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Cover Reveal

 


Finally, after all this time, I'll soon have another story out!

This is going to be story #1 in a series that I'm still trying to figure out a name for, but right now I'm thinking the series will be called Holiday Wishes, but nothing is certain yet. Don't worry, each story will be a stand alone story, which means you don't have to read them in order.

So I present to you the cover for the first story in this series - Her Secret Santa. I'm busy putting the finishing touches on the story and hope to have it out in a couple more days.

I took a break from it yesterday to do a cover. I do my own covers and I'm finding that I really enjoy making them. I guess all those art classes I took in the past are not going to waste after all.

While I did study art at one time, I don't have any graphic design skills. I won't lie, it really worried me if I could make decent looking covers myself. I discovered that many authors used a free online tool called Canva. So before I started this whole self-publishing adventure, I decided to play around with it and see what I could do.

To my surprise, I made something that didn't look too bad. At least I didn't think it looked too bad. My two Office After Hours stories were made completely in Canva. When it came time to do Her Holiday Fireworks, I knew what I wanted the cover to look like, but I was limited with what I could do with the free version of Canva, and I didn't have the income to afford the paid version. (Which obviously you can do more with the paid version)

Since I'm a nerdy Linux user, I already had Gimp on my computer. For those who don't know, Gimp is a free and open source software similar to Photoshop. So after watching a tutorial on YouTube I managed to make a cover that I couldn't have done with the free version of Canva.

I knew how I wanted this cover to look also. Since so much time had elapsed since I made my last one, I had to re-watch the tutorial and after a couple of hours of work, I must say, I was pretty satisfied with the results.

I still did the text in Canva, because I find it easier to do in there, plus they have a nice selection of fonts to choose from. I'm sure in time I'll just do everything in Gimp. But for now the process works for me.

Anyway I need to get back to those edits. When the story goes live I'll be sure to post it on here with a link, so keep checking back.

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