masquerading villains. Darkness. Dark Masquerade. Perfect.

So no more lighthouses in the title, or on the cover. Now I need to find a good design that incorporates a masquerade mask that resembles the Legion masks referenced in Dark Masquerade. That shouldn't be too hard. My wife and I already have some ideas, and we'll be making a trip to Michael's craft store to see what we can find for the photography.

Of course, I want to keep with the cover theme that's been running through the series thus far.

End of the Innocence, book 1 in the series, was put together with various photographs that my wife took, including the stars in the skyline and the silhouetted tree, which my good friend Jelani Parham helped put on an invisible background. The shooting star was just a simple piece of clipart which Jelani added a nice glow to. And for anybody wondering, the Black Earth font is called Soul Mission and can be found here.

For The Broken Daisy, book 2, my wife took some pictures of downtown Phoenix- yes, the silhouetted buildings on the front are in Phoenix, even though about half the book takes place in Tucson and the other half in Los Angeles. The orange sky is actually another photograph my wife took.

Dark Masquerade's cover will be in silhouette form as well, although we're still trying to figure out what to use as a background once we finally get a nice pic of a masquerade mask. We already know we don't want to use a human model with a mask. The Black Earth covers have a very solitary look to them, lacking people or animals, and it's done that way on purpose since the stories are somewhat post and pre apocalyptic in nature.

I'll keep all of you up to date on the step-by-step process of cover creation as I move through it. I will also be overlapping the cover design for the fourth - and final - book in the series, Bridge to Anaisha, although we have no idea what we want for that cover yet.

Lost Birth Cover Peek

I am finally on the right track to finishing Lost Birth, the second book in my Expired Reality young adult series. Here's a sneak peek at some of the cover art for the book, illustrated by my good friend, Jelani Parham - www.akinink.com.

And here is an image of the timepiece from the books to be used for the back cover art when the paperback cover spread is done -

My goal is to finish the ebook edition of the book by Christmas and release it right after the start of the new year. After that, I'll work on the paperback edition, which always takes a little longer to format.

Official Cover for Endangered Memories

Just thought I'd drop in and give everyone a glimpse of the official cover for Endangered Memories.

Endangered Memories Cover Art Sneak Peek

I've been off the radar for a while now, but I'm back with some goodies in regards to Endangered Memories. I'm happy to announce the cover art is finished - thanks to my good friend Jelani Akin Parham, the back cover copy is finished, most of the formatting for ebook editions is finished, and now I'll be spending the next few days getting the website ready for the book's release the beginning of next week. My official release date is Tuesday, June 14th, and on that day I'll be giving away ebook copies of Endangered Memories so stay tuned to the blog for more details on that.

The first piece of cover art I want to give everyone a glimpse of is Carrie Green, one of the main characters of the book -

I am more than happy with the job he did with her character design. I wanted to give the cover a young adult feel but nothing too juvenile. I think his artwork captures the balance between the two perfectly.

Next in line is the background, which Jelani did as well -

The city is South Ryshard, where Carrie is living at the beginning of the book. I almost cried when I saw how beautiful the cityscape was and the coloring he implemented in the scenery.

The third element that comes into play with the cover design is the font. I spent many hours trying to find the right fit for the book. When I self-published Picture Perfect, I ended up changing the cover font later because it didn't fit the feel of the book. I'm happy to say I found the perfect fit for Endangered Memories though. The font is called Chocolate Box and you can grab it for free at dafont.com.

I'll be spending most of today putting all of these elements together into a coherent cover design. This Friday I will be posting a sample of Endangered Memories to get everyone geared up for the release next week! And next Tuesday I will officially release the first novel in a series that has been near and dear to my heart since my youth.

New Cover Design For Picture Perfect

As my friend Jelani continues work on the cover for Endangered Memories - the first book in my upcoming young adult series - I have been busy messing with the cover to Picture Perfect, a novella in the same series. Picture Perfect's cover is made entirely from scratch by yours truly using Gimp. When I showed the original design to Jelani, he gave me a few pointers on what needed to be fixed with it. After a trip to the drawing board, I am very happy to reveal the new cover.

First off, here's the old one for those who haven't seen it or don't remember what it looks like -

And here is the new cover design -

Notice the purple font for the title in the first version? First off, I really started second guessing that font as soon as I published the cover. It just doesn't fit the series very well - it has more of a magic, fantasy feel to it when the series itself is a bit more science fiction/fantasy. The original font was Gartentika in case anyone was curious. I get the majority of my fonts at dafont.com because you can find free ones for commercial use there. The new font is called Chocolate Box. Great font. Also, the purple color for the title in the first cover is real bad - makes it blend in with the rest of the cover. White is much easier to read.

See how the spiral symbol is positioned in the original version? My friend suggested I have all ends of the symbol run completely off the page. It was mentioned that when I have the ends of the symbol showing up in different areas on the page, then people's eyes are going to run to those spots instead of elsewhere on the cover.

And notice how my name is in two different colors and at an odd angle in the original? I thought I was being clever with that. But the new version is soooooo much easier to make out after it was suggested my name just be one color. The reader should be able to make out my name without having to stop and figure out what the different colored words are at the bottom of the cover.

For a final touch, I switched up the color scheme. The purple was great, but I want to use purple for another character's side story. I think the teal/blue looks a lot better for this cover and is much more pleasing to the eye.

I'd love to hear what you all think of the change. I'll more than likely keep doing the novella covers myself while I have my friend illustrate the young adult novel covers. I can't wait to show you all what he has come up with. Soon. Very soon!

Learning To Delegate

For the longest time now, I've been a self-published author. And while being a self-published author has its challenges, the thing I've loved the most about it is that I'm in control of every aspect of my publishing journey - cover design, formatting, story, characters, marketing, etc., etc., etc. Some may even say I'm a control freak when it comes to my content. But can you blame a writer for being a control freak over the world and characters they have created? I think not.

However, I am slowly and painfully learning to delegate.

Case in point? My cover designs. For a while now I've been going back and forth on what I want the covers for my upcoming young adult series - Expired Reality - to look like. When I released the first two books in the series a few years ago, I tried to go simplistic with the design - a symbol which had to do with content within the story.

Not my best work, but I figured it was helping me work toward branding.

Yesterday I had a great writing meeting with my good friend Jelani Parham. He's an illustrator and fellow writer, and when I opened up a discussion on what fonts I should use for the new covers, the conversation turned into me asking him to draw some of my characters from the series and help me with the cover design.

This wasn't easy for me to do. To give control to someone else to draw my characters? Even though he's a good friend of mine, it's hard for me to let go. But I've always liked Jelani's art style and he's read the first two books in the series, so he knows what would be most appropriate for the covers. Having his help will also give me more time to write and work on marketing - two things that take up the majority of my time anyway.

As soon as he's gotten some sketches done and we have a good idea what direction the covers are going in, I'll post some images here. In the meantime, if you want to check out some of what he does, head over to his deviantART page - http://j-rok.deviantart.com/gallery.

Picture Perfect Cover Design

Okay, so I'm finally revealing the cover design to Picture Perfect, the young adult novella that is going to be released in ebook format in the next week. (The audio and paperback editions are going to be released soon as well, but are taking a bit more time to put together.)

The reason the cover art to Picture Perfect is so newsworthy is because it represents the basic structure of what the covers of all of the stories in my Expired Reality series will look like. The symbol, the title, and the spacey clouds will hold different color patterns depending on what the story is, but the same basic look will be held throughout most, if not all, of the series - which is going to be big, mind you.

To give you an idea about how far the cover designs for my Expired Reality series have come, I'll show you the old, full cover spread I had for Drather's Story (the original title for Picture Perfect) -

And here are the covers to the two original novels in my Expired Reality series, the ones I am in the middle of rewriting right now -

As you can see, this time around my cover design has developed into something more eye-catching and more colorful. I used Gimp to create the cover design, and I had a blast putting together the color scheme and the templates for the new cover(s). I am really looking forward to releasing Picture Perfect before the end of February.

Special thanks and credit goes to Obsidian Dawn (www.obsidiandawn.com) for the great free Gimp brushes I used in creating the cover design. ;)