Covers

Readers,

A word about covers

What's wrong with this? Well just about everything. There is an inexpensive e-book which shows you how to create covers like this and also full photo covers in Paint.Net. It is a very good book and I can recommend it highly. However, the theme of the burning barn was a deviation from my original design of the Prism (largely because I changed the title at the last minute). But oh, that gothic writing!

The Prism (Scorpian Visitant) would lend itself to a professional cover. The triangular end of the Prism with Scorpio in the centre. The young love triangle, depicted by the lovers at the points of the triangle, Robbie, Louise and Jade. All superimposed over billowing flames - we've got a fire and we're gonna let it burn! I'll re-release this fantasy one day - and a new cover will be a priority.


So to the Brent Street Haunting

God have I thought about this. Maybe the sexy Evangeline Weekes with the African Witchdoctor, the evil Mr Coates in the background? Well yes, maybe. But for some reason it doesn't seem to work. Then again how about Evangeline levelling her Mauser pistol at the handsome company director Charles Smyth-Dyne (she's about to blow him away). Perhaps. But for me using a particular scene or allusion to it doesn't work. I could be wrong, but this book cover seems to need an image that will be redolent of the work.

Think of JK Rowling's best book - the Philosopher's Stone. My copy has a picture of a steam train on the front. Not the Hogwart's Express with young wizards clutching owls in cages. Just a steam train. Somehow it seems to suggest the start of a journey? Either way, for me it is an icon and readily calls to mind JK's first book in the same way as the phoenix graphic does of Lady Chatterley.

So for The Brent Street Haunting I have given you a door to walk through. A scary looking door. An old door. Very similar to old doors of my childhood, often pressed into service in lonely places such as allotments. What lies behind that door? Well wait and see.

Okay, now to the other novel I have in the can. Duisburg or The Duisburg Star (a newspaper), whichever I decide to call it. This novel would almost certainly go better with a professional cover depicting a major part of the storyline.

How about our heroine, young beautiful reporter Amy Simms, in the foreground (looking wary, scared even). In the mid shot, sadistic killer Orion, stripped to the waist and hooded like a medieval executioner (his working clothes). Let's have the fictitious city in the background. One of those US cities with a clutch of sky scrapers rising like a rocket range from centre of the urban sprawl? Sounds good?


Best wishes

Saul