Monday, February 28, 2011

I'm On the Road: Get Inspired

Amanda's Wrinkled Pages has a great series that talks to authors about finding inspiration in unlikely places. Today, she's letting me take the stage (or is that the page?) and telling a few stories about things that inspired me and what I learned from them. 
It’s Everywhere!
When Amanda first asked me about writing something for her Get Inspired series, she said she was looking for stories about inspiration from unexpected places. One such event popped into my mind immediately, but in reality, I get inspired from weird places all the time. I’m a firm believer that inspiration is all around us, and the trick isn’t to find inspiration, but to figure out what to do with all those bits and pieces of it.
Read the full article here.

2 comments:

  1. Just out of curiosity, how did you come up with your final cover for THE SHIFTER? Were you involved in the process? Did you have an idea of what you wanted or did they just turn it over to the designer and you had to be satisfied with the result?

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  2. I've been very lucky in that I've been involved in the process from start to finish on my covers. I even got to design the concepts for BLUE FIRE and DARKFALL. Most writers just get handed final art and have no say at all.

    For SHIFTER, we went through several illustrators, but nothing was quite right. They were all beautiful, but something was missing. I sent in some reference photos I used while writing as inspiration, and someone in the marketing department put together a mock up using those photos and clip art. It was the hands. We (me, my editor and agent) took one look and we KNEW that was the cover. A new illustrator was brought in (the amazing Brandon Dorman) and soon we had a cover. I did a post on it when it first came out:

    http://blog.janicehardy.com/2009/06/cover-me.html

    This covers the whole process and shows the files from that first mock up to the final art.

    For the next two books, I did mock ups myself and sent them in. Both times, Brandon chose one of my mock ups and use that concept for his illustration. He made them better, but they're my ideas.

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