All About Covers

The results for the All About Romance annual Cover Cafe Contest are in, and you can see them here. Three of the covers I voted for (or against, in the case of the Worst Cover category) made it: Two Image, Contemporary, and Worst. I love the “Alternate Reality” cover winner (Maria V. Snyder’s Poison Study), though I voted for the C.L. Wilson, myself.

I love the Contemporary winner (pictured right) and have ever since I first saw it. I think the author is somehow anointed by the cover gods. The book, btw, is about crime and retribution (a good bit of running people over with cars in municipal parking lots) in a small oyster farming town. I know, seems a bit incongruous to the cover, right?

Or maybe I just covet this cover for my own. I think something like this would have been great for the SSG books. So mysterious and feminine and vibrant. (Yes, you can make the argument that Rose & Grave members wear black and only Elysion members would be in red, but Amy never wears a polo shirt with a sweater tied around her shoulders, either, so there you go.) Can’t you just see that woman being Amy, though? I can, all wrapped up in her society robes, keeping her own counsel?

Covers have been at the forefront of my mind of late, since I’ve had not one, but two conversations about my new covers recently. To be fair, having a conversation about your cover, as an author, is a bit like having a conversation about whether you’d like a boy baby or a girl baby. Fun to think about; but doesn’t have much bearing on the results. My publishers are nice enough to ask me what I think, and I’m pretty sure they want me to like it, but they design the covers for my books, and they have the final say. Usually, all an author can do when presented with a less than ideal cover is make suggestions for tiny adjustments and hope for the best.

Though I only have three books in print, I’ve had five covers, since Secret Society Girl had a different cover for the hardback version, and those of you who saw the ARC know there was an earlier cover as well. Now the series has a nice theme going on, and the covers all match. My favorite, of course, is the cover of Rites of Spring (Break), which I think not only best captures the tone and essence of the novel, but is also the closest representation of Amy. For once, she’s in an outfit I could actually see her wearing. The coolest story behind the cover is that the designer picked the yellow bikini all by herself, and when I first saw the cover, I was so excited by the yellow — Amy’s favorite color. (You may have guessed by those shoes.) I think Amy looks very strong in this picture, confronting the water before her.

Now, of course, we’re planning the cover for the fourth book, which is circling ever closer to a final title. And by “we” I mostly mean “they”, but my editor and I had a lovely chat about it and I put together a list of suggestions. I always have a cover in my mind when I’m writing a book. It’s easier for me to picture because I know what the “series look” is. I can imagine a cover in that “family.” I know what I’d love the new cover to have on it — the images, the colors, etc. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that the powers that be agree!

My YA novel is a whole different kettle of unicorns, though. For RAMPANT, I have been dreaming about this cover for ages. I dreamed about single elements and action scenes, I had nightmares about fluffy cartoon unicorns and “gossip girls with bows” — as a brand new book series in a brand new genre, it could look like just about anything! I’ve been visiting all the YA shelves and noting a few distinct “looks” to the novels I’m seeing (can mostly be classified into: “We want to look like Twilight,” “We want to look like Uglies,” “We want to look like a Great and Terrible Beauty,” “We want to look like Gossip Girls,” and “Black and Metallic”) and I am wild to find out which camp I’ll fall into. Or will it be its own creation? The countdown is on. The nails are being bitten.

I know the designer has worked out an initial comp that people are excited about (I’m excited just from hearing the description). They had the casting call last week, and I’ve seen pictures of the model my designer and editor chose (she looks awesome — very smart, and strong, and unconventional). I can totally picture her as Astrid. Next week is when the photo shoot happens, at an undisclosed-location-slash-horse-farm. I wonder if it’s the same place Jessica Burkhart had her cover photo shot? Hmmmm…

Interestingly enough, the place Astrid shoots her first unicorn is at a farm as well. Gotta save those sheep!

In other, NON cover related news, I’m the author of the month at Romance Divas. Next week, I”ll be giving my popular plot boarding workshop there, but there’s an interview up already, and you can see it here.