Book Covers Are the Secret Sauce for Me

Our topic this week is appreciation for our cover artists and I LOVE working with Fiona Jayde. She's been my go to cover person for all my scifi romance novels since my debut SFR Wreck of the Nebula Dream in 2012.  She also did my fantasy romance cover and my most recent ancient Egyptian paranormal romance cover.

The cover is such a key for helping readers find your books - the artwork has to look good in a thumbnail size, tell the reader what genre it is and draw them in to come read the blurb and hopefully one click and start reading. It's a very important piece of the marketing and it's also my reward to myself.

Our process is that usually about halfway through writing the novel, I'm ready to have my gorgeous cover as inspiration while I write the rest of the first draft. I go to the stockphoto sites and search for "the guy", which often takes me half a day and does get exhausting. Yes, even looking at gorgeous sexy guys can get tedious LOL. I use a lot of different search terms and can sometimes ferret out photos no one else has used. Or very few people. Or at least not yet! I send Fiona an e mail with maybe ten to fifteen possibilities although I'll tell her which ones are my favorites.

She winnows through those and kindly doesn't ever tell me which ones are totally impossible. Sometimes she can find alternate poses of a guy that I perhaps liked but whose photo wasn't suitable for a romance cover. In the early days before I really understood the limits, I'd often gravitate to pictures where I'd say things like, "He's great if we could change this or make that different..." Which of course you can't do in a stockphoto, although some minor changes can be made. Fiona is very patient and collaborative, which I value highly. I've learned so much from her!

Even though I write strong heroines, for me the process revolves around the photo of the hero. Make of that what you will! I rarely send Fiona photos of the heroine, unless there's an unusual aspect, like the alien sleeping beauty in  Trapped on Talonque, where I lucked into finding a stock photo of a woman with purple braided hair, exactly like Bithea, my heroine.

Since the 'branding' we've evolved usually has the couple on the top of the cover and an alien scene on the bottom, I'll send her a few stock photos to give her a general idea - is it spaceships, planets, alien cities, a rock concert - but I trust her to find the perfect heroine and the perfect 'landscape'.

Fiona evolved the 'Veronica Scott' scifi font and cover layout.

Sometimes I just ask her to go creatively wild and do the cover from scratch, as with The Captive Shifter, and wow, do I love the results! She knows the genre-specific and reader expectations and can make a cover to fit.

Until my current Badari Warriors series, my best selling book of all time (in its release month) was Star Cruise: Marooned and I really give credit to Fiona for the cover, which I felt at the time and still believe had a huge positive effect because it was so eye catching.

We've also had Fiona do the covers for all three annual editions of the Pets In Space anthology.

I also have to give a giant shout out to Frauke of Croco Designs, who did the cover for my first published book, Priestess of the Nile. She captured the essence of the book so perfectly and I felt so blessed to have her cover art on my first ever release. I believe Carina Press asked her to do the cover in part because obviously she loves crocodiles and the Crocodile God is the hero in the novel - it was all just perfect serendipity.

Frauke has also done a number of my other Egyptian covers and I love them too. When working with her I filled out a questionnaire, similar to what fellow SFF7 member Vivien Jackson described in her post here on Wednesday. I sent a couple of Egyptian images as 'mood' and a few covers I admired but then Frauke developed the covers herself.

Cover Artist Praise

 Danielle Fine does most of my covers. It's a good thing, too, because on those forms for authors, when cover artists ask if you have a vision for the cover, I always do.

And it pretty much sucks. 

For Damned If He Does, I'd figured on some artsy cover because the hero is a frustrated artist. And maybe because I grew up with those kinds of covers out of the 70s and early 80s with geometric shapes in once bold colors that inevitably faded by about the third year the book had been on a shelf. 

Danielle kindly led me down the path of PNR reader expectations for this cover. And even if the cover seems to promise something the book doesn't deliver (I had concerns this cover conveyed a really hot read and well - the heroine is ace so while the story has its share of flames, they aren't the sexy kind, much) this book is already one readers either love or think should have been a short story. So eh. Point of interest. Danielle found the models for the cover and she NAILED that heroine.

She found the heroine image for Emissary, too. After I'd looked and looked and looked. This heroine isn't 20. She's at the end of her soldiering career and I really wanted someone who looked like she hadn't just skipped class at the local high school. 

I think my favorite thing about Danielle's work is that whether models match my particular internal vision or not, Danielle always manages to convey the mood of the story. Every single time.

The two Nightmare Ink covers were done by someone at Berkley - I'm ashamed to say I don't know by whom. Because both books are e-only, the covers are simpler and with the first book, the editor and marketing staff chose to go against the UF tide at the time. Most UF covers at the time these came out were barely clad heroines in ripped jeans and leather. Some gorgeous covers came out of that, but Isa wasn't that kind of bad ass heroine. She has her strengths, but fighting isn't one of them. At least, not physically. The only issue we had with the covers, in my opinion, was that the first book didn't actually convey any hint of magic. I think the Bound By Ink cover does a better job of that. It's more atmospheric, too. But this is the difference between publishing through a traditional publisher and publishing your own work. With a traditional publisher, covers are collaborative to a point. Past that point, you can't ask for further changes in the cover. On books you publish yourself, you can pursue THE perfect cover to the limits of your budget. I have a dream to be able to commission original artwork for book covers. Just because I love painterly covers and if I could pay an artist whose work I love - everyone wins.

Cover Artist Love: Paul Young

I've said many a time how happy I am that my covers have all been done by Paul Young.  He's created a look and feel for Maradaine, while giving each series its own flavor, and he's done that by being very aware of the nature of the work, and being receptive and giving with his talent.

Now, I could go into further raving about his work on my covers-- like ALL DAY-- but I've done that before, and I want to do something a bit different.  I want to highlight some of his other works.  Pieces of his for other covers for other writers that really worked for me.  Evocative images that draw my curiosity about the stories hiding behind them.  That's a big part of what Paul does, and I'm glad a piece of that work goes to my books.

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.

Cover Artist Love: Gene Mollica Studios

Shout out to the awesome team at Gene Mollica Studios who have done the covers for my Immortal Spy series. I've drooled over Gene's work for years. When I had a series for which I wanted a custom photo shoot, he was #1 on my list. He and his team have been awesome from go, inviting me to be a part of the process, explaining to me how things worked. From costume design to choosing the model to the actual photo shoot, the whole experience was ridiculously fun.  When I mentioned my girl was going to have shadowy tentacles in the later books, I expected him to balk; instead, his enthusiasm went up a notch.

Gene has assembled an amazing team who are lovely, lovely people who are excellent at what they do and at making you feel like your project is their priority (even though, psht, you know they're busy AF, but they are super responsive). I give them a cover-input email and my mss in a Word doc. They send me a beautiful finished book. (Okay, yes, there are a few revision steps in between.) Behold the pretty:

I am so pleased with the first three covers, I can't wait to see what Gene & Team come up with for the next four! (Once I write the books, of course.)

In Praise of Cover Artists

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but I'm here to tell you that's a blatant lie. People do it ll the time, whether or not they should.

That's the nature of the beast., A good cover can make or break a book and so can a bad one.

My first few book covers were, well, horrid. I mean that. The publishers asked for cover ideas and it was like they took the best I could offer, tossed it aside and hired their next door neighbor's five-year-old nephew to handle it for them. They were work-for-hire books, but that didn't matter even a little to me. they managed to find the worst possible covers as if to prove something to themselves and to me. What they proved to me was exactly  how much a cover can affect sales.

The thing about being a midlist author is sometimes the publishers give you some control and sometimes they don't. In the small presses I could ask for and often receive the artist of my choice. In the big houses, it was "this is what you're getting."

Somewhere along the way I managed to run across publishers who actually consider your suggestions and, gasp, artists who actually read descriptions. The covers for the entire SEVEN FORGES series and for the TIDES OF WAR are all done by one man: Alejandro Colucci. Alejandro is an amazing talent. he also, gasp, actually reads the descriptions I send his way and then does his very best to follow them. His best, by the way, is stunning, as evidenced by the covers below.

In addition to Alejandro I want to point out the stunning talents of one Dan Brereton. Dan is a longtime friend of mine and has been kind enough to offer up several illustrations for covers of books that I am either self-publishing or doing through a small press. THIS IS HALLOWEEN. ONE BAD WEEK and SLICES are all covers created by Dan. His normal work is in illustrating fro his own NOCTURNAL Comic book, or for Marvel or DC Comics in some circumstances. frankly I don;t know how the man has time tp breathe, because if I were in charge of the hiring of artists, he would never have a moment's rest. 

Trust me: get a great cover and your book will be noticed. Get a crap cover and the book might well suffer here are a few examples of great covers from fantastic artists.

I am very, very grateful!

Meet My Awesome Cover Designer

The Arrows of the Heart

Our topic this week is Cover Artist Praise. An easy topic for me because Ravven is an amazing cover designer. She's done all three of these for me and clearly rocked them all. 

The Snows of Windroven

 Her portfolio speaks for itself. I can add that she's prompt, efficient, delightful to work with and somehow manages to pretty much nail the cover image the first time, every time, with only minor tweaks needed after that.

The Shift of the Tide

I would like to take a moment to clarify that a cover artist and a cover designer are not necessarily the same thing. I was at Bubonicon yesterday and was on a couple of panels about self-publishing and I noticed fellow paInelists and audience members conflating cover artist and cover designer. Basically, a cover artist does the actual artwork and the designer lays out the titles and font, does the spine, and generally adjusts the art to make an effective cover. In this case, Ravven does both, but not all artists can design covers, and not all cover designers can create the art.

Also, I'm excited to announce that I'll soon have another Ravven cover to share! On November 13, we'll be releasing SEASONS OF SORCERY, an anthology with me, Grace Draven, Jennifer Estep, and Amanda Bouchet. I'm 90% sure my story will be from Harlan's point of view. Should be pretty awesome!

Proud to be Living My Writing Dream

The Author of that marvelous
fairy tale

What am I the most proud of in regard to my writing?

The fact that I have twenty five books published and people besides me actually read them. I love notes and comments from readers about how they’ve enjoyed the books!

I’ve always written, since I was seven and did my first self-illustrated fairy tale about a princess with many sisters, flying cats, flying horses and a riverboat captain hero.

My image of a successful writer at that age was Jo from Little Women, writing in a drafty attic. I never understood how she could make a living at a penny a word though, and her choice of Professor Baer always puzzled me.

I envied (and admired) Andre Norton, who was one of my favorite authors and I had the feeling I could write stories too, with science fiction and a lot more romance. Which of course is what I do now.

Not the Author
DepositPhoto 

I NEVER once thought I could make a living as an author. I went through wanting to be a nurse (hello Cherry Ames, RN), an astronaut (hello geometry and trigonometry and goodbye dreams of being a scientist because I can’t “math the sh*t” out of anything), a teacher (because I idolized several of my high school teachers, which led to a disastrous choice of a college which led to my dropping out after a major illness to marry my high school sweetie – ok, there were a LOT of other factors involved in the situation and the marriage part was the BEST thing I ever did….where was I?!)

I got a business degree because my late husband and I were partners and he was so good at long range planning, which started with both of us having degrees, good jobs, then our first house, then a station wagon, then a baby…

I went to work at NASA/JPL because I loved all things to do with the space program, I could work in contracts and related business areas for them…and stayed for a fulfilling and challenging career full of new experiences.

Yes, they got off the roof. Published
many years later, much revised!

But I never stopped writing. Sometimes it went on hiatus for a long time due to life happening, as when my husband was killed in a bicycle-truck accident when the children were 3 and 5…yeah, it’s a family joke how many years my poor characters were stuck on a temple roof under attack by bad guys because I didn’t touch the writing for so long after being widowed…The stories never went away - I was always thinking about plots and ideas because that's how writers are, but all my energy had to go into the daily effort to keep going and keep the family going.

And in 2010 when I had an empty nest after a LOT of life happened, I dug in and decided to make a real effort at becoming published. I had a few rejection slips here and there over the years when  I got brave enough to send something off into the void but had never made a serious, let’s-get-our-craft-skillz-up-to-par effort and attempted to conquer show vs tell and head hopping and a number of other things…

First book sold in 2011.

Published by Carina Press in January 2012.

Self published my first scifi romance in March 2012.

Left JPL to become a full time author in February 2015.

Not writing in a drafty attic for a penny a word, no difficult professors on the horizon to date or court or be courted by…but living the dream! Of course Jo didn't have to deal with the challenges of promo and marketing and social media and the vicissitudes of various ebook seller platforms and all the other things an author of today must juggle...but in general I get to spend the majority of my time working on my novels and I enjoy a lot of the 'other' activities. Twitter is my favorite thing! I just can't let them eat up too much time or I never do get the words on the page.

So there you have it.