The Colors of Sin

So, traffic has been up on my Seven Deadly Sins page, and the LOST WAGES OF SIN freebie promo was pretty darn successful. I thought it might be time to discuss the new covers.

When I purchased the rights back to the books, I had the creative license on the covers for the first time. While both Liquid Silver Books and Totally Entwined Group did an admirable job fitting the books, I found they weren’t quite the way I wanted. Ava on the LSB cover is too passive, and a little too bold on the TEG. Obviously, though, I’ve been in this game long enough to understand and appreciate that covers rarely embody the characters. This is why I’ve trended more over the last few years to covers that don’t rely on stock photography.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

Exhibit B.

That said, I did search for stock photos of models that I thought could fit the bill for each character. Hell, I even bought a few to help people better visualize the characters if the need was there. Even these aren’t 100% on, but beggars and choosers, and all that jazz.

Since each book features a different Deadly Sin as the leading character, and since the Seven Deadly Sins live in Hell, I decided to see what could possibly unite the two ideas.

Hell = fire

Fire = smoke

That seems simple enough.

But what about the colors?

As it turns out, there actually colors assigned to the Seven Deadly Sins. Faustian, even.

Holy cow! How awesome is that?

Granted, this took some mental rearranging on my part. I, like most of the world, see lust as a red color, and some modern color palette updates have shifted to accommodate this. But the traditional color associated with Lust was blue.

This is how it breaks down:

  • Greed: Yellow

  • Lust: Blue

  • Wrath: Red

  • Envy: Green

  • Pride: Violet/Purple

  • Gluttony: Orange

  • Sloth: Light Blue

 

So there you have it. If you’re familiar with the colors and the sins they represent, that should be a visual indication of which book features which Sin.

And guys, I’m close to the end. Like, super close. CARDINAL SINS is knocking on the door of 80k, and I’m about to write the black moment. This series, which I started in 2010, is so close to being wrapped up. Granted, Lucifer still gets his book, but I’ll worry about that when I get there.

I was also fortunate to find a smoke pattern with devil horns for that installment. Which pretty much sold me that this was the cover direction God, err, Big J was directing me toward.

Lucifer's book, coming in 2019

Lucifer's book, coming in 2019