The bold and (hopefully) beautiful cover of my short story collection, Unusual Tales for the Curious Mind. I used pre-existing fair-use images of the skull, brain, and eye, but manipulated them heavily to the point where they would not be recognizable from their source image. The title font was custom made by myself and the background was digitally painted from scratch.
Overall, this cover is supposed to convey to potential readers that they're in for a wild mental ride if they pick this collection up.
The original cover art for my first novel, Inner Expanses without the title, author name, and border. Hand drawn in pencil on paper first, then scanned and coloured digitally. It was my first time working on a mixed media piece like this in a very long while, but I'm happy with how it turned out.
The new cover for Inner Expanses. After getting some good feedback from others, I decided to change how the cover of my first book looks. I feel the darker tone is more representative of the atmosphere that I want to convey to readers. It is Dark Fantasy, after all. For those wondering, this creature is Cortex, the antagonist of Inner Expanses. They are a very powerful being from another plane of existence that can travel through dimensions and manipulate matter.
Art that I created via manipulation of existing copyright-free images. This tale (sorry for the pun, I could not resist!) follows Fornus, an important supporting character from my first book, Inner Expanses in a semi-related adventure.
Art that I created with image manipulation and a bit of digital painting. This is the other tale meant to act as both an epilogue and reader magnet for Inner Expanses.
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This story follows Mercae, a dimension-hopping wizard. He's a big fan of fire spells and physics magic (basically telekinesis).
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You can read this one for free as well on the Short Stories Section of Rahaman Writing.
More image manipulation with some font-play. This one is a bit different from my usually work, as it is set in a more familiar environment. It's an urban sci-fi/horror that tells the tale of Valence Vickers, a waitress and aspiring artist, who is left no choice but to defend herself from monsters that invade her hometown from the sea.
This is another tale that you can read for free on the Short Story Section. This is one of the stories that will be in my upcoming short story collection.
A story that I forgot that I had written for years. More of an experiment than at attempt at a complete short story.
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This is the second version of this story's cover. I wanted simple art that had a "clean" and "precise" feeling. I took an existing photo of the star Vega and manipulated the colours a bit before extending the light rays so that the horizontal ones formed a strike through "Absolute".
Having the "O" around the origin of the star's light worked out nicely. I didn't plan for it but this was a design choice that worked so well that I could not pass it up.
Absolute Precision
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This is the first cover that I have digitally drawn from scratch. There are no prior existing elements here.
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This took me the better part of two weeks to make. Somehow, the title is the part that took the longest.
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This was drawn using an "okay" quality mouse in a free program on Pixlr.com. A website I use for both original art and photo manipulation.
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Nature and supernatural concepts are my strong points and I plan on doing more like this.
Open Water is an incredibly important story for me. It was the first short story that I fully wrote after graduating from college. As the first work at a competent level of writing, it encompassed my loves of the sea, fantasy, and, believe it or not, H. P. Lovecraft.
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This is also the first story ever written in my 'Sky, Sea, and Stone' universe. In fact, it was this story that made me want to build this world beyond just a single tale. Unsurprisingly, this will be in my collection.
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Digitally painted from scratch. I Custom-made the title text as well.
Pine Valley Wyvern
While putting this page together, I'm realizing how old a lot of these stories in my upcoming collection (Unusual Tales for the Curious Mind) really are.
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This was another experiment that I started years ago and never finished until the Summer of 2020. It's in a genre that I like to call 'Biological Fantasy'. It follows the perspective of a wyvern living in a remote pocket of forest in a valley set between a few mountains.
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In the future, I'm going to write a whole novel in this genre.
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The art is image manipulation and some cleaning to remove all man-made structures.
Another big selling point for my upcoming collection (Unusual Tales for the Curious Mind) is The Birth of Mancafar. This cosmic horror tale actually follows the perspective of the horror in question. Most stories in this genre show you things from the human perspective, but I wanted to do things differently.
I want to show readers how a cosmic horror comes to be. Where it starts and how it becomes something that fuels nightmares. I wrote this in tiny segments over the course of years as a hobby/time killer.
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The art is a heavy degree of image manipulation that is akin to solving a puzzle with pieces that I tailored to fight one another. I also custom altered the font.
Winter's Maw
Probably the most gory thing that I'm willing to publish under my own name. A truly sinister tale about domestic abuse, supernatural torture, and the cold apathy of the frozen north. I'm going to include this in my collection, because it's one of my better works, but I think I may need to put a disclaimer before it.
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Follows the perspective of a child named Theo, who is subjected to horrid visions of a cruel and bloodthirsty wendigo.
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Another cover that required a heavy degree of image manipulation. I custom made the font for this as well.
A tale set in my Sky, Sea, and Stone world. One ruled by forces greater than most can even perceive.
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This story follows the brutal assault on a couple within their own home and what happens afterwards.
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Driven by madness, a young woman seeks that which was stolen. In doing so, she discovers secrets in the depths and the location of the fiend who wronged her.
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Though, maybe she shouldn't have.
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More image manipulation.
A Mad Current
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A Mad Current
The Ferrous Fiend
The Ferrous Fiend
Set in my 'Sky, Sea, and Stone' world, this story follows a race of organic metal people.
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They inhabit an island free of humans and with very different forms of life. All living beings on this island in the far west seas are comprised mostly of metal, like these humanoids.
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But one day, in an iron mine on the north of the island, a hideous monster appears. The miners send for aid and the call is answered by the mightiest legion of warriors from their civilization.
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Heavy image manipulation and much colour-tweaking were involved in creating this cover.
Another tale set in my 'Sky, Sea, and Stone' world, this is one of radiant horror.
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Inspired in certain aspects by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, Ascending shows you the difficulties facing monks residing within an ivory temple resting upon a mountain.
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Though, this is no ordinary temple, as it was formed from a bony fragment from a massive, prehistoric being. The ferocious past echoes loudly for one poor monk.
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Intense colour alteration and some image manipulation went into this cover.
The Cosmic Fool
This cover is arguably unnecessary for a 100 word story but when it comes to creating content practice makes perfect.
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This tale tells of a hungry fiend upon a desolate asteroid on a collision course with a star. There is a heavy these of green, as this was initially written for a short story competition where this colour was the theme. Read it here.
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The cover is image mostly manipulation, but I found a way to customize the font through a glitch. One that I think can only be done on the free program Gimp, which I what I used to use on my old laptop.