I am really enjoying looking again at this historic romance set in Southern Arizona of 1883, a year after the fight at the OK Corral; but I hope I can leave the writing alone for the summer. I think everyone needs to do a variety of things and for over a year, writing has been most of what I have been doing.
Is it really taking a break when I work on the images? It takes a lot of time but doesn't feel like work. Since I love the area so much, love these characters, (not to mention like playing with images a LOT), I love doing it. I don't know if I'd enjoy it as much for someone else's book because this is like doing it for my own children.
The image above is one of those I created for an extended trailer; but it is not the trailer I will make public. And much as I like this one is, it won't be in the extended trailer either.
Before I have discussed how an image like the one above comes together. I might have new readers since then and because I am particularly happy with this one (one of the best I've done not to mention more complicated), I thought I'd go into the way it happens.
With two minutes to play instead of one, I knew one addition I wanted-- a spirited black stallion. The hero's horse is almost a secondary character in the book. I found the right horse and pose with a man on it. Wow-- but not the right man. A very nice looking man but not the hero of this story. I could have just cloned him out of it leaving a rearing stallion, but as I purchased it, I already had another idea.
Because I already had several planned images for the hero, I looked for another that could be adjusted to sit on this horse. There it was-- Eureka! Actually I didn't say that. I just paid me money, took the image and began to adjust it a bit to be the right angle for how that rider had sat on the horse. (This would be so much easier if I ever learned how to do layers...)
Now I had spirited man and horse but wanted background. Here's where my recent trip to Southern Arizona paid off. One of the sets of photos I had wanted was in those desert washes with the big trees. One of them worked beautifully.
Lovely image but wrong setting for the ranch yard where I felt this really should be placed. That meant I had to set that horse and man into yet a different background, create the feel of early summer on the land and beyond his ranch. It is the one that will be in the extended trailer.
I don't consider the one above to be a loss, not just because of its beauty, but by cropping it could someday be a cover if I come up with the right project. I could also see painting it for a landscape if I ever actually do some painting this summer. No reproductions though. My licensing rights don't extend to that (the owner of those rights is no dummy).
What I am thinking now for the future books (assuming the other three go to Kindle), which will be historic, is they will come with the link at the end to extended trailers like this one will be, available only to purchasers of the book with the suggestion that they view it after they have read the book. Afterward it wouldn't ruin the story and would be an enhancement of the experience as the trailer brings to life the energy of the story, the land, and these people.
