So Many Covers

I'm excited because I finally have final covers of the UK and German editions of The Shifter and Blue Fire. They look fabulous, and all are so different from each other. I also thinks is hysterical that all three book ones have different titles, but all book twos are the same.

The US Hardcover of The Shifter

The UK Hardcover of The Pain Merchants

The UK Paperback of The Pain Merchants

The German Cover of The Healer

The US Hardcover of Blue Fire

The UK Hardcover of Blue Fire

The German Cover of The Blue Fire

Aren't they awesome? Granted, maybe I'm biased here but I love every one of them.

And the Name of Shifter Two is...

Part fugitive, part hero, fifteen-year-old Nya is barely staying ahead of the Duke of Baseer’s trackers. Wanted for a crime she didn’t mean to commit, she risks capture to protect every Taker she can find, determined to prevent the Duke from using them in his fiendish experiments. But resolve isn’t enough to protect any of them, and Nya soon realizes that the only way to keep them all out of the Duke’s clutches is to flee Geveg. Unfortunately, the Duke’s best tracker has other ideas.

Nya finds herself trapped in the last place she ever wanted to be, forced to trust the last people she ever thought she could. More is at stake than just the people of Geveg, and the closer she gets to uncovering the Duke’s plan, the more she discovers how critical she is to his victory. To save Geveg, she just might have to save Baseer -- if she doesn’t destroy it first.

This cover is near and dear to my heart, because I got to do something very few authors ever get to.

I designed my own cover. There's a full breakdown of the story over on the writing blog for those who want to know the nitty gritty behind it. There are also samples of the covers I mocked up to give to my editor. (I'd re-post here, but it always seem so silly to say the same thing on both blogs since a lot of folks read both).

I'm really excited about it, and can't wait to see the galley proofs. Since the cover is ready, I'm hoping they're full ARCs like The Shifter was, because those look like real live books. Somehow that makes it feel all the more real. And I get to squeeze them to my chest and jump up and down squealing in glee.

Yeah, I'm a goof.

Cover Me, Part Two

As promised, the The Pain Merchants cover.


And here's the full jacket all spread out. (They took that back cover copy from my website! For some weird reason I find that really cool.)


As I mentioned last week, the cover process for the UK version went a little differently than the US one. I wasn't included, except for one tiny little detail. My lovely UK editor said the design team wanted to do something iconic, and asked if the Healer's League had a logo. I said no, but told her I could whip something up if she'd like.

I gave her five simple black and white logo designs. Nothing fancy, as I knew her art department would work their magic and make it look all nifty cool. For funsies, here they are:

It's easy to see which one they went with, and how the others influenced their final design. They took this basic line art and turned it into a gold and enameled-looking image. To make the cover fit the story, I added a line that described the Healer's League pin into the story.

The two covers have a lot of similarities, such as the idea of the hands, the swirly stars and the blue (which is the color of the magic metal, pynvium, in the book). But they're also quite different. The Pain Merchants has an edgier look, and I love how the font style captures the Byzantine feel I based the architecture of the world on. You see some of that in The Shifter cover with the city along the bottom. I think they're both great, though my husband likes the UK version better--I wonder if he's secretly British?

Here they are side by side for easy comparison:

I find it fascinating how the same story is represented in two different cultures.

For another look at covers across the pond, my agent did a post a while back.

Cover Me

Have you ever wondered how a book cover gets designed?

Every author will have their own experience, as this varies, not only between houses but between authors. Since I'm a graphic designer by trade, the cover was very important to me and I wanted to be involved in the process. I made sure to tell my agent and my editor, and my editor was gracious enough to include me from the get go.

An illustrator was chosen and sketches were made. We made comments, suggested changes, and more sketches were made. When we got one we liked, the artist created on the final art, complete with title text.

Alas, sales nixed it.

We went back and tried a new approach. This time, the artist just did pencil sketches. I wish I could show you the sketches, but alas, that whole legality thing.

Sales nixed it again.

Then someone on the Balzer & Bray staff (I don't know who, but I'm still grateful for them) did a clip art mock up and sent it to my editor. My editor sent it to me and my agent and asked, "What do you think?"


Well, I went nuts. I just LOVED the idea and the look. The original title is used at this point, as we hadn't changed it yet. We made sure sales loved it to before we went any further. Luckily, they did. My editor changed illustrators and we started over, giving them this new concept to play with. He sent us this sketch:

We loved it, we're totally thrilled, made a few suggestions again (some involving the hands, and I wanted a more Byzantine look to the buildings), and sent it off. During this time, the title change was finally approved, so the color version reflected that.

You could have heard my excited squeal a mile away. I could NOT stop giggling over this cover. I think it totally rocks. You'll notice the "the" is missing from this version, which was added to the title after. We made a few minor tweaks (like adding some purple to the swirly stuff) and the final cover is...

And that's how I got a cover.

I'm incredibly lucky to have been included in the process, as a lot of authors have no say and don't even see their cover until it's done. That's actually how it went with the UK cover (which I'll post about soon). Nothing wrong with that, especially since those Brits like their covers differently than us Yankees do, so my design experience wouldn't have been much help. (And I did get to do one small thing, which I spill in that post). This just goes to show that even the same author and the same book can have different experiences depending on the house.

And both of mine were fabulous experiences.