Prior covers, not created by Parajunkee Design.

When Matt approached me to take on his fourth cover in the Protector series I was a little trepidations. Not because I couldn’t do it, but mainly because I was following in the steps of another designer that had already produced three fabulous covers.  Strict guidelines never work for me. Or at least my designs don’t flourish under strict guidelines, I can competently produce something, but the best work is done when I’m allowed to just interpret and produce. Or at least, so I’ve been told. When I thought about what I wanted to do with Endure, I always got lost in what had been done before. So, I threw out all my prior ideas and decided to focus on everything piece by piece. Matt wanted to go back to a tree as the focal, much like Exiled, the first book. He also wanted to represent a crossroads and the four elements. A lot of things to put on one cover. At least he didn’t request a chick in a flowing dress too, right? That will be the next book (I’m just kidding, chill guys).

So, I focused on the tree.

 Then I needed a crossroads. But there weren’t a lot of crossroads images that I found compelling enough.

I came up with a rudimentary cover…

 But the title wasn’t working and neither was the fire.

So I had to put together all the pieces and parts.

Fire, lightening, fog, sky…but I won’t bore you with all those stock photos, here are a few.

With a few more tweaks and twists, a little fog, a little more rain…we finally had the cover.

This is what they look like together…

This is what it looks like in spread…

So what do you think?

Here is the before, middle and after.

Bella picked up the works, with the Best-Seller package and an extra avatar and graphics.

See the live version here.

More images and fun stuff.

Kait asked for a gritty design that would reflect her sexy Heroes. The covers will have a tribal looking design so those were brought into the design of the site. The heroes of Kait Ballenger books are also Paranormal Romance leads so they had to be edgy, dark and drool-worthy. The site was put together in WordPress.

See the live site.

“Do your thing.”

See it live.

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