Hello again, all! Been awfully busy around here, but I wanted in on my cover artist
Eithne Ni Anluain's blog tour, so I just had to drop a few less-important things and post about my dear, dear Eithne!
I met Eithne - never personally, but we're internet friends - a couple years back when I held a cover contest on
deviantart for
The Unbound Series Book 1: Hazy Shade of Winter. There's something mildly insane in trusting a bunch of strangers to first create and then decide upon the image that will grace your cover, but when they're also a bunch of talented artists...well, it's not all that crazy, after all. Eithne, a gifted "computer artist" and freelance illustrator, created a cover that absolutely floored me, and when she won, I confess I was thrilled; her talent begot a book cover that
itself has actually motivated a
great many people to pick it up, story be darned.
When it came time for me to think about a cover for Book 2: Sun is Burning,
Eithne was on board. It took her only a few days to put together another amazing image, set the type, and sort out the dimensions...all for substantially less than I'd pay another similarly-talented professional.
Eithne is a dream to work with, and aside from the
myriad book covers she has done - one of which was for my mother's book,
The Very Name of Christmas - she also dabbles in fantasy at its finest. (I have one of her works framed and
hanging in my bedroom; aaaah, digital art!)
She's been featured in a number of photoshop magazines, interviewed by all sorts of industry moguls, worked for publishing houses, and her work can even be found on the cover of Suspense Magazine...not just on dozens of books! She illustrates stock photography, yes, but she can also do her own model photography, design sets
and props, and find costumes and models. Her clients range
from mainstream and fantasy NYC and London publishers, to mainstream and specialized
magazines and motion picture houses.
The best thing about
Eithne, though, is that while she creates
amazing fantasy art, ("
A rock is just
not a rock, it’s a hiding place for faeries!")
she as a person is one of the most down-to-earth, REAL people I've ever met. She's as Irish as Irish could be, loves canines, her parents, and nature, and she never fails to make me laugh or feel like her one and only customer, bless her Irish heart.
If you get a chance, please visit her website. She's a gem and an angel and a heckuva gal, and it's absolutely worth your time to
get to know her and
her work! Thanks for all you do, Eithne! Looking forward to commissioning cover number 3!
Jess
Aw stop I may actually have a tear in my eye! :-D
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