Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 44

Book Covers: ARGH

We are once again in book cover talks, this time for the Rocky Start series. I love book covers, I love talking about book covers, but actually trying to get across what I want for book covers when I’m not actually sure myself? That’s hell.

So I filled out the questionnaire for the new series, and the designer who did the Liz covers send back two mock-ups, one for Rocky Start and one for Very Nice Funerals, and in a rare moment of synchronicity, Bob, Mollie, and I all agreed they were not good for us. So she asked for more info and possibly some existing book covers that we liked. That seems fair. So I went looking.

When did the entire publishing industry decide that large fonts on busy backgrounds were the only possibility for a cover. I hate those covers. First of all, they’re lazy designs. The first one back at the beginning of time was probably striking, but now they’re all just throwing type on jazzy backgrounds and you can’t tell one from the other and you don’t want to because they’re all ugly.

Alternately, you can do cute flat color cartoons of impossibly thin characters with big eyes that look like children’s books except that kids don’t eye each other like that. I hate those covers, too.

As you can imagine, I’m not fun to work with.

But then I found the perfect cover, a brilliant cover, which unfortunately is on somebody else’s book. That designer is amazing.

So Rocky Start seems like a sleepy little town in Tennessee (and North Carolina) but it’s full of ex-spies. And what Max does is look behind the facade and realize he’s in a box of snakes. So the imagery there is just dead on perfect. The landscape not so much, but that’s easy to change. Add in Maggs, and there’s our cover.

Except this isn’t a one book deal, so we’d need to use this idea for at least two more books, which is limiting. But I love it. I love everything about that cover.

Still, that was going to be a heavy lift, so we gave her another example of a cover that might work. We wanted store signs on every cover since the titles are all based on stores in the town. And I found this:

If we swapped out a store sign for the label, and then added miscellaneous things under it (Oddities is a second hand shop, remember?) like the Maltese Falcon, a tea cup, a gun, a wad of cash, Maggs, etc. then it would be new but call back to the Liz covers that had one main image and then smaller details around it.

So that’s where we are now. And I’m feeling better because I could find two examples that weren’t big fonts on awful backgrounds.

Oh, I also liked this one. It’s too busy, but I liked the use of fonts in the title and the offbeat image. Plus, you know, a dog.

Argh Author: Brenda Margriet’s Too Good For Words

Our own Brenda Margriet‘s new book, TOO GOOD FOR WORDS, came out yesterday, so the fifth and final book in the Silverberry Seduction Seasoned Romance Series is now available.

Like all the other books in the series, it can be read as a standalone.

Ride hard or stay home…
A phony friendship between an ex-con biker haunted by his past and a suburban mom with an uncertain future shifts gears with startling consequences.

After more than two decades as a stay-at-home mom, Penta Potter’s life is at a crossroads, her future stretching emptily ahead. When her youngest son vandalizes a local motorcycle mechanic’s garage, confronting the forbidding yet compelling owner sparks deliciously wicked longings.

Since his release from prison twelve years ago, Cash Rylance keeps his head down and his nose clean. He has no business aching for a fiercely protective, sweet-lipped, divorced mother of four. If he promises to keep his hands to himself, maybe she will help him be the dad his estranged daughter deserves.

A fake relationship between these two restless hearts seems the perfect route to take…until their improbable plan detours toward a totally different destination.

Amazon US: 
All other retailers

Blue-collar, ex-convict, tattooed, motorcycle rider hero (48 y/o)
Overprotective, divorced, single parent heroine (44 y/o)
Fake relationship
Bad boy/good girl
Opposites attract
Estranged child/parent
Steamy, open door, slow burn

www.brendamargriet.com

This is a Good Book Thursday, October 12, 2023

The only book I read this week was Rocky Start, which made me think about how many times you can read a book before it becomes mush in your brain. Okay, I’m also rewriting Rocky Start, which is a different kind of reading, but I’ve been through it so many times now that I can’t keep it straight in my head. And yet I love rereading my favorite books. Some of Georgette Heyer’s, some of Loretta Chase’s, some of Dick Francis’s, some of Martha Wells’, some of Terry Pratchett’s, Connie Willis, Rex Stout, . . . the list of my rereads is long and varied, but the ones I go back to again and again are just as enjoyable the fourteenth time around. Comfort reads, every one of them. And thank god for comfort reads. With any luck, I can get Rocky Start rewritten to be somebody’s comfort read since Bob is in there, too, doing good work.

What did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, October 11, 2023

This week I spent time fixing a really dumb mistake. We had to change a name in Rocky Start because it was too similar to another name, so I used a Replace All command without clicking the box (there was no box) that said “Exact word only.” Or whatever the box that was missing was supposed to say. The change was from “Lu” to “Mei”. Do you know how many words have “Lu” in them? At least fourteen thousand. I had to find them all because if Bob found them, I’d never hear the end of it. So I worked on that, and the house, and taxes, and several other things, but that was the dumbest.

What did you work on this week?

ETA: Yeah, I screwed up and this posted a day early. Just another Dumb Mistake. I say we roll with it.

Happiness is Rewatching

I hadn’t watched TV in a couple of years, not because I don’t like TV–I love TV–but because I was having this problem with depression and just didn’t care. Then last week, on a whim, I watched some old episodes of Numb3rs. I’d forgotten what a cosy show that was, all about family and close friends set in front of an ever-changing stream of violent crime and math. I kept watching because it was comforting (I skipped episodes that I remembered as being wrenching), going back to that family again and again. If I ever get through all this stuff that’s overdue, I think I’m going to do a lot of rewatching because if there ever was a time to snuggle down in a comforter with hot chocolate and watch something old, it’s now, as the seasons turn and the world starts to go into winter sleep.

What made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, October 5, 2023

So many people here had mentioned that Anne Bishop’s Lake Silence was good that I foolishly clicked on the sample just to see what the book was like and ended up buying eight books. That sounds like I’m recommending them, and the were great reads at first, but when I tried to reread them . . . uh, no.

I can tell you that the Others books are addictive. They’re well written (although comedy is not her strength) and have compelling conflicts, and I zipped my way through all eight of them in four days. Great world-building and interesting character interactions and evil antagonists who get their just desserts power the books (emotionally abusive exes who get eaten by monsters are my jam). But there were things about them that bothered me, and as I read them again, they became too much. I learned a lot about what I need from a book by reading these, which was illuminating, and there are just not my kind of stories. But they were a lot of fun to read the first time, so don’t let me put you off.

What good book did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, October 4, 2023

I was a slacker this week. I did nothing of value for anybody, just read books and drank hot chocolate and vegged. Well, I did a little furniture moving but not enough. So today, I am working. As soon as I have some breakfast.

What did you work on this week?

Happiness is a Cup of Hot Chocolate

It’s not even chilly yet, but the hot is gone from southern PA, so I’ve been drinking hot chocolate, a beverage I forget about entirely once spring gets here. But as soon as the temperature reaches that maybe-take-a-sweater point, I buy milk and dump chocolate powder into it. Bob would sneer at this: he actually drinks that field mocha that Vince swills in the Liz and Vince books: instant cocoa and instant coffee mixed with water and drunk on the back of a truck. So for the purposes of this post, you may all define “hot chocolate” as you see fit. Except not that.

What made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, September 28, 2023

This week I am still reading How Magicians Think by Joshua Jay because I am mostly working until I drop and then I sleep. But it’s a great book and I’m underlining like crazy, not just because it’s going to be so useful for both Rocky Start and Haunting Alice, but because the analogy between how magicians think and how writers think is strong. Probably more on that later since I’m fascinated by that.

In the meantime, what good book did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Today I am working on unpacking, painting furniture, and making freezer meals, but mostly I’m working on Rocky Start. In other words, the same thing I did last week.

What are you doing this week? Last week? Any week?