AletheaKontis.com

…and then there was this.
Breathtaking.

My favorite photo of the trip so far, I think. Capturing this brief moment made me impossibly happy.

Today over at the Waterworld Mermaids, I talk about writers who do more creative things than just write…like me…and how those writers CONFUSE THE HECK OUT OF PEOPLE.

I credit most of this to Neil Gaiman and his Sandman comics, circa 1993.

Hop on over and check out my True Confessions!

I’ll be posting one of these a day for the tour.

If you want to peek and see them all, follow me on Tumblr.

In an effort to spend more time on Tumblr, I have discovered (thanks to Alma Katsu’s social media roundup) some fabulous quote-making websites…and I’m having a blast.

Yeah, yeah…I know…now I have to go back to WRITING NOVELS…

No..wait! It’s not what you think!

A while back, fellow Mermaid author Carlene Love Flores dropped me a line to tell me about a really cool project her neice was doing in school.

“Alex’s 8th grade class is doing a group assignment where they have been asked to design a new cover of one of their favorite books and then all these new covers will be made into a quilt.  My niece decided to do Enchanted.”

Unfortunately, the Enchanted square was not selected for the quilt…but that doesn’t make it ANY LESS AWESOME. In this era of cover reveals and cloverflipping, I am honored to have such amazing fan art in my corner!

So, to celebrate this week’s release of Enchanted in paperback, I present to you: Alex’s fabulous new Enchanted cover!

Please gush in the comments accordingly. Thanks!!!

I totally LOVE this frog. And the heart! Just like when I sign my books! So awesome.

If you (or someone you love) has designed a new fan cover for any of my books, please don’t hesitate to share! xox

…at least, that FEELS like how many HERO cover reveals I’ve had to date. But this one is For Real and For True…and already up via publisher feed at Amazon UK. (But don’t ask me why the UK seems to have a December release date — I don’t know that answer yet.)

One again, Art Director Christine Kettner has hit it out of the park.

But my favorite part might possibly be the tagline.

For those of you not lucky enough to enjoy my and Leanna’s EPIC performance at the KGB reading series, there are some great photos up on Matthew Kressel’s Google page.

Just click the photo to enter!

Huge hugs and many thank yous go out to everyone who helped me with yesterday’s EPIC April Fool’s prank, which I have hereby dubbed the “HERO 4.1 April Fool’s Day Project.”

Like all the best jokes, this one began with a seed of truth: There WILL indeed be a 4th version cover of HERO, as-yet-to-be-released (but I promise, you folks will be the first to know. For realz). I was notified about this roughly a week before April 1st, so I took the opportunity (with the blessing of my esteemed publisher) to have some fun and…well…make lemonade, if you will.

Of course, since my favorite artist BFF got struck down with Wretched Eye Gunk From Mars, I scrambled to find other artists willing to pony up in only a few days time.

Here are those  wonderful, amazing artists who came through for me in such a short time, as well as the locations where their covers popped up yesterday around the internet. You can also view the full HERO Variant Covers Album HERE.

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Marc Vulteich (HERO: Deadpool)
When Marc Vuletich is not leading the ranks of Deadpool’s Zombie Army to world domination, he spends his free time drawing comics. Marc has an undying love for everything comics, movies and video games which helps to motivate and inspire him to pursue his goals in the comic book industry. Marc currently resides in the beautiful city  of San Diego, CA.

Marc’s art illustrates webcomics written by Emily S. Whitten for news sites such as MTV Splash Page and ReelzChannel and collected at http://askdeadpool.com/comics, and more of his art and webcomics can be seen at Vulture34.deviantart.com and scarletvulture.deviantart.com.

I was so awed by Marc’s gorgeous artwork that I didn’t even notice the Deadpool nod at first. HA! Marc’s cover of HERO was featured on Goodreads (split the day with Bradley), as well as A Backwards Story and I Smell Sheep.

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Bradley Powers (HERO Hooping)
Bradley is a very good friend of mine, whose art I’m proud to say hangs in a place of prominence in my house: on my fridge.

10-year-old Bradley decided to use herself as the model for this particular HERO cover, changing Saturday Woodcutter’s infamous sword into a hula hoop for her hip-swaying pleasure.

Bradley’s illustration was featured on Goodreads (she split the day with Marc). as well as A Backwards Story and I Smell Sheep. She is also still my Facebook profile picture.

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Quinn Conner (HERO Collage)

Quinn is six years old, and already poised to be Queen of Everything. She’s possibly the only person I know with more natural go-juice than the Energizer Bunny.

Quinn–who also has a permanent art installation on my fridge–has lately been into collage work.

She and her fabulous mother Lesley (hi, Lesley!) composed this piece together…yet it was I who ultimately slapped it into the Spoof Template and added the tagline.

A labor of love AND a collaborative effort, all in one!

Quinn’s cover was the cover photo for my Facebook Fan Page all day yesterday.

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Avery Flynn (Hero Wars: A New Hope)

Fellow Waterworld Mermaid sister Avery Flynn was the first of my friends to jump forth into the breach and therefore inspire many more covers in her wake.

Avery and I have a history of silliness together, as evidenced by this impromptu video interview we put together last year at the WRWDC Writing retreat. (I still have no idea why it seemed to have filmed in mirror-image.)

You can find out more about the fabulous Avery Flynn, her antics, and her latest sexy book releases at her website: http://averyflynn.com/

Avery’s cover was revealed in the crossposted blog entry that appeared on the Waterworld Mermaids blog.

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Alethea Kontis (The Desperate Herowives of Arilland; HERO: A Fabulous Boy and His Sandwich)

Some of you might remember–back in February, after my grandmother’s funeral, I stayed with my sister Cherie and we took this picture of her, posing like Saturday Woodcutter in her velour tracksuit of the same color as the dress on the cover.

The second after I came up with this April Fool’s prank, I knew that I wanted to use the Cherie image for my HERO spoof cover. I dusted off my photoshop skills to add multiple Cocos (Cherie’s toy shih-poo) and change the title, in honor of the vapid crap my big sister actually made me watch. *sigh*

But as the day went on yesterday, I had so much fun revealing all the covers in all their various locations that I decided to make another one. I incorporated an idea the Faory Godboyfriend had along with a picture of my brother West I had been saving and…VOILA. The Boy and His Sandwich was born.

I am only sad I didn’t end up making a cover that featured Soteria as well.

The Cherie cover was featured on this website yesterday as the new cover reveal.

The West cover was featured on the Books page of my bibliography (where the placeholder image for HERO is now.)

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I hope you all had as much fun as I did hunting down all these different covers yesterday. And to the one or two folks who might have thought any of these covers was serious, I sincerely apologize. HERO 4.2 will be coming, and it will be amazing.

IN THE MEANTIME…are you sad you missed out on the fun? Are you jonesing to make YOUR VERY OWN SPOOF COVER OF HERO? Well, now’s your chance.

Using the HERO Spoof Cover Template (or not), create your most gorgeous and/or hilarious image and send it to me (akontis at gmail). I will post all of the covers on Facebook in the HERO 4.1 April Fool’s Day Project Album. Whichever one has the most “Likes” by the time I leave for WRWDC (let’s see…we’ll call that April 18th), the artist will receive A SIGNED COPY OF THE HERO ARC.

Here’s your template:

Go forth and make good art!

(Crossposted to The Waterworld Mermaids)

Sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the windshield. Yes, folks, HERO really is getting yet another cover. This is the way of publishing, and I am so glad I have you all along for the ride.

When I was but a wee lass attending the Ingram Publisher’s Showcase (may it rest in peace), Harlan Coben once gave a hilarious talk–with slides–about the progression of his book covers. One of these days, maybe I’ll be able to give a similar talk. It may go a little something like this:

Once upon a time, I was approached by Harcourt and asked about a cover concept for HERO. I was sent various pictures of various models holding various swords, from which my editor and I picked the one we felt most resembled Saturday Woodcutter. Here’s what we chose

…and here’s what we got.

Now, I really couldn’t complain — Girls With Foofy Dresses on the Cover have been proven to sell more copies by the Marketing Powers That Be. Plus, it more closely resembled ENCHANTED, which I was told to believe was a good thing, since ENCHANTED actually did pretty well.

And hey: it’s gorgeous. If Saturday had to be wearing a dress, she should be wearing the only dress she’s worn in her life, right? The one from the first ball in ENCHANTED. It actually *does* factor into the novel…in a sideways sort of fashion.

I only made a few nitpicky comments, just to be a Good Author and earn the “cover consult” we so painstakingly negotiated into the contract. One of those points was “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was someway to have dragons in the filigree?”

So they came up with this:

Which was AWESOME! I made tons of swag with  this cover. The ARC has this cover. I made tons of swag with this cover.
I am now trying to give away all my swag with this cover, because a Professional Calligrapher happened to be in the neighborhood and did this:

…and again, I can’t complain because it’s just MORE GORGEOUS. Subtle and intricate and beautiful.

And then a Beatific Cover Angel descended from the sky and said, “Behold! Harken ye unto my words and your book will be adored by bookstores the world over.

So more tweaks were made. Some roses were added to the filigree, like ENCHANTED. A tagline was added to the top, not like ENCHANTED. Lo and behold, we once again had a new cover, blessed by the angels and now–once again–officially signed off on as the new-new-new-reallysupernew cover of HERO.

There was also a slight title change.
BUT ISN’T IT GORGEOUS?!?

Your thoughts are welcome in the comments below. And, as always, sharing is encouraged.