Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover: Malice of Wasteland

Oh boy, this one was tough.

The cover and the story itself went through many, many changes.

As you might know, when I'm not writing porn, I'm watching and reviewing it. On one such occasion, I was watching something, which I cannot recall, I do recall making the comment that whatever I was watching wasn't as good as Malice in Lala Land, or Wasteland. Only, I had typed "Malice of Wasteland"

And then a book was born.

Malice Of Wasteland (Working title, simply Malice), started out as a story about a girl who fucks an entire band to get a spot in the band. But, then, I thought about it more and fleshed out the band itself, particularly the lead vocalist, Nick Scratch. 

And I fell in adoration with their lust for one another.

But if the vocalist was still around, how would Malice get the gig? So I had to make Nick vanish.

At first, he suffered a coma from a car accident, but I didn't want to deal with the pesky recover, the physiotherapy, the stress of healing. I have enough stress in real life, and I write smut as an escape.

So, in the second version, he simply ghosts everybody.

To make the cover, I had to capture the essence of Malice. She's a tough, standoffish woman who has secret insecurities and a soft side. I struggled to capture that while I looked for a suitable image. 

 

I fiddled with placement, as you can see, but decided on the cover on the right. I liked the clothes, the bustier in particular gave her an edge, but I wasn't in love with the hair or the peircings. Still, it communicated the basic idea and I liked the hand up, because it gave a certain kind of grace and was more interesting than Malice just standing there. The image on the left had too much empty space.

But then, I wrote a passage in the book, describing the cover of Malice's album. She mimes opening her own chest.

Then my editor made a joke about making band t-shirts and other merch and DAMNIT KAGE!

So...

I asked some of my model friends if they knew anyone who'd be interested in modeling but it was a time-sensitive matter, and I was already shoulder-deep in Depositphotos.

So I found this.

Original image by Elisanth

Okay, it's more in line of the pose I wanted. Not quite as edgy, but interesting. Then I started to play with the layers, and filters, and colours

It's intriguing, but a little too intense.

And then this happened.

It had a good balance of the reds and blacks and pale colours. It sort of bridged the gap between the super dark cover of Crossfade and the calm pastel cover of Crescendo. I still worry that the gloves make it look too sweet and gentle, but hey, over-all, this story is about letting go, and allowing people to see your vulnerabilities. So in that respect I feel it works.

Welcome to her Wasteland. She really, really likes it...

When exotic dancer Alice Masterson is purchased for a private dance by Nick Scratch, the intimidating but charismatic frontman of the death metal band Wasteland, their mutual attraction causes them to break all the rules. After two nights of searing, kinky passion, Nick ghosts her.

And the band.

And everything else.

With Nick gone without a trace, Wasteland sends out an open audition for a new lead vocalist. Adopting the stage name Malice, Alice answers the call.


Touring with the band revives Alice’s lust for life and her alter-ego can’t get enough of the endless stream of groupies that throw themselves at the band, the top-shelf booze and the parties that rage all night long.


But death metal is a hard road to walk for a woman. Is Malice strong enough to endure the slag and vitriol? Will she be able to keep her two identities separate? And what will become of the band and Malice when Nick Scratch returns?


If he ever does…

MALICE OF WASTELAND is part of SILVER CITY STORIES and is a hard core, kinky BDSM erotic celebrity rockstar romance intended for adults only. It deals with dark subject matter, and celebrates sexual expression between consenting adults.

MALICE OF WASTELAND (Silver City Stories #3) is available for pre-order as soon as Amazon approves it.

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Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover: Crescendo

Here we are, once more my friends, with "Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover V".

I'm sort of dreading writing this one because publishing Crescendo was a somewhat unique process.

If you've kept up with this series, you know that I begin working on covers before the final draft of the manuscript is even finished. (To that point, I have tentatively finished the cover of the third SILVER CITY STORIES book and I'm only about 8,000 words into the draft...) While it didn't take me terribly long to write what I now call Crescendo, personal issues had delayed the editing process.

During this delay, my mind started concocting other stories related to Crescendo, four of them, to be precise. And so SILVER CITY STORIES was born. Crescendo would be the first book of a series.

Except it wasn't. 

Somewhere along the way I got the idea for Crossfade, which, chronologically would take place before Crescendo. I based the cover for Crossfade off, what was then, the final cover of Crescendo.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's start with the working title. I didn't have a title nailed down until very late in the process, so the working title was AprilMay, after the two leads. At first it was going to be called Music Box but that made no sense, then One Night Only. 

I was trying for a sort of promo flyer/punk vibe.

But that too, didn't make sense because the heroines don't spend only one night or performance together. They're always together, doing press, or making appearances at parties, and so forth. Somewhere along the way I decided on Crescendo for the title. It stuck. 

Dutch Angles are all the rage.

Ok, I kind of like this! It has the indie label feel.

Then, I found that fluorescent light font

Nothing says high class like neon!

Behold! A cover for a novella. Isn't it beautiful? It would have to wait to see the world,however because by now, I was in the middle of writing Crossfade. I modeled the aesthetic of Crossfade's cover to this one. 

And then I published Crossfade and once more looked at this cover. I realized it looked like some sort of Young Adult runaway-from-home-and-became-super-heroes-or-something cover. It had to go.

Once more into the trenches of free images. Then, I found an image of a girl in a gown at a piano and it looked like it was ripped directly from a scene in Crescendo. The exact scene I used as a teaser in the back of Crossfade, to interest people into buying the book and continuing on with the series.

So, this became the final cover. 

Original image by Ashley Byrd

So, what have we learned from this dive into book cover creation for fun and profit? Same thing as always: be flexible. Sometimes going to square one is for the best.

In an era of Britneys and Christinas, 17 year old April Lee hit it big with her debut album "This Girl Punx", and the hit singles "Skid Sister" and "Confusion".
She was top of the charts and took the pop-punk world by storm. Now, at 22, she's hit rock-bottom.

May Hart is a Victorian goth fae princess. She’s all tortured wailing and flowy skirts. Snow white skin, jet black hair, ice blue-grey eyes. She’s part Ice queen, part murder of crows. As front-woman for the band Ethereal, her haunting vocals made hits out of the songs “Plastic Garden”, “The Eternal” and “Take me from Death”. Now is the time to go solo. Can she succeed? Of course she can.

When both women are tapped to record the theme-song to a new super hero movie, they begin to grow close. But the business is very two faced and both April and May carry with them dark secrets. Can they look past each other's hurt and find love and stellar careers?

CRESCENDO is part of SILVER CITY STORIES and is a first-time lesbian erotic romance intended for adults only. It deals with dark subject matter, abuse, violence and celebrates sexual expression between consenting adults.

CRESCENDO (SILVER CITY STORIES #2) is available for preorder for 2.99 USD or FREE with Kindle Unlimited

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Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover: Crossfade

The fourth Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover! How exciting. I'm here today to talk about the new series SILVER CITY STORIES.

So, a little history lesson. Back in the middle of 2019, I had an idea for a story. I finished writing it in January 2020. Then Covid hit, and we here at Broken Wings Media just mentally checked out. No more writing. No more editing. 

Even though we were lost in a void of existential dread, I was still plotting. This one story inspired a whole series I now call SILVER CITY STORIES. I have several stories planned. Somewhere along the middle of 2020, one such story grew in my mind. The only problem was that, chronologically, it took place before the story I had written in 2020.

Oh well, I guess story 2020 is book 2 now.

I thought it was going to be something like 7,500 words. It really wasn't. It was far bigger than that.

From July 2020 to January 2021, I had written this 25k word book. I named it CROSSFADE.
As always happens with me, the cover was made before the manuscript was finished.

It all started with a visualization of sound.

You know how it is, you're looking for a free sound-byte for some reason you can no longer remember, because what is time, anymore? While poking around royalty free music collections, you find one sound that looks exceptionally yonic.

And then you get fucking inspired.

I recreated the visualization in Photoshop and gave it extra colours. Some more glow. Some more pink. More suggestive.

After perfecting the sound, finding a suitable image was simple. 

Courtesy of Roman Khripkov on Unsplash.

The colour scheme was fun, because I had decided the SILVER CITY STORIES would be vaguely neon and bright, with lots of purples and blues and pinks. I had already made the cover for that 2019-2020 book, so I just sort of snatched some of the filters and overlays from it.

I ended up with this first version.

But it was too eye-searingly extreme so I had to tone it down.

I also played around with positioning 

Finally I ended up with this...

One half of the loving couple lives across from a bar and the neon light illuminates her loft with reds and I tried to evoke that idea. I also like the contrast between the dull red and the neon pinks and blues. 

Since this is the first book in a series, I'm going to try keep a theme going and have all the covers look cohesive. Let's see how that turns out.

Maxine Cross is young, ambitious and full of desires. Working as the personal assistant of one of the most powerful men in the Silver City music scene, Max knows it's her only way to get her foot in the door. When she meets singer/songwriter Fade, Max sees in her the key to take her career to the next level. As they work together, passions grow between the two women.

But, the entertainment business is teeming with snakes and when Max's abusive boss crosses a line, the women begin to drift apart. Can they find it within themselves to fight for their dreams in a world that sees them as expendable objects? Or will Fade just become another star that burns out?

CROSSFADE is a first time lesbian romance that features explicit sexual content and disturbing topics. It is not intended for anyone under the age of 18. Reader discretion is advised.

CROSSFADE is available for pre-order now. 

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Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover: Sanguinerotica

Welcome to the third Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover post. There will be more to come.

As you probably know, Broken Wings Media is having a sale of our horror themed erotica. Last month we released a vampire-centric novella, SANGUINEROTICA, in which Elizabeth Bathroy meets and falls in love with Vlad the Impaler.

As stated in the previous entry of this series, when I write a story, I usually think of a working title. For example, the working title for ECSTASY IN CHAOS was SCROLLS. SANGUINEROTICA was no exception. Finding an actual title for it was one of the most difficult parts of the entire story. At first the working title was BATHE WITH ME or BLOODBATH, neither which I liked at all, BATHE WITH ME sounded directionless and BLOODBATH sounded too violent. Then it was BETH, BATH & BEYOND because aren't I just the cleverest little shit?!




This was the first cover.

Image source: mjranum-stock

I hated it. It was too bland, her head was too flat. The dress looked frumpy. No. No that's not right at all.

So I went another direction, and once more followed my muse that always directs me to the Sylvia Day/50 Shades type covers.  What about a goblet? A wine glass? With that in mind, the new working title became DRINK ME IN. That didn't feel right either.

Well, That's fucking boring. So boring I didn't finish the mock-up. Although I did feel like I was onto something with the title.

I decided "fuck it" and trawled through my usual free use image haunts and finally found something suitable.

Image source: ann-emerald-stock

I decided to see what I could do with the above image and I produced the now familiar cover:

What's the take-away from this post? I'm not sure. I guess it's just reaffirming the conclusions from the last post. Be flexible, sometimes go in fucking blind, not knowing what you want. You'll get there eventually.

SANGUINEROTICA, as well as other stories are currently on sale all through October.

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Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover - The Unicorn Knight

Well, looks like this is a series now!

Writing and publishing your own book is a very involved process. I'm lucky enough that I have some artistic ability so I am able to do all my own covers as well.

I started writing UNCHAINING THE UNICORN KNIGHT before I even knew what the final title would be. I had a premise, and certain scenes visualized in my mind, but the title and the cover were mysteries to me. It went under the working title KNIGHT or UNICORN KNIGHT.

Due to things outside of my control, writing UNCHAINING THE UNICORN KNIGHT stalled for a bit, but I hate stagnation, so I did what I could to keep the project going.

I made a cover.

The original Unicorn Knight cover.

Fun fact: it's surprisingly difficult to find good royalty free, Creative Commons images of unicorns. They're all so cartoony.

The original concept was a sort of knight's flag drawn on parchment or maybe scratched onto leather, but there was an obvious Photoshopped quality to it that always vexed me. Also, it was very brown for being all about a knight who's main colours were white and silver. Still, this had been the cover for months, and I figured I could tweak it when the time came to published.

But then, I was struck by inspiration, so I looked up "chains" and "Lock" and "Key" on Unsplash and Pixabay.

The second cover.

The second cover is once again going for that Sylvia Day/50 Shades/Twilight type style, but with a unique feel. Personally, I loved the cover, for a time, but when I showed it to others, the love wasn't shared. For one thing, it had nothing really to do with the content of the book. Still, I preferred it to the first version, and while I was formatting UNCHAINING THE UNICORN KNIGHT, I was set to use this one, damn the nay-sayers.

And yet...Even I wondered if there was something else out there...something even better.

Perfect. Just perfect.

I found the image of the woman hidden under the fabric on Pixabay, and a chain from a necklace on the stock image section of DeviantArt. Did some creative colouring, and came out with the perfect cover image. Pink is not a motif colour in the story, but I find the pop of colour alluring. All in all I feel that this cover is mysterious, hints at the content of the book, and is sexy.

The first version is not always the best. Be flexible with cover ideas. Sometimes the right image is just a few clicks away.

UNCHAINING THE UNICORN KNIGHT is available for pre-order from Smashwords and Amazon and can be added to Goodreads. It is available on April 12th.

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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.

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, Tumblr and Goodreads for updates.

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