Why Perfect Gravity's cover does not feature a shirtless cowboy and robot cat

I've never worked directly with a cover artist or designer. I've never had any say in a cover once it was done.

Aaaand now you're thinking: this gal is completely unqualified to talk about awesome cover designers. You are, as usual, completely correct.

At my level of power in the biz (i.e., none), I don't talk to artists, designers, or art directors. I don't offer feedback on final designs. I don't get a yes or no. If there's something truly wrong about a final cover, I can point out that detail and it may or may not change. I think the reasoning here is that I don't know markets or reader expectations nearly as well as the people who are in charge of bringing my story to the public. So I bow to their experience and expertise.

However! What I can show you is a peek at the one thing I do get to contribute to the cover-design process: an information packet that describes the characters and setting. I send these in at product launch time, right at the beginning, and they are supposed to function as a cheat sheet so the designers and artists don't have to slog through reading the whole book.

I love filling out these things and sharing my inspirations and wishes; it's one of my favorite parts of book production. Here's what I sent Sourcebooks for Perfect Gravity (note that the images I included are all copyrighted, so I can't post them here, but I've included a short description of each in [brackets] and I'm sure your imagination or Google-fu can illuminate the rest):

Hero (Kellen Hockley)	Race:  Texan (okay, not a race, but definitely a type) Complexion: Tan from spending a lot of time outside Age:  30 Body (height/build):  He gets a lot of exercise. Um, I used this image for inspiration: [pic of Scott Eastwood shirtless] Hair color/length: dark blond Eye color (one word):  blue Facial hair?  Nothing really in the story, though he does go a few days without a shave there in the middle and could definitely be scruffy. Clothing: He wears jeans and boots a lot. Stetson sometimes (outdoors only, because down-home manners!). A belt buckle. At the very end of the book, at a fancy-dress shindig, he wears a tux. Thusly: [pic of Scott Eastwood in a tux] Signature Accessory: A cat. He rarely goes anywhere without Yoink, a cloned, bionic kitty. She’s cinnamon-and-white striped and has metal horns protruding from her wee skull, near her ears. The details aren’t hugely important. If y’all decide to put a cat on the cover, I don’t think it matters too much what kitty looks like. [pic of shirtless cowboy holding a cat] My dream cover for this book would feature a shirtless cowboy holding a bionic cat. But probably that stock photo would be really, really hard to find.
Heroine (Angela Neko)	Race:  Bengali/Japanese Complexion: more South-Indian than Japanese, so kind of latte Age:  early 30s Body (height/build):  short, slight, in command (of everything). Bit Napoleonish. Hair color/length: Black. Can be in any style: she goes from having a super fancy updo to being bald to having a short pixie cut at the end. Eye color: dark brown [pic of Priyanka Yoshikawa] Tattoos, body marks or piercings? Nothing that you’d want to feature on a cover. Clothing: Conservative high-fashion futuristic chic. Tailored to within an inch of her life, but with flights of couture weird. In terms of style and deportment, I think of her as a mashup of Huma Abedin, Padme Amidala, and Alexander McQueen. [pic of Huma Abedin in her wedding dress] [pic of vaguely steampunk long-sleeved Alexander McQueen dress with buckles and frogging on the bodice] [pic of Padme Amidala in her heavy velvet addressing-the-Galactic-Senate costume] Key Accessory: Elbow-length biodeterrent smartgloves. (That, uh, just look like regular gloves, those heavy-duty long things the Victorians wore to keep the whole world off their skin.)
Setting/description (similar to first book in series)	The year 2059, so near future. Look should be futuristic but gritty. Western U.S. desert (so, lots of scrub-brush flora and bumpy horizons) with an unexpected giant megastructure (an arcology, like those mongo buildings in BladeRunner) jutting out of a vast, dark nothing.  Also scenes in post-apocalyptic underwater Galveston and a futuristic Guadalajara.
Design ideas/inspiration	This movie poster sums up the mood nicely: [pic of Cowboys vs Aliens movie poster featuring Daniel Craig's backside] Also has cowboy, futuristic-looking tech, impending doom clouds. Nice.
Cover descriptive words	Techno, sexy, old-west, bleak, futuristic

And this is the cover they came up with:

I think the cover is gorgeous. Does it match my vision? Not really. But it fits smoothly into that urban-fantasy kickass-heroine market, which is where I suspect the publisher was trying to place it.

So, yeah, it's probably best I don't have a lot of control over covers. There are people who are much better at this than I am.

But, just the tiniest bit, I do mourn the shirtless-cowboy-with-a-robot-cat cover that never was.