The Making of a Cover

I showed you the cover for my November release, Sweetened with Honey, on Tuesday, but today I’d like to give you a glimpse behind the process. As you know, my daughter over at Book Cover Bakery does my covers.

For the illustration style she uses on my Farm Fresh Romance series, she prefers to do a photo shoot so she’s got a reference. She can (and does!) change quite a lot, as you’ll see, but still finds it helpful to have a starting point. On a very hot day in July, she begged her cousin and his wife to don sweaters for a few minutes and allow her to take pictures!

Then she drew a rough sketch of them as the characters in my novel. Notice the hero lost his glasses (but reminded me that I should totally have characters with glasses in my stories, because real life is full of them!) and we chose a different pose for the heroine’s legs from one of the other photos. The style of her top was altered, and her hair changed to the color and style of the story’s heroine.

As Hanna filled in the characters, she decided to change the hero’s sweater from a zip-up jacket to a regular sweatshirt with pushed-up sleeves, revealing his untucked striped shirt at neck, arms, and hem. She decided to change his legs to a pose from one of the other photos, too. She also changed the heroine’s top one more time and belted the cardigan.

In the background, the sky became a more turquoise autumn sky, which goes well with the three-toned autumn foliage and the drifting leaves. We’ve even got a few lazy bees wandering through, required for a book with “honey” in its title.

Yes, I definitely had input at various steps along the way, but I couldn’t have imagined this cover myself. I’m so thankful to be working with my daughter, who loves my stories and has the talent, time, and desire to create the exact right covers for each of my books.

Best of all? You can hire her, too! Check out the various covers she’s done at her website, Book Cover Bakery.