Book 19 cover reveal

I've had to take a break from writing the last week. Something had to be done about the cover before I could go on.

Every cover in the Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds series has something from the main location or an event of that book. I use stock images, some with a lot of Photoshopping, like this Book 19 cover (two pictures, actually). I do this for several reasons but mostly I hate the search for an artist whose style would fit the book. I would only include characters if I could find a single artist to design all the books, but with a series stretched out over several years like this, it would be a risk. Getting on their schedules, working with them to get things just right, and hoping I don't lose them and have to start the search over again is more than I care to deal with. I don't have the time and energy to go through all that, and it is a LOT of work. So, I decided at the beginning that I would keep the covers generic/stock and add some touches where I thought it was necessary.

Doing this also means the characters are left to your imaginations and not ruined by an artist or my impressions. I did create the AI characters for fun, but if you don't want to see them, you have to go searching. They aren't always in your face on a cover. You can avoid having your imagination ruined if you want.

Book 19 is something different. I've mentioned how it's high fantasy in my space opera series, but without magic. I envisioned a medieval/renaissance European-ish setting. For this, I wanted something of a castle, but I couldn't find anything quite what I pictured for the castle in the story. I had to compromise on the cover art.

I found two different pictures and had to do a lot of Photoshopping. Fortunately, I have an artistic kid who advised me on colors. She approved of this after telling me what she thought would work for colors. She still doesn't like the depth of the blue sky, but she likes the other touches I added.

The two pictures (https://www.dreamstime.com/beautiful-gothic-medieval-arched-stone-window-magnificent-majestic-view-window-gorgeous-winter-mountain-landscape-alps-image203717885 and https://www.dreamstime.com/three-people-hiking-mountains-winter-landscape-deep-snow-clear-sunny-day-allgau-bavaria-germany-alps-image103810330) work pretty seamlessly together, after the color adjustments to the stonework and other touches to the two images so they didn't quite look like photographs but more like illustrations.

So, here it is, the cover of Book 19, which still leaves a lot to the imagination for the reader to complete. And, of course, I had to add the feathers.

Now that I have the cover, I can relax and finish the story without worrying whether the cover image will match what I write. It doesn't reveal any exact details that might contradict the story. I've adjusted some of the stories to match the image I had found for the covers. In this case, I created the cover to match the story. That's a big weight off my mind.

The only thing that might change is the cover blurb. It's pretty good, but I might reword it before it's final.

Thanks for reading!