Celebrate with Author Heidi Belleau & Artist Vivian Ng on the REV New Cover Reveal and Collaboration! (giveaway)

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New Cover Celebration with Author Heidi Belleau and artist Vivian Ng!

Nothing makes a reader sit up and take notice then the cover art on their books, whether the books are in print or eBook format.  Covers pull us in and give the readers hints to the story and characters.  What better way to bring a story back to life than a new cover?  Here we celebrate new covers for the Rear Entrance Video stories, the author and artist and their collaboration!

Re-Covering Rear Entrance Video – Vivian Ng’s Process

Hi, I’m Heidi Belleau! Over the coming days I’ll be touring the web showing off the gorgeous new covers for my queer NA rom-com series Rear Entrance Video, all about a diverse house of Vancouver roommates who wind up running a dilapidated porn store.

Today on the tour, Vivian Ng tells us about her process designing these gorgeous covers:

I got brought on to do these covers by Heidi and worked under the direction of L. C. Chase (who I’m gonna add are both really great to work with). Essentially I was told that I’d be doing a re-cover that would appeal more to a broader audience, which I interpreted as, play down the sauciness, and play up the portions of the book that speak to a general YA fiction crowd. I feel like it’s worth noting that I actually went and read all three books. I don’t think that’s usually something illustrators can afford time-wise, but I was given a generous amount of time and I knew I would be much more confident submitting whatever the product ended up being if I’d seen the work myself instead of relying entirely on summary docs and art direction (not that those things were lacking). Also I was genuinely curious about what was in the books!

So, just as a general theme all three books have something to do with the main character struggling with self-expression in their personal and professional lives. And what I picked up from reading them as a way to represent that on the covers was how Heidi centred on clothing as a significant part of how her characters constructed and expressed themselves. I also had this idea that flat colours, neatly arranged objects, and slightly messy hand-lettering already have some precedent in YA book covers. From that core idea I basically just had to play around with composition, text, and colour under L. C.’s direction.

Vivian brought us lots of different concept sketches, which we’ll be featuring later in the tour. Riptide’s art and marketing people worked with me to narrow down our favourite choices, then tweaked those designs until we had a very gorgeous, cohesive set of images that really spoke to the books.

Vivian’s focus on clothes and objects worked really great to represent:

Christian’s carefully structured image—occasionally knocked into disorder and chaos—for Apple Polisher,

 

and Rob/Bobby’s experimentation with femininity and androgyny as he came into himself as bigender/genderfluid in Wallflower,

and lastly, Austin’s attempt to fit kink (and queerness) into his life and identity as a hockey player in Straight Shooter.

Be sure to check out the series at Riptide (and don’t forget your coupon code to get a great deal on Apple Polisher!), and also give the artist, Vivian Ng a visit: http://viivus.tumblr.com.

Rear Entrance Video (Universe)

Welcome to Rear Entrance Video, Davie Street Village’s very own backdoor triple X store! The peep show booths are sticky, the sex toys are out of stock, and nobody’s collected any late fees in months.

Enter the store’s new manager, uptight teacher-hopeful Christian Blake, and his four misfit college roommates from Noah Hadley’s house for wayward gay boys: reluctant landlord Noah, mysterious bad boy Max, vain jock Austin, and awkward gamer geek Rob. Together, they’ll try to run the store . . . without letting everything they’re hiding—from the world and each other—run it into the ground.

Stories in the Rear Entrance Video universe include:

• Apple Polisher (Rear Entrance Video, #1) by Heidi Belleau
• Wallflower (Rear Entrance Video, #2) by Heidi Belleau
• Straight Shooter (Rear Entrance Video,#3) by Heidi Belleau

 

 

About Heidi Belleau and Vivian Ng

 

Author: Heidi Belleau

Heidi Belleau was born and raised in small town New Brunswick, Canada. She now lives in the rugged oil-patch frontier of Northern BC with her husband, an Irish ex-pat whose long work hours in the trades leave her plenty of quiet time to write.
She has a degree in history from Simon Fraser University with a concentration in British and Irish studies; much of her work centred on popular culture, oral folklore, and sexuality, but she was known to perplex her professors with unironic papers on the historical roots of modern romance novel tropes. (Ask her about Highlanders!)

When not writing, you might catch her trying to explain British television to her newborn daughter or standing in line at the local coffee shop, waiting on her caramel macchiato.

Connect with Heidi:
Blog: www.heidibelleau.com
Twitter: @HeidiBelleau

Goodreads: goodreads.com/heidibelleau
Email: heidi.below.zero@gmail.com

Cover Artist: Vivian Ng

Vivian Ng is an illustrator and occasional comic artist living in Mississauga, Ontario, working mostly in watercolour, ink, and digital media. Vivi’s hobbies include watching children’s cartoons, reading fanfiction, and drawing entirely too much fanart.
http://viivus.tumblr.com
https://twitter.com/VViiNNG
http://cargocollective.com/viivus-draws/

Apple Polisher (REV #1)

Buy it here at Riptide Publishing.
This straight-A student has a dirty little secret.

Christian Blake dreams of being a kindergarten teacher, but making the grade means maintaining a squeaky clean image: no drinking, no drugs, no swearing, no sex. And definitely no falling for his new roommate—tattooed bad-boy Max, who may or may not be a drug dealer.

Most of all, it means no working at a porn store. But Christian’s aunt has cancer, and her beloved Rear Entrance Video will go bankrupt if Christian doesn’t take over managerial duties. Soon enough, Christian finds himself juggling sticky twenty-five cent peep show booths, a blackmailing employee, and a demanding professor who likes to make an example of him.

And then there’s Max, who doesn’t know anything about the store, but hates Christian’s preppy sweater vests and the closet Christian forces him into when they’re together. Max just wants Christian to be himself—even though Max is keeping secrets of his own. Christian struggles to find the impossible balance between his real life and the ideal one he thinks a teacher needs to live . . . all while trying to keep his aunt’s dream alive without losing his own.

Wallflower (REV #2)

Buy/find out more about Wallflower here at Riptide Publishing.
This gamer geek has a pretty little secret.

Art student and MMORPG addict Robert Ng has always been a loner, but he’s recently made it his goal to make more (IRL) friends. Which is how he winds up working nights at Rear Entrance Video, shilling sketchy porn and blowup dolls as a favor to his roommate. The longer he works there, though, the more he realizes he’ll never be truly happy until he becomes the person he is online: his female persona, Bobby.

Bobby is cuter and funnier than Rob is, and a thousand times more popular with boys. Becoming Bobby IRL presents its own set of challenges, though . . . especially when you’re sitting on the fence between two genders, only one of which has caught the attention of your seriously cute customer/classmate.

Dylan Ford is a six-foot Inuit comic book artist who always says what’s on his mind, and screw anyone who doesn’t like it. As rough as he appears, though, Dylan has a soft spot for Rob. But will out-and-proud Dylan still want Rob if he’s not all man?

Straight Shooter (REV #3)

Buy/find out more about Straight Shooter here at Riptide Publishing.

This macho jock has a crooked little secret.

College hockey player Austin Puett is in trouble. Unless he starts treating his flamboyantly gay roommate with respect, he’ll lose his room and his job at Rear Entrance Video. But Austin’s got a not-so-straight secret of his own: nothing turns him on more than insults implying he’s gay—even though he’s definitely not!—and all his old coping methods have stopped working.
Pure desperation drives him to rent a Mischievous Pictures porn flick about straight men tricked into servicing Puck, a male dominant. Instead of letting off steam, though, it just leaves him craving more, more, more, and suddenly, Austin finds himself at Mischievous Pictures Studios for an audition. After all, you can be Gay For Pay and still be straight . . . right?

But meeting Liam Williams, the real person behind Puck, confuses Austin even more. Liam really seems to like him as a person, and Austin likes him back. And while Gay For Pay’s okay, what does it make Austin if he still wants Liam when the cameras aren’t rolling?

 

Contest

Giveaway at Riptide Publishing….

Use coupon code REVRECOVER to receive $2.00 off the ebook price of Apple Polisher!