“As I work at my drawings, day after day, what seemed unattainable before is now gradually becoming possible. Slowly, I’m learning to observe and measure. I don’t stand quite so helpless before nature any longer.”
Vincent van Gogh
Well, it’s that time again. I’ve made good progress on revamping book 3, The Sangreal, and realized it was past time to start working on the cover. But cover art is one of the most challenging parts of the publishing process because I’m not an artist, and I find it difficult to see colors and pictures in my head.
At least I didn’t have to start from scratch. With books 1 and 2, I’d already decided on some basic design principles:
- I want the cover art to tell the book’s story (therefore, all the books in the series will have ghosts, magic, historical places, and action on them).
- Historical place at the top of the front cover
- Magical object in the center
- Action in the bottom
- I like the spines of my books, so all I have to do there is update the title and book number in the series
- And, for now, I’m keeping the back cover fairly simple.
- I also had the artist I’d used on the first two books – Fiverr.com/rebecacovers
But I had two problems. First, I’ve already developed the general concepts and colors for each book, but I’ve always been uncomfortable with my ideas for book 3. The other issue was that everyone I’ve talked to liked my book 2 cover better than book 1. The challenge for me, then, was to discover why. After all, I’d used the same basic design concepts.
My conclusion is that my book 2 cover is more popular because it was more action-oriented, including a stormy sea background. Typically, I like to keep things simple. So, getting comfortable with a ‘busier’ cover was hard for me to accept. Looking at the Harry Potter original book covers finally helped me get over my concern. For years all I used to see was Harry riding on a broomstick in front of Hogwarts. I only recently realized that HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone had over half a dozen parts of the story hidden in the cover. The later books had similar complexity. So, I figured if it was good enough for Harry Potter, it was good enough for me (postage stamp size pictures on the internet notwithstanding).
But that led to other issues I had to address. Namely:
- Time (when to start the development). Book 3 is somewhat of a transition book. As I’ve noted before, I’ve written at least one draft of all 8 books in the series. But each time I’ve rewritten the books, I seemed to change one or more parts of the various storylines at book 3. So, it had become somewhat of a hodgepodge of storylines. I was unsure how difficult it would be to get it all tied in, so I didn’t start artwork until after I had gotten to the point where I was comfortable with how it all fit. I’ve just finished version 11, and I think it’s only a couple of edits away from being ready to publish. That means I’ll probably be waiting for the cover art when the manuscript is ready.
- Choice of object. The book is titled The Sangreal. You might not have heard the term, but I’m sure you’ve heard what the name eventually changed to – The Holy Grail. The term Sangreal was used hundreds of years before it became the Grail. That timing influenced the choice of what the object looked like. And, just like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I wanted the object to look like what Jesus would have used. So, I researched Ancient Roman wine cups and selected the calix as my design.
Spoiler Alert
If you don’t want to know too much about the story, skip the next two items!
- Design. The first thing I had to decide was what the cover’s background theme would be. Book 1 was about the jungle and a Mayan ruin. Book 2 was stormy seas and pirates. In book 3, I chose a wormhole because Alex accidentally gets caught up in a time-space distortion. And after all, he’s already encountered aliens and the afterworld.
- Elements. I had to choose the elements of what would be on the cover.
o . I eventually chose the Plaza de España in Seville, Spain, as the historical place. Alex visited it, it’s the most fascinating building I’ve ever seen, and it fits with the wormhole design.
o I had to choose a ghost. In the first two books, I put Alex’s sister in, but I decided on Thomas Torquemada, one of the villains in the book, and the magical object he uses.
o If you’ve read book 2, you know dragons are involved. In book 3, one tries to kill Alex. I had to put that on the cover.
o And trains. One of the cool parts about our trip to Spain and Romania were all the trains we got to ride – new and old alike.
The picture below shows you the differences in books 1 and 2 to help you visualize what I said above and my pitiful attempt to show my artist how I envision the cover. I’ve also told her I need help because I’m unsure how it will all work together. I’ll keep you updated.
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