Drawn on: 12-9-08, colored on 12-9-08 | This is the cover I designed for my first finished novel, Masks in Moonlight! As mentioned in the last pic, the characters who are now in the moon (this is how I know it wasn't a perfect circle...) are, clockwise from upper left, Tavi, Mihael, Caia, and Konrad (I still <3 Konrad). The guy silhouetted in the foreground is Dante, my main protagonist. I know he's hard to see, since he's, you know, mostly black (I thought it was a dramatic effect). But he's got black hair and he's not a girl, so he can only be Dante. (Caia also has black hair, Tavi has brown, and Mihael and Konrad are both blondes, though Mihael certainly isn't a dumb one and Konrad... well... er...)My original idea was Dante standing at the edge of the upper tier of Aarboridge looking out at the slums, but then I realized that in order to have the moon in the picture I'd have to draw all the way to the docks. I made one attempt and realized there was no way I could draw it, and then I did this.
When I showed it to my sorta-co-author Carmen, she said it was just like me. She said the cover she would've thought up would've had Dante's profile on one side and Tavi's on the other, facing each other but a little downward, both wearing their masks, with a moon in the background between them. I told her that sounded like the cover of a Harlequin romance novel. I didn't put the veil on Tavi 'cause it would've been a pain, and I didn't put it on Dante 'cause I needed to maximize skintone space. And I like my dramatic cover better. The story doesn't focus enough on the romance for Carmen's cover idea. Though it is just like her that it's the only thing she thought of for the cover. And it's just like me that the thought didn't even cross my mind. My original idea wouldn't have even had Tavi in it.