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Published on 4 Comments on Book Cover Art: It’s A Process

I'm getting close to hitting the Publish button on the first book in my YA trilogy. Yes, I realize it's been in the works forever. I completely understand if you consider this the writer version of crying 'wolf'.

However.

Of the four of us in my critique group, three have committed to publishing our books before the end of this summer. The fourth writer, Rachel Knox, has already pushed Publish and is far ahead of us. If you enjoy reading fantasy, check out her books!

Jim and Dan, the other two in the group, have already chosen their cover art. As usual, I am bringing up the rear. Here's where you come in. I've narrowed my search to two designs. I'd like to hear what you think about them.

Once I decide on a design, I'll contract with a cover artist to create the various cover art graphics I'll need in different aspect ratios for e-book, paperback, audio book, thumbnail, etc. Those of you who know me know I am always sorely tempted to DIY stuff. But I learned the hard way that unless you have some graphic design or other similar art skills, which I most certainly do not, if you DIY your cover, it runs the risk of looking like garbage.

These books are a young adult, or YA, trilogy in the action genre. There is no romance subplot. Think young, nerdy Mod Squad. Three teens getting into all sorts of hijinx as they take on some bad guys. So I will need something that lends itself to a series of books, and not just a standalone. The main character is a guy, but an important secondary character is female.

I found this art on Canva and played around with it to add the title info. You may notice the Canva watermark. If I purchase this option, that will go away.

I really love the colors and the splashy, chaotic vibe. But I am not sure if similar art is available for books two and three. And my friend Dan pointed out that without any specific images to communicate what the book is about, the title suggests romance. He's not wrong.

Here's the second image I am considering. I found a group of images on the iStock website that are inspired by the propaganda style of the Cold War era. When I saw the fork, I took that as a sign, since food plays an important role in the plot.

I don't think I'm quite there yet with the font. But I love what I consider the strong action vibe. No mistaking this for a romance. And there are several other similar images available in the same style that I could use for the other two books in the trilogy.

What do you think? Feel free to drop comments, or even some pix of great cover art, in the comments. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it!

Click-O-Rama

  • I have several pins of propaganda-style art on my Pinterest board. But this is the one that really grabbed me. It's from an old Taco Bell ad campaign.
  • I must admit I'm addicted to any articles regarding cover art that float my way. Some, especially those from the rarified air of Literature with a capital L, take my breath away.

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Published on Leave a comment on Liberate Your Lexicon

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I love to read. I love talking books with people who love to read. They are my tribe.

There is a subset of our tribe: people who enjoy reading the same book more than once. Apparently they return to their favorites every so often just because they enjoy the story or the style or some such.

As you may have surmised, I have never been one of those people. I'm all about the Ooh, Shiny. What's new? What's next? What's a book I've always meant to read but haven't gotten around to yet? When I read a book that I absolutely adore, I usually buy it in hardback and put it in a place of honor on the bookshelf. But I rarely re-read them.

Until now. Until I read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Now, I kinda get it.

I need to take a minute here and give props to my kids for steering me in this direction. It got on their radar. Then, a guy in our local library book club was raving about it. I had read The Road, and had seen the film version of No Country For Old Men, so I was vaguely familiar with McCarthy's work. But I hadn't read this one.

Granted, Blood Meridian is not exactly the type of book you cuddle up with as a bedtime story. The formatting is a little wonky. There is no HEA; at least, not that I could tell. It's brutal. It's violent. It's so dark, I feel a little weird as I'm gushing about it to others, worried I might end up on some kind of a watch list.

What's got me hooked is not so much what happens in the story, even though it's quite a tale. It's McCarthy's style. The dialog. The description. But most of all, how he's absolutely, confidently, fearless about word choice.

I'm pretty sure McCarthy doesn't give a hoot about reading levels, or taking the reader 'out' of the story because they have no idea what a 'thrapple'* is. I looked up more word definitions in the week it took me to read this book than I have in the last year. And that's not even counting any of the Spanish (which btw can I just mention I was able to read most of the Spanish on my own, thanks to it being fairly rudimentary, and thanks to mi maestra Roxanne and the free Spanish classes at our local library).

Some of the words, I gave myself a pass for not knowing. I'm a city girl. I don't know much about livestock. I know there is such a think as hobbling an animal to keep it from running off. But I didn't know the knot and rope style used to hobble an animal is called a spancel. I know what spurs are, and in fact am in possession of a pair that used to belong to my grandfather. But I didn't realize the spinny-pokey-thingie is called a rowel. In both of these examples, a lesser author would've probably just used 'hobble' and 'spur'. Not McCarthy.

I learned that planet Anareta is an ancient astrological reference to a harbinger of doom; and that Tasmania used to be called Van Dieman's Land. I freely admit I needed a refresher on the meaning parricide (I knew something was getting killed; just not sure what), and the lesser-known meaning of filibuster as a profession rather than a political strategy.

Just to be clear, I didn't learn these terms because the author explained them in the book. Oh, no. He disperses them as daintily as pumpkin spice on a latte. I appreciate him respecting his reader like that. But I still had to look them up.

And the cool thing is, I didn't mind taking the ten extra seconds to Google. The more I read, the more comfortable I became with the occasional rabbit holes. McCarthy could've used 'handle' instead of 'helve'. But once you see, and say, 'helve', it's undoubtedly the better word. If he had used 'moccasins' or 'slippers' instead of 'pampooties', where would be the fun in that?

There were a few head-scratchers. He rarely missed an opportunity to indulge in obscure geological jargon during one of his lengthy paeans to the otherworldly landscape of the desert southwest. I am still not sure what he was trying to accomplish with his use of 'manciple', even after I looked up the definition.

Reading Blood Meridian was a challenge. But it was a challenge I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm already looking forward to re-reading this literary nonpareil to see what I've overlooked. And we didn't even talk about the sentence structure yet!

* thrapple is the neck and throat area

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