{"id":4987,"date":"2009-10-30T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T17:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2026-02-24T17:12:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T22:12:36","slug":"evolution-of-a-cover-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/evolution-of-a-cover-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of a cover, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Originally published at Publishing Renaissance on January 30, 2009.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

\"TheThank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you\u2019re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies\u2122. Originally, The Proviso<\/em> was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire<\/em>. Then I figured I\u2019d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is the story of book 2.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n\"Dulcissime,
\n 
\n\"\"
\n 
\n\"\"
\n 
\n\"\"\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Zoe commented<\/a> that \u201cCanned Heat<\/a>\u201d (the original title of book #1) is a favorite song of hers. Well, it\u2019s a favorite of mine, too, and that\u2019s how I came to name it that. It fit the couple. So in keeping with the song names theme, I originally named book #2 (couple #2\u2014so Dating Game) \u201cDulcissime<\/a>,\u201d which is an aria from Carl Orff\u2019s Carmina Burana<\/em><\/a>. Trust me, it fit. This cover, however, did not, so \u2026 you can see I abandoned that right quick. I remember doing that the same day I did the yellow one (the mostest ickiest one in my previous post).<\/p>\n

Well, I hauled out a picture a friend of mine took, which I bought the licensing rights to a gazillion eons ago when I wanted to use it for a different project. (Ignore the purple blotches on the small one and pretend it\u2019s got \u201cDulcissime\u201d on the front, \u2019k?) Oh, that was a pretty cover. Showed it to Dude (who was in the midst of reading that particular couple) and he said, \u201cToo girly.\u201d I said, \u201cYeah, but isn\u2019t it pretty?\u201d He said, \u201cYeah. That\u2019s my point.\u201d Okay, got it.<\/p>\n

Finally, I decided to ditch the \u201cDulcissime\u201d (because I\u2019m the only one in the world who\u2019d understand it and once Dude said, \u201cHow do you pronounce it?\u201d I knew it wouldn\u2019t work) and went for the ORIGINAL original title of that novel\u2019s concept (which had been a stand-alone bouncing around in my brain for years): Morning in Bed<\/em>. Now, those of you who\u2019ve read The Proviso<\/em> will know what this refers to; for those of you who haven\u2019t, I\u2019ll not spoil you. Anyway, see above graphic and explanation.<\/p>\n

Then I decided to go with a Kansas City theme. Naturally! I showed it to Dude, who said, \u201cMmmm, yeah, I like it\u201d in a rather unenthusiastic tone of voice. I said, \u201cOkay, what\u2019s the problem?\u201d He said, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t stand out. I wouldn\u2019t notice that in a bookstore.”<\/p>\n

But this would! And it fits unbelievably well with the story. Problem: It was done in 2002 and is therefore under copyright and, while I was willing to pay whatever I had to pay to get that perfect man on my now-perfect cover with the now-perfect title, I couldn\u2019t find the artist. Anywhere. I called freaking Canada. Twice. You should see my phone bill. Okay, so artist has disappeared off the face of the earth. I wept.<\/p>\n

Then it didn\u2019t matter. No matter how much I wanted that art, I couldn\u2019t use it anyway once I decided to reassemble my story under one cover. Like Lilith<\/em>, this image represented only one of the major characters and I needed something more inclusive. I\u2019m still weeping.<\/p>\n

Next week, the covers for couple #3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published at Publishing Renaissance on January 30, 2009. \u2605\u2605\u2605 Thank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you\u2019re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[529,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-production","category-kansas-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4987"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23998,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987\/revisions\/23998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}