As a self-publishing author, I decided to take on the job of designing the covers for my books and e-books myself. Previously I had been using a very old version of Corel Photo-Paint (so old, in fact, that it had been written for Windows 95). Every time I upgrade my machine, I wonder if the software will still run. Also, I lacked licences to install it onto all of my machines so, if I had to do any art work, I had to do it in one place. It was time for a change. Having researched the cost of upgrading, or buying something new, I discovered a free tool that has turned out to be a game-changer. If any of you have image creation or image processing to, do then I would urge you to download GIMP (GNU Image Processor). There’s a learning curve (I wasn’t used to dealing with layers, for example) but there are so many tutorials on line, that you quickly catch up). I created both of the images below from a standing start within a week. Armed with GIMP (yes, I know ;)) I created new covers for the e-book and paperback versions of “The Marguerite Effect” and “The Blue Angels”. Perhaps it’s the novelty of having new images, but I really like them. Let me know what you think!

This is the cover for my first novel, “The Marguerite Effect”

This the cover for my second novel, “The Blue Angels”