Cover Love

There's nothing better than getting a cover for your book.

Wait, no. There is something better - it's being involved in the creation of that cover. Having your ideas taken and given life and made even more beautiful than you could have imagined and then rendered into pixels that you can share and attach to your novel.

Cover love. I haz it.

D. Robert Pease of Walking Stick Books designed the cover of Open Minds. You will find his badge on my side bar, along with a hearty recommendation that you use his services the next time you need some design work done. Although he's just now getting into book cover design, Dale has 20 years of experience doing website design and covers for magazines.

The story of how Dale came to do my cover is another one of those "serendipity" tales that happens when you're part of the blogging/author community. Quite a while ago - 2009! - Dale and I connected for the first time, while we were first writing our middle grade science fiction stories. We exchanged critiques and I got to see the early version of Noah Zarc. We recently re-connected when Dale decided to self-publish Noah Zarc this summer. I was very impressed with the cover/interior design and asked who was his designer.

That's when I found out he was the designer. At that point, I had already contracted with a cover designer for Open Minds, but I asked Dale if he might help me walk through the interior design part I was planning to do myself. He was happy to help with that, but he also offered to do a cover for Open Minds, as a demo for his new venture Walking Stick Books. I said, sure, but made it clear I already had a cover designer that I planned to use.

Then Dale sent me his first draft of the Open Minds cover, which is remarkably close to the final draft.

Wow. Cover love-at-first-sight.

At the same time, I was having difficulty with my original cover designer, who was a delightful person and I really liked his portfolio, but somehow were weren't really connecting on my concept for the cover. We amicably parted ways, and I told Dale I loved his cover so much that I wanted to use it for the book.

When Dale said he still wanted to help with my interior design,  I fought back a wave of guilt and said, Yes! 

Double wow.

The interior design is beautiful, and so pretty, and yeah. Much better than mine. But then, Dale's a professional and IT SHOWS.

Do you have to have your e-book (or print) interior professionally designed? I think I could have made a decent interior on my own. But Dale has now spoiled me with a beautiful interior design, so I may have to rethink that strategy for the next book(s).

Because Dale is awesome, he spoiled me further by creating the Mindjack website banner and badges for the Virtual Launch Party and Blog Tour. It's an embarrassment of riches in professional design!

Thank you, Dale, for all  your help! And thank you for making my book so shiny, inside and out!

(And seriously people, you want to try his services!)