Choosing a cover that expresses the right tone, says the right things, captures the eyes of a target audience, figuring out who that target audience is–well, it’s all work.  This is what I went through with Straight Up and Dirty before we ultimately chose what we did (and I happen to absolutely love what we selected). 

At first there were a few things I threw together for the cover of my actual proposal.  Things I literally threw together.  How awful, the sword stuck through the olive.  Just wretched.  Then when it came to a cover, they sketched up the shoes and martini drawing NOT for that to be the cover, but to show the IDEA for the cover, that they would hire a photographer to shoot the idea.  But I was so against cigarettes, that I refused… and I REALLY didn’t want shoes on the cover either.  The galleys went out with that greenish cover, and then finally, the one we ultimately ran with, which I love.

We’re going through it now with MOOSE, and it’s not easy.  Moose is not a slapstick goof ball comedy.  It’s a fun book, but it’s also serious and a bit dark at times.  I explore my relationship with my mother, express a lot of self-hatred and angst, and am ultimately just hoping to fit in… not just into a new size, but into a new life.  Finding a cover that expresses these ideas, or at least the tone, is hard.  It must not look like a novel.  It cannot look like a young adult book (which it did when they tried putting my before photo on the cover).  It needs to look like a memoir for adult readers.  We’re working on it, but it ain’t easy.  Though I’m sure we’ll ultimately come out with something fantastic.