Covers are a funny thing. When you have the right one, you almost always know it immediately. There’s a little click, the feeling of something slotting into place. A happy exhalation, shoulders dropping down from ears. The desire to send it to all my friends and show everyone I know so I can watch their faces light up.
For most of my writing career, I had photographic covers. This meant a lot more couldn’t be planned for, but when you captured the right image, it really was lightning in a bottle. The SYBG cover was literally an outtake, the models just getting ice cream. Meredith Jenks, the amazing photographer, caught the image - and it’s been there ever since. BUT it also meant that when something wasn’t working with a photoshoot, you had to do it allll again. New model, new stylist, new location, new wardrobe. The initial shoot for the Save the Date cover was a whole different concept, model, everything. (But I’m so happy with where we ended up. That first cover didn’t have Waffles on the cover! Can you imagine? A tragedy.)
In the last few years, as trends and the marketplace have changed, the push has really been toward illustrated covers. I still have a soft spot in my heart for a photographic cover - but when I saw the final cover for Darcy & Russell, I felt the click. I KNEW this was it. And this cover in particular was doing something that I feel like is the best part of an illustrated cover - it was showing something a photograph couldn’t. It was expressing, through graphics, a bigger idea and feeling and tension within the book.
LOOK! Isn’t it gorgeous???
*swoons for days*
I just adore it. I think it captures the book SO well, and the feeling of the book in one image - as opposed to the 400 words it took me.
I hope you guys like it!! More to come soooooon.
xoxo
MM1
just realizing after the last newsletter, saying I was going to do footnotes, that I totally forgot to do footnotes! NEXT TIME.
this cover looks so good!! i love the photographic covers on your other books so much (and i loved learning a bit about how that process has gone for you in the past) but i agree that this illustrated cover is just perfect!!! can't wait to read it in a few months🫶🏼