Guest Post: Sheila Deeth

My ebook’s just come out and I love the cover! So when Paula kindly invited me to her blog and asked if I could write about the picture, I jumped at the chance.

I have to say, I love the background to Paula’s blog—it matches my cover perfectly, and the subtle sparkling makes me think of magic…

I’ve got three ebooks out with Gypsy Shadow, and all the covers were created by the wonderful Charlotte Holley. The first one was the subject of a competition on the Gypsy Shadow website. The prompt was a picture, and the prize was publication. Amazingly, my story won, and my first ebook, Refracted, came out last year. The picture became my cover with the addition of beautiful text and even a rainbow crafted to match my theme. It was like a dream come true.

I really enjoy the fact that Charlotte keeps her authors in the loop when she designs the Gypsy Shadow book covers, and she takes great care to make them match the tale. For Refracted she added the rainbow which made the cover so perfectly right and individual. For Black Widow she sent me six images to choose from—from man to spider to sacred cup—then painted the guy in my chosen picture blue, added tats, and surrounded him with red and black for the spider—it matches my story perfectly.

Then came Flower Child. Charlotte searched the internet again and sent me a selection of images. Each had flowers and a child in it, but somehow I couldn’t quite settle on any of them. Some were too sweet; some too mature; some had too many children, or too vivid flowers… None felt “just right” though I had to wonder, is “just right” ever possible? And how do you choose?

Charlotte didn’t limit me to those images though. She also sent me a link to a magical website called Dreamstime: http://www.dreamstime.com/ If you’ve never been there, you really should give it a try. Type “flower and child” into the search box and see what images you find. Now I really did have too many to choose from—page after page after page—and I gained a better appreciation of how hard Charlotte works to create our covers.

The final choice was an image that simply grew on me. I’d narrowed my search by then—flower, child, girl, young etc.—and every time I saw this picture I liked it more—the distant houses, almost lost in mist; the color of the haunting sky; the girl, so sweet, with her face mysteriously turned away from the lens… It had to be this.

Charlotte quickly approved my choice and dealt with all the permissions. Then she turned the picture into a cover—not the easiest task I’m sure—adding appropriate writing and that touch of innocence in the flowers on the title, carefully positioning the text…

So that’s how Flower Child’s cover came to be. I love it and hope you do too. And I love the work Charlotte Holley does for her authors.