For this redoing, I began with Desert Inferno, which seemed right as it's the first book I put out. As I looked at it, I liked the original cover's layout. For awhile I had put up a temporary cover of a sunset, but it never seemed to really depict the book. The original face for Rachel though had never seemed quite right either.
This business of trying to visualize my characters, to put faces to them has been an addition to my writing that I never used to think I had to do. I wrote descriptions but the characters were sort of ethereal, more like dream characters. Making covers changes that.
Rachel was supposed to be the kind of woman who when she walked into a room, men and women would turn to look. She also had no personal vanity thanks to how she was raised which meant her face should have a quality of innocence. My original female face never seemed quite right. Rather than totally redoing the cover, I decided to redo her. I found an image for inspiration and using the digital brushes changed it to get Rachel.
Actually I feel a lot better about it now than I did on several levels. I feel she's not only beautiful but also looks like she's caught in that desert inferno. I could see this woman being an artist and also the kind of woman who would stand up to whatever fate dealt her.
Jake stayed the same as he is the bulwark, the strength, the kind of man people know they can count on. Finding a face that would come closer to him than this wasn't happening. I looked at a LOT of images with the potential of changing him; but in the end, this was Jake.
Finally I decided to experiment with a different background. Eventually I used one of my own photos of a desert sunset while in Tucson. When I layered Jake and Rachel into it, the whole thing came together. I might still not have something that satisfies some of the readers, but I am happier with it.
For now, this will only show up here. It takes several days to get anything changed on the Amazon page and even longer to redo a book's actual cover. Everything comes in stages.
If I am learning anything through all this, it is to be patient and keep eating away at problems until I get the final products that I feel do justice to the stories. I hope that before I get to the last three contemporaries, I'll be better at figuring it all out before they get published!
Desert Inferno's cover and all the searches through stock photos has been informative. You begin to feel cross-eyed after awhile and have to quit. Of the stories I have yet to go, I am not sure I'll change two; but will go back to look for more possibilities when my eyes un-cross. What I am trying to do with this is satisfy readers as well as myself. I can't say how readers will see this change, but I am happy with it. Of course, I was with the first one too....
