~ NO DAMAGE DONE TO THIS COVER! ~

I may have to rename this segment "The Steven Novak Worship Corner" because I just love my cover artist's work! Today I'm going to share with you the development of the cover for my newest release DAMAGE DONE.


Okay, so this one is set in Ireland...I'll give you a blurb ~


When an unhappy youth leaves him damaged, will Teddy Mckee be able to find love?

“Teddy Passmore McKee was born in Cork, Ireland, with a limp and a chip on his shoulder that threw his balance off all the more.” When he falls in love with the dark haired beauty born of an Irish father and a Spanish mother, will Gabrielle Quinn be able to restore his balance? And what about the charming Sean Hennessey? When Gabby catches his eye, too, will Teddy’s playboy best friend cause his own damage?


Fourteen years later, will Teddy and Gabrielle’s son be able to overcome the damage done to him in his childhood?

“Even through bloodshot eyes he could see she was different.” But can Michael leave behind the bottle, and his womanizing ways, to win over the lovely Tess Flanagan? Tess has sustained some damage of her own. Can she and Michael overcome the terrors of the past and learn how to love each other?


And if they do, will they be able to elude those after them who want to create their own damage?

On the run after an altercation leaves their boss in a pool of blood, will Michael and Tess be able to stay one step ahead of their pursuers? Or is it simply too late to correct the damage that has been done?




I sent this blurb to Steven along with this, copied and pasted from my email:


So, a lot going on here! A book told in two parts. The love triangle of Sean (good looking blond), Gabrielle (dark-haired, dark eyed), Teddy (brown hair, plain features, but handsome) in the first part. And the love story of Tess (long,red hair, green eyes) and Michael (looks a little like Johnboy Walton).


What I see: I like the covers we've been creating lately! The REAL ROMANCE COLLECTION generally has that banner with my name, some handsome hunk or couple or something, and the setting at the bottom. Setting is Ireland so you could go with green fields, thatch roofed cottage, sheep, or cliffs and sea (there's an important scene that takes place there). We've also got barns, bars, and churches as major scene settings. Color wise I'm thinking maybe mostly white, with a splash of green for font and/or banner. But as always, I'm open to your brilliance. I attached some images that I got off of BigStock to make my teasers with. Oh, yeah, and I'll be wanting a couple of your fab, teasers, too. I'll send some quotes in a separate email when I get the MS back from my first editor in a couple of weeks.

In short, the cover needs to say Irish romantic suspense and be consistent with my branding. I'll show you the first two covers from the collection.

THE HEART TEACHES BEST is FREE for the month of August to celebrate my release of DAMAGE DONE! (Had to get that plug in there!) ;)








The first cover Steven sent me for DAMAGE DONE was phenomenal. I just loved it. But it was wrong for my book.

We have the whole sexy thing here, the pub, even bikes. (Sean rides a motorcycle and that's touched on several times in the book.) But with the image blown up more, I notice the girl's nails, and to me, they're hideous! And it's just not saying Irish to me. The pub could be a bar, and we all know there's a huge difference there. I'm just kidding, but I needed more Irish. These were images I sent him, by the way. I'm sure he was like, but these are the images she sent me! But being the great guy that he is, Steven made me up another cover from the images I sent. Now, keep in mind, you may not agree with the decisions I made to come up with my final cover, and that's fine. I really did love this cover. Sigh. I even love the colors. So here's what he came up with next--->

Again, I love it. We have the Cliffs of Mohr, they say Irish. I like the couple. She looks pensive, the bottom's a little spooky, I think that can hint of suspense. I'm actually pretty sold on this...but I want to mess with it some more because I'm just that much of a pain in the backside. I feel like the all white with the fonts is washing it out a little bit, and my girl has red hair, and I don't really want to change it. It's kind of one of her outstanding features. So Steven works his magic and I get this--->

Much closer. We've got a tagline now. I'm feeling the Irish. But there is a strand of the girl's hair near her face that's blond and bugging me. I also ask Steven to change the title, which I just told him to make green, back to white. That's how I roll.

The next cover is great. 

The title looks good in white, he's gotten rid of the blond hair...but we still need a little more tweaking. I've been looking at the girl's hair and it looks fine when it's small, but big it comes off brassy. And there is a green mist behind the title now that gives it a sci-fi feel. Plus my editor wants me to take the "to them" out of the tag.

The girl's hair looks slightly less brassy. It's a subtle difference but I think we are as close as we're going to get. The final change I ask him to make is again to the color behind the font. The white, I feel, washes it out. I ask Steven to make it grayer, like in the first cover with this couple. And here's our finished product. --->

Did my changes make it better, or screw it up? We'll all have our opinions, but I feel Steven has done an excellent job of capturing my book in visual form.

I hope you enjoyed this. And now, if you think you'd be interested in the pages behind the cover, here is where you can purchase DAMAGE DONE:

You can find DAMAGE DONE at:

Amazon: http://amzn.com/B00LU7719K

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/damage-done-mj-schiller/1119955011?ean=2940149795697

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/damage-done-1

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id899251690




You can find M.J. at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/MJ-Schiller-Romance-Author/286382241460365?ref=hl

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/mjschiller/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mjschiller

Tumblr: http://mjschilz.tumblr.com/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/mjschiller

Google + : https://plus.google.com/u/0/110797684036386240402/posts  

What are your thoughts on cover art? 

Does the cover weigh in a lot when you're choosing a book?

Is there anything that tends to annoy you on covers?

~ FOR THE COVER CONSCIOUS GETS THE INSIDE SCOOP FROM STEVEN NOVAK! ~

So Steven, you’re a freelance graphic designer, an illustrator, a cover artist, and an author. What do you do in your spare time? Ha. That is an amazing amount of talent in a number of different areas. With all of these freelance gigs, do you have time for what we authors call a “day job?”

Actually, graphic design is my “day job.” Besides book covers, I do a lot of work for social media professionals, web graphics, and I’ve done a little product design in the past. It keeps the food on the table long enough for me to stuff it down my gullet, extract the nutrients and process the waste.

Biology!

Ah! Colorful answer! I would expect nothing less. Your bio says you’re from Chicago but now you live in Southern California. What took you out there? Do you like it in sunny California?

I was actually at school in Ohio when I met my wife online. We maintained a long distance relationship for a year or so and met a couple times in person. The day I graduated I informed my mother that I was moving in with her, and that she lived in California. I also let my mother know that she was ten years older and had a son that was only seven years younger than me.

So that went over well.

Actually, believe it or not, she was completely cool with it.

I think she was just happy I’d met someone. I was a bit of a weirdo growing up, a loner. I can count the friends I had in high school on zero hands.

That was almost fifteen years ago.

See? I knew exactly what I was doing.



I was the same way growing up, Steven. They

say geniuses are often ostracized, so that would explain our problem. When did you first become interested in art?

I can’t honestly say I remember an exact time. I’ve always loved drawing. It’s really the only thing I was ever any good at growing up. I had an “unusual” childhood. Sometimes it was good and sometimes it was really, really, really bad. I loved books, and comic books, and writing, but drawing was my friend. I could always count on it and it was always there. Still is.


It's always good to have a way to escape our cares. You have art, I have writing, and I hope many of our readers have reading! According to your website you’ve written seven books and three picture books. Your Breadcrumbs for the Nasties series is about a post- apocalyptic wasteland. Tell us more about that and your other writing.

Yeah, I’ve written a lot of stuff. None of it has ever sold very well, but honestly, I haven’t bothered to do a whole lot of promotion, and that’s probably not why I wrote any of it in the first place. Unlike graphic design, writing isn’t putting any food in my belly.

Unless you count that one Subway sandwich I had that one time.

It might have paid for that.

Breadcrumbs is a project I started about a year and a half ago. It’s told from the perspective of a ten year-old girl who is left alone in a world filled with monsters and human beings that are a heck of a lot worse than monsters. She meets a mystery man who barely talks, but seems to have her best interests in mind for some unknown reason. There’s a lot of action, a couple comments on humanity, and some overly descriptive grossness.

The goal of the project, and the reason I got excited about writing it, was to spin every genre trope on its head over the course of the series. The people you want to live probably won’t live. The people you want to die probably won’t die. The story isn’t what you want it to be about, and by the time the series end you’ll probably want to punch me in the face.

If that doesn’t make you want to buy it, nothing will.

Since you’re my favorite (and only) cover

artist, I want to ask you a few questions about that. On the average, how many prospective covers do you create before you and the author settle on a final product?

Awww shucks… * blushes *

It depends. Every cover is different. Every author is really different. Honestly, most of the time the process is pretty smooth. On average, most covers tend to take about three-to-four days to finish. I pride myself in being exceptionally fast and flexible.

I’m also pretty cheap. As an indie author myself, I’m well aware of budgetary constrictions and price my work accordingly.

If you’re an indie author looking for a quality cover at a quality price drop me a line at: novakillustration@gmail.com

Seems I’m far better at promoting my design services than my writing. Go figure.



I can vouch for all of that. Steven is fast, professional, patient, and inexpensive. How often do you have an author take your first design without requesting any changes? (My cover for Taken by Storm I loved right from the start and asked for no changes.)

That’s pretty rare. There’s usually something they

want tweaked, even if it’s something really little. There have been a handful of occasions when the first version was signed off on though.

I love those occasions.

I really do.



Describe your most frustrating experience when creating a cover.


Eh, I don’t know that I can think of something specific. I’ve been doing book covers for indie authors for a little over two years and only twice have I had to tell an author that it just wasn’t working. I’m not a quitter. My job is to find a way to give an author exactly what they’re looking for and sometimes that takes a little back and forth. On the couple occasions when I couldn’t make it work with an author it was a mutual parting of ways. You can tell when it’s not working and it’s not really anyone’s fault. Not every designer is right for every project. It happens.



Is a difficult when an author asks you to change what you feel is a perfect cover and make it into something you don’t personally like?

(Steven also does great teasers like above.)

Nope. Not at all. Not even a teeny, tiny bit. It’s not my cover. It’s not my baby and it’s not my vision. If I’m not especially fond of a cover I do for someone I never have to look at it again. If they don’t like it, that really sucks for them. It’s the face of their words and they’ll have to see it every day. My job as a cover designer is to bring someone else’s vision to life, not mine. I can make Steven-specific art on my own time. And I do.








I'm very proud of my Steven Novak cover

art and have some of it framed and use it as my desktop wallpaper. Love it! What is the oddest thing that’s happened to you during the course of you career?

Hm. There was a period of time around 2009 when the economy tanked, and I couldn’t find work, and I ended up vacuuming the local Best Buy at 4:00 in the morning just to make ends meet. By the time 4:30 rolled around I was scrubbing the toilets in the ladies bathroom.

Three years later I had the most financially successful year of my adult life.

So that was pretty “odd.”



Finally, who is your favorite client? (bats eyelashes) Just kidding, you don’t have to answer that. It’s been great having you on.

Of course it’s you.

Then me. I love the covers I do for myself.

I’m very agreeable.