I added Piper's amethyst necklace (that she wears to transform into rock star Maeve) to the cover. (It's not exactly how I pictured it, but the best I could do working with vector graphics)
Now I just have to finish writing the damn story. I need a good ending.
Also, have you ever seen these "alternate" SVT covers? I see them on eBay sometimes. They look like vanitas. Weird. (They never looked like that when I was buying them in the 90s). My latest cover was inspired by those, I guess.
See:
Just pooping around... Not sure if I like this. Also, can't get Steven to look right. And Piper isn't wearing her Goth makeup, because that is difficult for me to Photoshop (and by that I mean use GIMP).
OR how about this:
the background is supposed to be Piper's spellbook
ETA: here's a slightly better scared/ worried Steven:
The "photo frames" deal makes for clunky graphic design, but I can only use Artbreeder to make "headshot"-type portraits.
So, this happened. Not sure what I'm going to do for the cover illustration. I really want to use the GAN-generated portraits.
ETA: Ok how about this:
(if I re-do all the covers I'll have to pretend the GAN portraits are all polaroids, otherwise I'd have to Photoshop in some shoulders/ rest of their bodies)
All the Pipers. I made her up, and now she's real.
Glowy eyes and windswept hair (fittingly, upped the "chaos" on this)
I posted some of these on Facebook.
Here are the twins (Elizabeth and Jessica Wastefeld):
I need to Photoshop their eyes more "blue-green, the color of the Pacific Ocean" and see if I can make a dimple. Also, it's difficult to change just the hairstyle on a face. You end up slightly altering all the features.
Some "scared" versions of the twins:
and here's some different versions of Steven. The first good one I had was a kind of illustrated style instead of photo-realistic, so it didn't "match". (Using the "art" slider to make it more photorealistic sometimes turns into what looks to be a different guy.)
And here's "Fallon Morrison" aka Piper from book 2 The Witch. (It's difficult to make people look a certain age, like *exactly 12*, you have an age slider and you have to eyeball it.)
Here is in her Halloween witch makeup, which scares Elizabeth and Amy and grosses out the Unicorns (did this in GIMP):
And here's some "Amy Sputter" (Amy Sutton in SVT) and "Maria Sleeter" (Maria Slater in SVT):
Oh, and Tobias. So, in the Babysitter he looks 16-17 (to match Piper's apparent age, even though in "real life" - when they're not terrorizing insipid twins - they are adults). The first few "good" ones I made looked like Tobias but were that painted/illustrative style that didn't match the others. And converting it to a "photograph" made him look different/not like Tobias.
Not that I necessarily have any more free time. Since the pandemic started, and the subsequent shitty response by the US government, I don't go out much any more. I go to work 2-3 days a week, and work from home the other days. I go out shopping mostly to buy groceries, although I'm broken that rule several times. (Because sometimes shopping for things gives me an emotional lift, but obviously I always wear a mask). Now I'm like, for real now, buy "fun" things online and only go out for groceries. Because this isn't going away any time soon.
So, anyway, I'm going to end up republishing book 1, The Babysitter, because I noticed a discrepancy in the way Tobias is referred to. He introduces himself as Tobey to the twins, so they should call him Tobey. But Piper calls him Tobias, for reasons I explored in other, non-SVT horror parody stories (that haven't been published, because I haven't finished a whole book yet, just many, many chunks of many, many books, and short stories). There were times when Jessica or Elizabeth said Tobias, so that's wrong. As always, you can update the Kindle edition once you've bought it, but paperbacks will have to be re-ordered (in order to have a more "correct" copy). I sometimes think about all the paperback editions that have been published since 2014 that have mistakes/ typos in them, and cringe. Sorry, paperback lovers. I always order a new edition for myself because it's still so nifty to publish my own books.
So I changed that to be consistent, and since Tobias's alter ego in the new book (well one of them, as he plays Maeve the Rock Star's agent, guitar player in her band, and the twins' handsome new substitute teacher) is named Craig Riordan, I changed the name of Fallon Morrison's demon "cousin"* in Book 2 The Witch, to match. He was previously called Craig Ross, and I don't like that name anymore. Also the name "Craig" is suitable for this "Super Hideous Edition" (The Twins and Their Rock-Star Witch Babysitter - which is a parody name of SVT #55, Brooke and her Rock-Star Mom) because it means "rock" LOL. (As in, a craggy rock, not rock music).
I've been working on the Super Hideous Edition a lot lately. Maybe because it keeps me sane in these hideous times. (I shouldn't complain obviously, because I'm white, I can still afford rent and food, and I have health insurance. Many US citizens are not so lucky.)
So, maybe that'll get published at some point. I need to do a cover illustration and determine the number of pages. The cover will probably be sea foam green. (SVT had lighter covers for Super Editions, and darker covers for Super Chillers. And the Magna Editions were all Christmas-y).
*only not really, obviously, because incest, but the twins don't know that 12-year-old Fallon is really 17-year-old witch Piper, and twentysomething Craig is really 16-year-old Tobias, and that they're lovers (and not related). Because that's all part of Piper's plan.
