The Arhel Trilogy Covers

Today, I did the covers for the Arhel Trilogy.

Fire in the Mist

BOOK I: Fire in the Mist: Compton Crook Award Winner “Best First Novel”

Bones of the Past

BOOK II: Bones of the Past

Mind of the Magic

BOOK III: Mind of the Magic

I wanted something striking but simple for these books—and I wanted the central images to be meaningful. So I went with Ariss, the keyu, and a dragon. The toughest part of these was coming up with an appropriate title design and name layout without getting too friggin’ frou-frou with the font. And I still wanted that touch of gold to tie these together subliminally with the suspense stuff.

I’ll probably have something in that gold on every cover…though it might be very slight.

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Posted

August 21, 2011

Books, Fiction, Writing Life

Holly

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10 responses to “The Arhel Trilogy Covers”

Lewinna

August 29, 2011

Oh very lovely 🙂 I like the little border designs. Are you going to have these for print-on-demand as well as ebooks?

I’ve just been reading your book ‘Talyn’. Oh my God it is scary. Really scary. Reminds me of my unfortunate dabbles with sorcerers and tantrics. Oh scary. Nice job though. SCARY. O_O Too close to home for me…. some of the darker stuff kinda reminds me of a novel I wrote during that time in my life. That novel got put away…. too scary for me.

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Justin

August 29, 2011

Is there any chance we’ll see paper reprints of these like the first Cady novel through Lulu? My well-loved Baen paperback copies have seen better days. 🙂
Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Justin

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klharrds

August 26, 2011

Nice covers. I havent read this series of yours and am really looking forward to it coming out.

btw – I’m not sure where you are in the US anymore, but keep your head down from Irene if she comes your way.

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Sue Santore

August 24, 2011

I do like those covers. The clean simplicity will look good in thumbnail size on Amazon.

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Kathleen

August 22, 2011

Ditto TerriAnn — these are great covers.

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TerriAnn Gill

August 22, 2011

I like these covers alot. I hate the comic book quality to many fantasy book covers I’ve seen. And these are thankfully lacking that. I totally love the celtic design the covers are framed with. Great job Holly!

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WandersNowhere

August 22, 2011

Ooh. Ooh. Ooohhhhh. Yes. I like this a LOT. I’m leaning a lot more toward finding covers that have something elegant and symbolic of the story appealing (vs ‘generic fantasy hero on a hill with a dragon in the background’) and with something like this, you can identify the trilogy instantly. Bravo 😀

How do you do the central images, Holly? Do you draw them out yourself?

Reply
1. Holly
  
  August 22, 2011
  
  I haven’t had the time to do any drawing in ages. I get all my images from http://BigStockPhoto.com
  
  I do a lot of work on them once I get them. For example, in the Ariss example (Fire in the Mist) I took two little vector images of castles, made multiple versions of them, flipped them in different directions, and stacked them into a fortified city on a tall hill. 😀
  
  But so far, every single image on every single cover has come from BigStock.
  
  The text and separators (gold circles, gold squares, stuff like that) I do myself with ArtText. http://www.belightsoft.com/products/arttext/
  
  Reply
  1. WandersNowhere
    
    August 22, 2011
    
    Clever way to do it, and it came out very well. And the font’s clean and readable, which beats out some published books where you can’t even read the title at a glance.
    
    P.S If you’re ever pressed for time and in need of painting-style digital art (though I’m sure you’ve got plenty of this kind of contacts already) let me know. I don’t have credentials but I do have examples and I’d be willing to come out of retirement to help you ^^
    
    Reply
Stephanie Black

August 21, 2011

These covers are sleek and sophisticated, I like them!

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