Working on Book 2 and the Cover for Book 3

This week I'm working very, very hard on getting the final edits of the first proof copy of Book 2: Lynch's Boys done. It's slow, grueling, tedious work, and I decided not to take my mind off it to do a chapter post this week. My kid came down with what I think might have been a flu of some sort earlier in the week and it just blew any extra time I had parceled out because she wasn't in school the last couple days and up until today. And I had quite a bit of anxiety over how sick she seemed.

She's a lot better now, thank goodness. But I'm behind a bit.

So Jim suggested I share the cover progress for Book 3 with you. Great plan!

The incredible Angela Taratuta is once again doing the cover. Ordinarily, she would sketch out a very, very basic sketch just showing layout, with rudimentary figures representing where the characters would go, but since she's done two other similar covers, there was no need for that step. So she went straight to the characters. My normal MO for this sort of thing would be to have her do individual character treatments first, but three of these characters, she's already painted. And she's so good at it I don't feel like I need to have her go through the motions of interpreting the other two. I trust her at this point.

Anyways, once we agree on the overall look, she lays down a little basic color scheme. Storm and Scarcliff had jackets in the same color blue, and Still Water Woman and Jesse were wearing the same shade of buckskin. I didn't anticipate how "matching" everyone would look, so I tweaked the colors in Photoshop to show my suggestions.

I'm thinking let's fade Storm's jacket a bit (he's wearing a cast-off) and tweak the colors in Still Water Woman's clothing to mix it up a bit.

Once we all agree on the colors, Angela goes in and works her magic.

We decided to go with a starry sky this time, just to see how it would look. Interested in seeing this whole thing was some paint on it.


Speaking of artwork, I started a Pinterest board at the suggestion of Melissa Zayas (Three of Swords) to keep easily accessible reference shots in. People send me suggestions all the time, so it makes an easy place to keep them handy and together. If you want to poke around in our reference photos, feel free: http://www.pinterest.com/paintedwheel/

I'll keep you all posted on the book progress. I think we're in the home stretch. Have a good week!