Creativity

This is my favourite book cover of the Z-Virus series. A lion with red eyes around carnivorous plants.

The same book cover designer did all three of my book covers for the Z-Virus series.

I don’t think I’d change this cover. I really like it.

I got a mid-priced book cover designer to design Z-Virus Powers off Fiverr. At the time, I was still writing the book and all I knew was that it was about: zombies and teenagers with supernatural powers. I also knew that I wanted the book cover to have a red theme.

The book cover designer and I went through a different versions to come up with this, the final version.

I do have to say that I wasn’t 100% happy with it, but I listed the job with little requirements and came away with a reasonable book cover.

I still don’t know what I’d do to make it better. Perhaps, now that it’s written, I would have a designer create The Battle of Anglesey Bridge scene in the book.

But this will remain the cover, unless it becomes a huge commercial success.

I love this cover and designed it myself using images on a commercial licence from a Spanish student.

I wanted a cover to catch the eye and cover practically every aspect of the human body. I managed to create this using GIMP (think Adobe Photoshop only free) and am rather pleased with how it turned out.

Some have said the title could have been bigger or shorter. The title is the size it is, because I didn’t want to detract from the illustrations too much.

The long title reflected how I felt about my body at the time: I didn’t know there were so many ways the human body could go wrong.

My Royal Navy Friend is perhaps the worst book title and cover in my published works, because the book really isn’t about The Royal Navy.

Instead it is about a friend away on deployment and about maintaining our friendship through emails on a variety of entertaining, interesting and funny topics.

But because this book is so personal, at this time, I’m in a place where I don’t want to change the book title or cover. One of the reasons is because I can’t think of anything better.

This was another cover designer on Fiverr. He did an excellent job including all my requirements.

Surprisingly, The Alcohol Therapy Workbook didn’t do well in terms of sales on its release. However now, they grow each month.

I love the broken champagne glass as a symbol that alcohol can effect anyone, even the more affluent and as a symbol of what alcohol and indeed any addiction can do to a person’s life.

The photo for this cover was intended to make someone thing magic. I think it does that.

But the image width was too thin, so I had to put the title of the book down the right-hand side to take up space. I tried making the image bigger, but it skewed the image. So this was the best I could do.

I still think it’s a good attempt at a cover, especially as it was only the second one I had ever designed.

This was my first book and perhaps the most personal. The cloud represents depression and the colourful umbrella represents things I need to stay mentally well.

I’m perhaps most proud of this book cover and book.