Can you judge a book by it's cover?

This was the first book I had published. House Report. It's a murder mystery set in Calgary, with our main characters working in and around live theatre. There's the cover.

One of my big questions when I signed my deal was what was going to happen with the cover design. Would I get a say? And then early one morning I got up for work as always, sleepily wandering into the kitchen to get the coffee started and then turned on my computer. There was an email from Severn House. With an attachment. A JPG attachment. And it said, here's the cover art for House Report, please let us know what you think.

Wow. I cried. But then, I'd been so emotional since I got my contract that I cried over everything. But I loved the cover. The colours were vibrant, the design striking and even offered a bit of foreshadowing into the story. And someone even commented that it was metaphorical too: the curtain rising on this new mystery series as well as my new life as a published author. Cool!

I emailed the photo to everyone I knew for their opinion and then I woke half of them up by phoning them and telling them to go and check their emails. Everyone loved it. And when I did an interview on Shaw TV and they projected it on a huge blue screen for background, it looked amazing!

So this was great, everyone was happy. I emailed back the art department to let them knew how happy we all were.




Number two, Evening the Score. It was totally cool again. Eye catching, colour slightly off to let you know there was something myserious going on inside. A story about a piano competition.

Strangely, speaking for foreshadowing, one of my friends asked me at this point what would happen if I didn't like the cover art? I said I don't know, but I loved what they were doing, so I was happy I couldn't answer that question.

So there we go, two books out and me and my publisher are working happily together! Even cooler, though, was that since I got great reviews on House Report, we had a great quote to put on the cover of this one. Oh yeah, I cried! (LOL)

Does this fairy taile continue? Do the author and her publisher live happily ever after? Tune in tomorrow for my further ruminations, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!