Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover

Lilith here. I'm here to talk to you about the cover of BALANCE IN CHAOS.

When I pack, and when I clean, I tend not to do these things in order. I get a bit of this, a bit of that. I'll start folding clothes, but then get my toiletries. I'll start making my bed, but then organize my couch cushions. I'm just as flighty with art. If I don't have the urge to write, or am unable to do so for reasons, I move on to something else in order to feel productive and push the overall project forward.

Consequently, the cover for BALANCE IN CHAOS was complete long before the first draft.

I knew what I wanted, initially. I wanted something that felt ancient, that communicated The Ancient World but was still sexy. Our written depiction of Discordia made visible.

So I started with this:

This image is unfinished and thus it looks sloppy. I am better than this, know that. What follows is just a blocked out draft!






I let my cohorts at Broken Wings Media pass their eyes over it and they felt it wasn't right. So I scrapped it and searched for a new angle. I scavenged royalty-free images aplenty. And then I found it:

Oh, the things I could do with you!

So after hours of work, I ended up with this:

You might have seen this image on my FetLife profile. Finally, we here at Broken Wings Media were satisfied. For about 12 hours. All in all, it felt too pulpy, too 80's fantasy and yet, not bodice-ripper-y enough. It wasn't right. It was a good try, and adequate promotional material, but it's not the cover.

A valuable piece of advice I came across was to look at other covers in your genre. I did, and I also got to thinking about covers I really, really liked. Despite what one may think of  The Twilight Saga and Fifty Shades series, I've always found their covers beautiful on an artistic level.  Sylvia Day's covers are beautiful as well. That was the feeling we wanted.

So, for the nth time, and with this new plan, I went back scouring the image galleries. Finally I had a brilliant idea.

I always admired the leather-work of Teonova. I reached out to her for permission to use her Anubis Mask for our cover. After a bit of negotiating, she agreed.

And now, we here at Broken Wings Media, are proud to present the official cover to BALANCE IN CHAOS.

And the wrap around for print

BALANCE IN CHAOS will be available for purchase for Kindle on MARCH 31ST 2015.

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