I posted lots of other stuff yesterday when it was actually #1LineWed, so here’s this week’s line that’s actually three because I have no self control.
Speaking of no self control…I got clean line art back from the artist doing my illustrated covers for the next series, and I asked her permission to share some of it, so here’s a cropped version of the image that will be on Throne in the Dark:
Ahhhh, aren’t you dying???? I AM DEAD.
Here’s the artist, Anna-Mariya’s, Etsy shop. She has been amazing, and her style is perfect for what I have in mind. I know as a self-published author that my covers are supposed to be, like, identical to everything else in the genre, but I really wanted soft, illustrated covers with this series, and I’m hoping the style and the feel of them draw people in. Plus, there are plenty of alternate covers to really popular fantasy romance that look a little like this, so I’m playing off a mix of those and traditional, old-school fantasy that had like half-naked, illustrated barbarians and knights on the cover lol. (No, Damien and Amma won’t be half-naked on these covers, btw.)
Anyway, I got this line art back this morning and had to get up and walk away because it was so damn good and just bringing me to tears thinking about how these books are coming together and how the art is going to be so perfect and how I cannot wait to get them out into the world. There’s still a lot to do, but also so much has been done, and it feels like September both can and cannot come fast enough.
I don’t want to put too much stock in this series, especially when the next one will pivot so hard away into the contemporary, urban fantasy detective genre, but I have really high hopes for these three books. I’d like them to help me find my audience and figure out if I belong in the self publishing world or not. No one book, or even series, can probably do that, but, in an otherwise sorta meh situation, it’s nice to have hope.
A.K. Caggiano 