Ronit J

In this post, I’m going to talk about the book, as well as my process about how I made the cover for Abandoned by the Gods myself.

I’ve spoken about my short story collection a few times before. I revealed the title on my social media some time back. Now, the wonderful folks at SFF Insiders have helped me reveal the cover as well!

Here’s something interesting about the cover. I made it myself! That’s right, I’ve been toying with graphic design for over a decade now. Banking on those skills, I decided to make the cover for Abandoned by the Gods myself.

About Abandoned by the Gods

Genre: Fantasy, Grimdark fantasy, Indian fantasy
Word Count: ~30,000
Number of short stories: 4
Cover design: me!

Details

Welcome to Adeva…

A land abandoned by the Gods themselves. The mortals that were left behind built a rich thousand year history full of legendary exploits.

But history doesn’t remember everyone. Written by the victors, written for them, history has a bad habit of neglecting many.

This collection features four tales of those hapless souls that history forgot. A girl sold into divine servitude who would threaten to change the face of Adeva’s history, a noble forced into dacoity fuelled by vengeance, a princess in forbidden love compelled to make an impossible choice, and an ordinary woman fighting to survive through a mad god-king’s reign, this collection is an attempt to honour their humanity, to celebrate those who dared to defy norms, dared to thrive despite fate being against them.

Welcome to Adeva. Your faith will not protect you.

Cover Design

Unlike my debut novel, I didn’t have a professional designer for this one. Since I have some experience with graphic design, I thought I could take up the challenge. But it’s more than just a challenge for myself.

Why I decided to make the cover myself:

Help! My Dog Is The Chosen One! had a designer attached to it. Since it was my debut novel, I wanted the cover to have a professional touch. Plus, I also had a professional editor polish my draft before publication.

However, with Abandoned by the Gods, I had neither. Mostly because of budget and time constraints.

For starters, I am releasing Abandoned by the Gods to offer my work at the bare minimum cost. In fact, the plan is to offer the ebook version of this collection for FREE.

If I was planning on offering this content for free, I wanted to see if I could create it for free, using only free resources. And yes, I won’t deny that it is a cost-saving decision. However, if my final product wasn’t good enough, I would’ve abandoned it and gotten a designer on board.

In my honest opinion, I think the cover I made has turned out pretty neat. I’m happy with it, so I’m rolling with it!

How I made the cover:

My cover is divided into 3 distinct elements – the background, the handprint, and the text.

For the background, I used the Sketchbook app from the App Store to create a paintbrush texture and added some blood splatter to it. This process took the most time for me, because I wanted to get the strokes and splatter to look just right. Overall, it’s a basic background image, but with an added layer of colour, blended with ‘Darken’ mode, it gives off just the right vibe.

Once my background was ready, I put it into Figma and added the red overlay I mentioned earlier. I sized it for my book’s print versions and finally added the text. I experimented with different typographies before settling on the one I’ve decided to use. This part was the easiest and the fastest.

Lastly, the handprint, I tried a bunch of different things, before settling on using a copyright-free graphic from Freepix.com. Originally, I wanted to avoid using elements like these. But, I wasn’t satisfied with the different elements I added. None were able to capture the vibe I was going for with these stories. Finally, when I put that placeholder handprint before moving on, it looked just perfect. So, I decided to keep it. For context, I took two weeks to finalise this, including me trying to learn basics of Blender so I could include some kind of token from my stories.

The final step of this process was to get my designer’s (The Hyphn) input. I happened to show it to them when we were working on the hardcover editions for my debut novel. After some minor changes, I had their seal of approval. That’s when I locked the cover and was ready to move on to the next step!

Why The Handprint:

I’m going to leave this one open to interpretation. When you’ve read the stories, you might have a better idea. Or not. Who knows?

Finally,

I was really nervous writing this post, because this project is my first step towards my dream book. A trilogy, really, set in this godless world of Adeva. I’ve been building this Indian-inspired fantasy world for a while, and with Abandoned by the Gods, I’m a step closer to sharing it with the world. More on that in future posts.

At the time of writing this post, I have received feedback from four of my eight beta readers. It’s looking promising, and I’m glad I was able to pull this. off. The ARCs for Abandoned by the Gods should be ready soon. Keep an eye out for the announcement, if you’d like to read the eARC!

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Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Also Read:

• How I made the cover: Island of the Dying Goddess