I’ve seen covers or illustrations for three of next year’s books in the last week or two, and it’s always scary.
When I get emails from editors with attachments lurking at the top, I always pause and take a deep breath before opening them. I am excited, but also a bit nervous.
I see stories in my head when I’m writing them. I see the tortoise crossing the savannah with determination on his face. I see the surprise on a teenager’s face when her best friend turns up in a severe headscarf. I see the confusion on a toddler’s face when she’s given a bowl of icecream topped with… well, I’ll not give that away.
I see their faces, I hear their voices, and I know their thoughts. So it’s really strange to see someone else’s pictures of them. Because the characters are never exactly the way I imagined them. The pictures are usually fabulous, and bring the story to life, and that’s wonderful. But how could they possibly be exactly how I imagine them?
So when I get these pictures and the editor asks for my comments I have to try very hard not to go: ‘AAAARGH but that’s not right because Ellie has freckles and her teeth are slightly squint and she wears hoop earrings and…’ Because none of that is important in the story. It’s just how I saw her when I met her in my head.
I have to try look at the pictures not as the unique illustration of the perfect story that I saw in my head, but as one of many possible illustrations of the actual story that I managed to put on the page. I need to check whether the pictures help tell the story, and not expect them to be a telepathic rendering of my own thoughts.
But I’ve noticed something strange about the books that have already been published. Even though the characters on the page aren’t the characters I saw when I wrote the book, after a while, the characters in my head slide away, and are replaced by the ones that the artist has imagined and drawn. Which is a little odd, and slightly sad, now I think about it.
Maybe that’s one reason I love the silhouette covers of my Floris novels. They don’t give away too much. There is plenty of space there for my idea of the character, the artist’s idea of the character and the reader’s idea of the character, all in the nice dark space inside the outline.
I should stress that all the artwork I’ve seen the last couple of weeks has been splendid, a great help in telling the stories. Never exactly what I imagined, but if I wanted to put the pictures I imagined on the page, then I should have gone to art college.
And in the meantime, here is the actual real cover for my next book, Drawing a Veil. The cover I saw a couple of weeks ago should apparently not have been online. I like this better anyway. What do you think? I think the cover girl looks like she’d make a great best friend!
(And if you want to see the excellent line drawings telling the story inside Drawing a Veil, then you’ll have to wait til next Feb!)
I was just having a conversation with one of the booksellers in the Edinburgh Bookshop about front covers. She was horrified to discover that an author has little or no say in what they look like. I guess we just have to sit back and trust that the publisher knows what will attract the right audience better than we do. Just as well that I absolutely love the cover of The Wishcatchers! Like the Veil one too – though personally I’d have gone for a colour other than pink. It makes me want to read the book!
Covers are so important. And if you don’t like the cover, it’s very hard to hold up the book and say, I wrote this, and I’m proud of it. Luckily I’ve loved the covers of most of my books so far, and next year’s are looking pretty excellent too. But you’re right, if I didn’t like them, I’d just have to grin and bear it!