Karen Chance's Blog, page 6

With the new Dorina book coming out soon-ish, I was thinking about the cover of one of my favorite Dorina stories that I never felt did the contents justice. So, I redid it and reformatted “Dragon’s Claw” while I was at it. I think it came out much better this time! If you bought it in ebook form from Amazon, you can refresh it in your ereader to get the shiny new version. It should also be available everywhere else (B&N, Kobo, etc.) soon for those who purchased it there.

 

The next Dorina novel is Fortune’s Blade, and since I’m finishing up the text right now, I’ve also been looking at the cover. The original cover, shown first below, was one that my artist did in the bad old days when covers had to be cobbled together from stock photographs. Unless, that is, you had the budget to hire a photographer and a model for a shoot, which could be thousands of dollars, or an artist to paint it for you, which could be even more depending upon the artist. Since I had the budget for neither of those, my cover artist and I were stuck with whatever could be found in stock. That entailed many long, tedious hours paging through stock art galleries, none of which were really set up for fantasy-type images, and then trying to make whatever we finally decided upon work. It often didn’t entirely, but there was simply no alternative.

The original cover for Fortune’s Blade was typical, being patched together using a head from one image, a body from another, a sword that was painted on, and yet another image for the background. Add in some special effects and a title, and you have a cover–one that looked very little like my heroine, but it was the best that we could do.

But then, something happened, namely the advent of AI technology, giving regular joes the ability to create their own images. I got interested in the new tech a while ago and after experimenting with it, discovered that I liked a lot of the images I was getting back. Of course, I still needed my artist to work with any that I was going to use for cover art, as AI images very rarely come out perfect in one go, and often have poor quality resolution (a real problem for faces). And because she always makes everything look ten times better than I ever could. But doing the base image myself ensures that the heroine looks much more like my character than any stock image would.

Both of them are attractive images, because my artist is awesome like that, but the second is far closer to my vision. As I’ve said to people before, I don’t think AI will ever replace human artists or human creativity. But what it does do is to give artists far more stock to work with, and indie authors the possibility of covers that look much more like our characters. I’m very happy with the new Dorina cover, and hope that you are, too.

The audiobook for Time’s Fool will be out on August 1. It’s read by the incomparable Joyce Bean, so prepare for a wild ride, lol!

Did this for a reader who was not satisfied with the Mircea pic. Hope it’s better, lol! Also, I am at 91,000 words on the book, so will be working on finishing that up for a while, so you will get a break from my constant pic spamming. :-D

 

More character portraits that I’ve been posting on social media. These are the characters in real life. Can you guess who they are before you read the names at the bottom of each pic?

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Caedmon

 

Cassie

 

Louis-Cesare

 

Mircea

 

Pritkin

 

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Dory

 

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Lia

 

I’ve been doing some new character pics for social media, and thought it might be a good idea to archive them here as well. There are some of my characters as graphic novel heroes.

John Pritkin

 

Zheung-zi

 

Cassie Palmer (from a scene in Ignite the Fire: Inferno)

 

Mircea Basarab

 

Dorina Basarab

 

Louis-Cesare

 

 

 

 

Just got word that Joyce Bean signed on to narrate the audiobook for Time’s Fool! Also, Tantor is publishing it on August 1. Really glad to have Joyce back again, as she is a lovely person and an excellent reader.

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1371834Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C159N97GAlso, under the heading of great but unexpected news, there will be an ebook! Tantor has decided to record Time’s Fool and is trying to get Joyce Bean, the talented voice actress who did the other Dory books, to narrate. I will update you when I have confirmation that she signed on. In even more surprising news, they did a contract for the audio that includes Junk Magic, the recently released Lia de Croissets’ novel. I am extremely happy about that, as I thought Lia was a great book and was disappointed that some people wouldn’t get to enjoy it. So, this is excellent news.

Smashwords: Smashwords – Time’s Fool – a book by Karen Chance

Amazon: Amazon.com: Time’s Fool eBook : Chance, Karen

The paperback has been uploaded to Amazon as well and should appear soon. It usually takes a little longer. Also, under the heading of great but unexpected news, there will be an ebook! Tantor has decided to record Time’s Fool and is trying to get Joyce Bean, the talented voice actress who did the other Dory books, to narrate. I will update you when I have confirmation that she signed on. In even more surprising news, they did a contract for the audio that includes Junk Magic, the recently released Lia de Croissets’ novel. I am extremely happy about that, as I thought Lia was a great book and was disappointed that some people wouldn’t get to enjoy it. So, this is excellent news.

 

Time’s Fool is at 114,000 words, yet still not done. Augghhh! This book has kicked my butt. Lots of research, a surprising amount, actually, for an era I thought I knew pretty well. Anyway, I have the last chapter and conclusion to do, then a final proofread and formatting. I will let you know as soon as I post.