“By seeking and blundering we learn.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I mentioned in an earlier post that I can ‘see’ probabilities in my mind, but I can’t picture colors very well. So, I was hoping that developing the cover for The Pair Dadeni would be much easier than working on The Palantir since I already had some of the elements in place, like the spine and the title format. It wasn’t. It was just as terrifying as the first book.
What stayed the same:
- What’s on the cover. I want to let readers know what the story is about just by looking at the cover. All my books, and therefore covers, have ghosts, magic, adventure, and historical places.
o The fort at the top of the cover is the Citadelle La Ferrière. It’s where some of the action takes place. It’s also a UNESCO site and the largest fort in the Americas.
o The magical object in the front center is the Pair Dadeni.
o The action scene at the bottom is from one of the battle scenes late in the book. It’s got ghosts (the green cloaked figure in the distance is Deborah, and both ships are ghost pirate ships); magic in it (look closely at Deborah’s hand, and you’ll see a ball of flames); and action (a ship battle in raging seas).
o It’s also got most of the main characters in the series – Alex, Jane (the girl in the foreground), Diana (the dark-haired girl), and Deborah in the background.
- The spine. I want all the books in the series to look like they’re meant to be together when stood next to each other. To that end I:
o Have Alex’s ankh at the top of each spine, with the book number in the series inside the loop. I hate it when you have to dig around inside a book to tell where it fits in the series.
§ Note: The lettering on the ankh is a language I created. I’ll discuss it more in another post.
o When you read book 2, The Pair Dadeni, you’ll understand better what the eye at the bottom of the spine is related to.
- The book title format. I like how it looks. It’s classy and easy to read.
Challenges:
- Color scheme. My plan is to choose a color that’s appropriate to the setting in each book. So, in book 1, the cover is meant to remind you of ‘jungle green.’ My original idea for book 2 was a Caribbean blue since most of the action takes place in the Caribbean. But as you can see, the color is much darker than what you normally associate with the Caribbean. I attribute that to my cover artist rebecacovers. She created the ‘stormy’ sea colors. I love them. It makes the action on the ships much more dramatic looking.
- The war in Ukraine. You might wonder what the Russian invasion of Ukraine has to do with my cover art. Well, my artist is from Ukraine. She and her family are safe, but it highlights that we’re living in a global economy. What happens halfway around the world does impact us, whether we want it to or not. Why Rebeca? In my earlier post on cover art, I told how my daughter and I chose Rebeca from hundreds of other artists we looked at because we liked her work the best. Plus, she’s super easy to work with and has been very patient with me.
- Costs. I knew that illustrated book covers cost more than stock photos. The price for book 2 was more than book 1, but that’s because Rebeca makes a lot of changes for me. I’ve already mentioned some of the changes she made, but a couple to note (to show you the level of detail that goes into these things) are:
o She made the size of Alex’s left hand bigger because I thought it was too small.
o She changed the length and part of Jane’s hair to get closer to what I envision Jane looking like.
o She also changed Diana’s hairstyle to make it more realistic. If you notice, it’s hanging down, covering her face, because she’s leaning over.
Despite all the challenges and worries, I like this cover even better than book 1’s cover, which I liked a lot. I’ll be starting work on book 3 cover art pretty soon, but I’m already nervous about it because I haven’t settled on 1) a color scheme nor 2) the historical place that will go on the cover, and then there’s 3) the action scene will be very different from the previous two.
Wish me luck.
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