Whatever Happened to Dexter Gaines?
For me, the most important element of historical fiction is verisimilitude. To focus on the “believe” in “make believe.” Visuals have always been a vital component of my writing, and I often create Photoshop images to give vibrant life to whatever world I’m writing about, whether “look books” and “pitch decks” for television, or photos of the people and places in my fiction. What started as a Facebook ad campaign for And Introducing Dexter Gaines became a full on made-up mocked-up article from the old sleazy Hollywood tabloid magazine Confidential, which was then fictionalized to an even sleazier publication called Hollywood Undercover. I hope you get as big a kick out of it as I do!
The first cover I designed was the more realistic of the two, being as how it featured an article about Lillian Sinclair and a subheading about Dexter. When I decided to use the cover in an ad campaign, I realized I needed to fudge reality and feature the star of my book! Dexter is the cover boy. on the first image, then the alternate with Lillian is shown.
Full disclosure: I abhor pretty much everything about AI as it pertains to writing, creating, etc., but have found some of its photo enhancing tools to be quite useful. For example, adding a 1940s hairstyle to a contemporary shot of a real person, changing their wardrobe, enhancing the quality of old photos, colorizing for certain effects, animating real images and so forth. The real celebrities should be obvious, but as for my fictional characters, specifically Dexter Gaines, Milford Langen, and Lillian Sinclair, they are all enhanced photos of real people, either licensed or friends who’ve given permission. There are no AI generated faces. Enjoy!
