Not a cover reveal, more like a cover pre-reveal

My trusty cover artist Samantha Collins has been a bit busy but she’s getting back to finishing up the cover for Southern Discomfort. In the meantime, as I can’t do a cover reveal yet, I thought I’d go over the process that led up to it.

I began thinking about covers last year, as I blogged about here, here and here. Possibilities included “character stares out of cover surrounded with magical elements” as in Orin Sale’s cover here—

Or an action cover like Jason Chan’s work here.

There’s Clyde Caldwell’s “colorful cast” imagery for Chrome Born —

— or the moody, evocative look of Alex Bledsoe’s first Tufa novel (art was uncredited)

My initial suggestions were: 1)Maria and Olwen facing off. 2)A more symbolic cover with Gwalchmai, hooded and sinister, at the center and other key characters around him. But there was also the challenge of conveying Southern Discomfort is a historical fantasy set in 1973. I had no idea how to get that across; Maria’s simply not dressed distinctively enough (denim jacket, jeans) and nobody else is really.

Due to some email screwups it took us a while to get further. Once we sorted them out, Sam sent me six mockups back in February. Here’s the first two.

These first two drew from 1970s novel covers (the one on the right was a real book), with a font from that era. They’re representational because “this era was likely to depict setting and characters directly from the book.” That gives a feel for the era but with the risk that the book would look like it was a reissue rather than a new release, “so if we go in that direction, it needs to be obvious to the point of pastiche.”

Choices three and four were less representational but retained the old-school font. On the left side it’s setting and tone; the second one is more tone and character.

Finally we have two abstract covers. The left one mixes the contents of the handbag — including an occult symbol and a travel ticket, reflecting Maria’s only passing through Pharisee Georgia. The second cover shows a classic Southern manor facade and hints at something dark beneath it.

I liked the middle row right-hand one quite a bit; with tweaking it could fit the scene where Gwalchmai confronts Maria in the hospital. I liked the bottom left one too, though it felt too light-hearted, almost like a rom-com.

Next I turned to my brains trust, my siblings and my BFF Cindy. I got a mix of responses but they all favored the right-hand images, with some changes (bolder lettering on the bottom right, for instance). My own thoughts (I didn’t save the one I wrote Sam so I can’t swear this is exactly right) were that the middle and bottom right worked better than Tule Witch; if we did put Maria on the cover, she should be in jeans; I did like the Southern mansion in the background of the top and bottom right; and that we needed more obviously supernatural elements, preferably tied to the stuff in the book, such as the Hand of Glory (a magical talisman made from a hanged man’s hand).

I’ll get to the next phase next week.