{"id":248,"date":"2026-11-01T12:29:42","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T12:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/?p=248"},"modified":"2026-11-01T12:30:34","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T12:30:34","slug":"more-covers-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"More Covers and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s time to choose the cover for ‘Sudden Deaths’<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought about a view of Hampton Court Palace (HCP) in 1653 for my new cover, as there is a chapter based there. I looked for a picture showing the way that it looked mid-seventeenth century, but could only find a sketch which did not show the river entrance that I wanted to highlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even this took a long time – it’s not easy to persuade Google to show you pictures (or paintings, or sketches) from the mid 17th Century (trying prompts like ‘1650’ [too specific], or ‘Early Modern’ [too general]) which often gave results ignoring the period altogether or 16thC or 18thC, or even 1680, which showed the re-modelled HCP, post accession of William & Mary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results included the series of paintings known as the ‘Hampton Court Beauties’, also post 1677 and not quite the prominences of HCP I wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end I gave in and asked ChatGPT to give me a view of HCP in 1650 and it came up with a really nice picture it had cobbled together from a variety of drawings and paintings of the period. It showed exactly the features I wanted and came with a legend showing what the different parts of the building were – though I then asked it to remove the labels, which it did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image betrays its AI roots in the shadows – one chimney has its shadow alongside it – and the boats that have wakes, showing they are in motion, but no means of propulsion (perhaps they have outboard motors!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless it would have make a perfectly usable cover, the details being too small for any but the fussiest critic. In the end I decided that, since almost all the action in the book is in the London area, I should use another picture of London, as in the ‘Urchin<\/em>‘, but I’m keeping that one up my sleeve until publication day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s time to choose the cover for ‘Sudden Deaths’. I thought about a view of Hampton Court Palace (HCP) in 1653 for my new cover, as there is a chapter based there. I looked for a picture showing the way that it looked mid-seventeenth century, but could only find a sketch which did not show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}