Cover stories – Ghosts of the Lost Forest

Nimue Brown

March 1

(Nimue)

In the normal scheme of things, when you put out a book you want a cover that alerts the reader to the genre. Matching your genre is a good way of flagging up that you know your stuff, and of course it helps the right readers to find you.

Pagan fiction is not a huge genre. Witchlit is definitely a thing, but none of this is established enough to have any genre conventions where the look of the book is concerned. What this cover does first and foremost is flag up that this isn't an urban fantasy novel or a paranormal romance. Although if you like that sort of thing there's a possibility that this story will also appeal. I'm more at the Charles de Lint end of urban fantasy.

It is a cover that suits the story. Within the tale, there are paintings depicting the spirit of the forest of Arden. Having a face that is human-ish but not human works well with the book. There is both mystery, challenge and something uneasy about that face, I think.

The cover was created for me by Keith Errington, and while there was a bit of photoshopping involved, there was no AI. All of the photos you can see here were taken by Keith. The background tree photo is of a hazel that grows not far from where we live. The foreground laurel leaves were also close to home. The wood texture in the face comes from a photograph of a cut tree trunk. The face itself is something Keith drew digitally. It's worth noting that digital art and many of the ways of working with photoshop require skills and knowledge, it's not just about feeding text prompts in.

The paperback version of this book is up on Amazon now. I'll be releasing an ebook version in a few week's time. As usual, the ebook will be free or pay what you like. I'll be posting more about this story over the next few weeks, including ebook links once that goes live. If you want to be alerted every time I put up a new ebook, your best bet is to follow me on ko-fi - https://ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T