If We’re Designing Cover Art, This Must Be Real

Last spring, my publisher and I had a lunch meeting. As we ate in a mall atrium, we talked about marketing strategy, how long I had been working on the story, connections that could be helpful. We talked about whether someone would want to make my book into a movie someday (me: really? him: why not?!). He asked me if I had an artist in mind for cover art.

November 2017. The artist asked me to sketch what I had in mind. I told him I’m terrible at drawing. He told me to do my best.

I said, shyly, “Actually, I do.”

I had been dreaming about a particular cover for a while. The main character, Rachel, would be in the center. The picture would show the setting of her American life in Baltimore on one said, and her journey in the Old City of Jerusalem on the other side. It would give the impression that she was caught — or choosing — between two worlds. Long before the publisher said yes, I’d spoken to the artist, applied for, and received grant funding to cover part of the costs.

Not every book author gets the chance to design her own cover, so I was relieved when he seemed comfortable with letting me run with this side of the project.

Last week, the cover artist sent me some pictures to get started with his work. Baltimore townhouses. The Old City of Jerusalem. Models for drawing the main character. It was exciting to see things that have only lived in my own brain, brought to life in pictures! But some of the pictures weren’t quite right. Rachel doesn’t live in a house like that. I had a different idea for the Old City pictures, too.

My main character’s home, just a humble house in suburban Baltimore, as it lived in my imagination and on a bookshelf for fifteen years.

“I think I may have some pictures that could help,” I told him.

In my basement, I dug through the old photo albums from before I owned a digital camera. There, along with pictures of friends when we were young, engagement parties, my internship in the year 2001… was an album with notes about the setting for this book, with pictures taken in 2003.

The main character’s house. The Old City of Jerusalem, with steps leading to a door, just like in her dreams. The creek. The synagogue.

Steps leading to a door in the Old City of Jerusalem, just like in her dreams.

Those pictures had literally been sitting on a shelf waiting for me, for fifteen years. In my imagination I’d added some extra steps to her house. The Old City hadn’t changed much at all.

I sent the pictures to the cover artist with some instructions. I can barely wait to see his very first sketch!

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