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.

All the Truly Nasty Titles I've Thought Up

Okay… titles, huh? I’m going to have to punt on the expertise here because I’ve never successfully titled a work. Let me explain.

I have two books out. The first was a cyberpunk romance featuring a BladeRunner-type android assassin, and in my overwrought newbieness I called it On the Squeeze. Note the singular lack of cyberpunk or romance imagery there. To my ever-patient editor I submitted more than twenty terrible titles, each terribler than the last. Don’t believe me? Feast your giggler on these gems:

• Lost Things
• Hard Drive
• Hard Wired
• Guardian Machine
• Full Metal Seduction (<-- Seriously, I sent this. Amazing SFR author Cara Bristol had just done a poll on Facebook asking readers what words in a title were appealing for romance, and "seduction" was the clear winner. So I guess I thought I was being marketing savvy or something. Am blushing with embarrassment now, though. Pretty sure this was not the context the voters had in mind.)

Finally, in the last batch via email, I said, um, maybe Wired and Wanted?

At that point, either I’d worn down my editor with the sheer volume of badness or that title was close enough to what we needed. She switched it around to Wanted and Wired, and voila.

But wait! The follow-up book was going to be even more fun to title, for both of us. And by “fun” of course I mean agony. My working title for book 2 was Claws in Chrome, which, again, wasn’t super romancey, but at least it had a cyberpunk feel and called out the robot cat, who is a pivotal character in the story. (I had in my mind the cover image of a shirtless cowboy facing away from the camera, a la Daniel Craig on that hot Cowboys & Aliens movie novelization cover by Joan D. Vinge, only with a creepy robot feline peering over his shoulder, possibly in full ears-back hiss mode. THIS IS WHY VIV DOES NOT DESIGN COVERS.)

My poor, poor editor. 

None of the titles I suggested were even close to suitable, and just in case you don’t believe me, here’s the complete list I sent with the launch paperwork:

• Fire and the Fall
• Desire and the Desperado
• Spurred and Smitten
• Trust and Treason
• Tampered and Tempted
• Bliss and Bravado
• Riled and Ready
• Claws in Chrome
• Evils and Angels
• Passion and Power
• Outlaw and the Oratrix (<-- OH YES! Clearly targeted at readers who always have a dictionary handy!)
• Shadow Trust
• War and the Wild Things
• Fire of Forever
• Best of the Beasts

The title we ended up with, Perfect Gravity, has nothing to do with the book, but lordy is it better than anything I submitted. We may have gone back at revisions and added a couple of lines about the pull of gravity, or the heroine’s magnetic personality being like gravity or something. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool title.

That I would never in a zillion years have thought up.

So that's my unimpressive track record so far. The third book in the series has a working title of … (wait for it)…Bits of Starstuff. And okay fine, I love it and it’s so appropriate for my noncorporeal, sentient-chatbot heroine Chloe. So what it isn’t romantic. So what no stars actually explode in the story. So what it’s punny with “bits” having two meanings, and no one likes puns.

We’ll have to see what happens with that book, but hey, if you have title ideas, please feel free to pass them along. They can’t be worse than the crud I’ve thought up.

Oh no she didn't! (Except I so did.)

Ermaghad, the topic this week is gaffes we’ve made in books, published and pre. I…don’t even know where to start. I am a serial word abuser. (If you ever meet my copy editor, please buy her a drink and promise to never spontaneously make up verbs.) So how about a game of Six Truths and a Lie? In honor of our SFF Seven blog title, here are seven super-embarrassing word crimes I have committed:

1. The fanfiction from second grade where Luke and Leia went out on a date. (Qualification: RotJ wasn’t out yet, so the incest was as yet unconfirmed. Also, I wasn’t super clear what a date was but had some hazy thought that it had something to do with eating pasta together, like Lady and the Tramp.) 
2. The one-act play I wrote in high school, which I intended to be this tense, tragic relationship drama, but the actors got ahold of it and played it as a straight-up comedy and I never told anyone it wasn't meant to be funny. At all. 
3. The tech document I wrote about a public health web site but forgot the L in "public." 
4. The thing with a scuba suit that was so gross my critique partner wrote “eeewww” in the margin. 
5. Same book, I wrote a prologue. 
6. Still same book, I wrote not one, not two, but three flashback scenes. 
7. That fanfiction tale of old Gondor interpreted through a series of limericks. 

Aaaaand of those is a lie.

Dear Mom, Please don't read my books...yet.

Mom (upon learning that I’ve co-written a story that an actual publisher wants to actually publish): Can I read it?

Me: Er, I don’t think you’d like it.

Mom: It’s a romance. I like romances.

Me (silently: Oh, you sweet summer child) and aloud:  Actually, it’s more of a… scene. With three people. Who chat a bit in the parlor and then head upstairs to, uh, not chat. For twelve thousand words. Of nakedly not chatting.

Mom: Oh. Maybe the next one, then.

Hubs: Okay, so I’ve finished reading [the manuscript that eventually became Perfect Gravity – my second full-length novel].

Me: Uh oh, the ending fizzled, dinnit? It needs more guns blazing and cat hissing.

Hubs: No, that’s not what I was going to say at all.

Me: Wait, you and your fancy film degree and years making computer games weren’t going to give me constructive criticism that will definitely make me a better writer after I get over the initial navel-gazingly depressing realization that I’m not quite there yet?

Hubs: No. This one is good. Consider me a fan.

Me, having just received the biggest compliment of my life, sobs and kisses the shit out of that man.

My eldest child grabs a copy of my first-ever published-in-paper book.

Her: This is so cool, Mom. Can I read it?

Me (after slight hesitation for she is yet a Jedi youngling): Er, sure. Just, if you get to something confusing or weird, let’s talk about it, okay?

She cracks open the book and digs in. A couple of minutes later, she closes the book and sets it back in the box.

Her: I’m not allowed to read this book.

Me: Nonsense, I just told you—

Her (interrupting): Three. You have three swears on the first page, and two are the F-bomb. Mom, I’m not allowing myself to read it. And you need to watch your language.

So, to date three of the most important people in my universe have attempted to read my books. One actually made it all the way through. Hey, one of three ain’t… okay it’s a crappy percentage.

But someday I’ll write something without swears or sex.

(Stop laughing, you. I totally will.)