A book by its cover

Cover art for books is a subject that fascinates readers, reviewers and authors alike. Getting the cover right is crucial to a book's retail success - and keeping author and readers happy. I couldn't be more delighted with the cover for 300 Days of Sun designed by Jarrod Taylor. It offers an alluring first impression that is entirely relevant to the story and it's attractive in the full sense of the word: it draws you into the setting of the story, the dramatic rocky coast of the Algarve in Portugal. Brightness, beauty and danger are implicit in the image, as is the hint of a scratched old book.

 

But how did this cover evolve from an initial idea? To celebrate publication day in the USA and Canada, I've been given permission to show the process behind the scenes as discussion progressed between editor and author, design team and sales and marketing at HarperCollins.

 

I had just arrived in France last summer when the first images came through in an email from my editor, Jennifer Barth. Which did I prefer of these two?

 

 

 

I thought about it for a few hours, and wrote back to say I liked the red one best. It was the way the letters seemed to be sinking (or rising) behind the layers of the city that appealed. As it turned out, I was in a minority, and most votes went to the second design, by Gregg Kulick. I can understand why. The image is a strong one, with a great sense of light and dark. Perhaps it was the lettering that put me off. 

 

The next stage was another email containing another four images, all by Jarrod Taylor. Which did I like best? Which would you choose?

 

 

 

 

 

I liked them all except the third one, because the yellow rock seemed to hint strangely at an Egyptian pyramid. Our first guests of the summer had arrived, and we had a group reaction to report back. Most popular were the second and the fourth (though the lettering seemed wrong on that one).

 

The team in New York played around with the second for a while, using a deeper blue and capital letters (gorgeous, rather unusual, colours for cover art - and I preferred the original):

 

 

Then the fourth was re-worked and presented to a marketing and sales meeting. Everyone agreed, including me, over in France, that we had found our ideal cover:

 

 

So there we have it. Do you agree, or would you have made a different choice? As far as I'm concerned, as soon as I saw this last version, I felt it was right, almost like a sigh of relief.

 

As the book finally goes on sale, huge thanks to everyone at Harper, especially Jarrod Taylor and Gregg Kulick, Jennifer Barth, Amy Baker, Katherine Beitner, Jonathan Burnham, Cal Morgan, Kathryn Ratcliffe-Lee, Mary Sasso, Sherry Wasserman and Erin Wicks. Also to Stephanie Cabot, as ever. 

 

"a deeply satisfying novel, a rich story with a strong feeling for time and place and the expert pacing of the best thrillers. Readers will appreciate Lawrenson’s ability to combine stunning atmosphere with a fascinating historical backstory."

                                                     — starred Booklist review

Stork in flight

 

First new blog post for ages, I know, but I wanted to leave the Goodreads giveaway up as the first one on the page, and it ran for almost the whole of January. I've been busy too, trying to get a new book off the ground as well as all the real-life matters that don't seem to stop just because I'd like to sit down and write. As far as the blog is concerned, I think I'm going to do what I did in the lead-in to publication of The Lantern, all those years ago when I started this blog. That is, post little and often, with glimpses into the background of the upcoming novel due out in April.

 

So here we are, in this picture, on the salt marches in the sea at Faro, on the Algarve coast of Portugal. The landscape is home to thousands of storks that make their nests anywhere you care to look up in the town, in the recesses of church windows and roofs, on the pediment of the Old Town gates. If you look carefully, there's a stork in flight in the top left of the photo, cropped as much as I can without losing too much focus.

The first evening I was here, I started to notice how most of the streetlamps were tufted with dried grasses and twigs. Then I saw more ragged wigs on church porches and high ledges. I assumed it was yet more evidence of neglect, that weeds had seeded and been left to grow in sandy crevices, but as I began to study them more carefully, I figured it out. They were birds’ nests. There was one high on the stone pediment of the gatehouse to the Old Town, a great wheel of grasses, big as a tractor tyre. I looked up as I passed. I was lucky. I caught a movement inside the wheel, then a powerful white wing extended and then folded in on itself.

 

                                                                    from 300 Days of Sun

 

PS. Hmm, now I've had another look at the picture, I'm wondering whether it actually is a stork! This one definitely is, pictured from a ferry boat making its way through the maze of marshy islands. Apologies to any expert ornithologists!

 

 

Dreaming of sun

 

Weeks have passed and I have been quietly working away at my desk, trying to get another novel off the ground. I can't say much about it yet, as it's such early days and so much can change, but the act of writing brings home, once again, how much I enjoy working under gloomy skies and rain, while the pictures in my head become more intensely vibrant.

 

Just like these images from Portugal that capture the setting for my new novel, 300 Days of Sun (out next April). So relax and scroll down, and see if you can imagine yourself there, feeling the heat of the sun and the salt water on your skin...while winter does its worst outside your window.

 

As these are not my photos, I have included the links to the articles and travel websites they came from. The top image is from the London Daily Telegraph, and comes with a great introduction to the Algarve coast:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destination/portugal/93544/Algarve-travel-guide.html

 

 

This is the same view, but taken in bright daylight. I want to swim in that emerald green part of the water! http://www.globusjourneys.com/tour/portugal-in-depth/zp/

 

 

https://www.mightydeals.co.uk/Getaways/Overseas/National/Eden-Resort-Albufeira-Algarve-Portugal-7-Nights-January/4236

 

 

http://www.thomson.co.uk/destinations/europe/portugal/algarve/holidays-algarve.html

 

 

 

http://www.villas.fr/location-villa-algarve-portugal/reg28.html

 

 

 

http://www.cheapholidays.com/destinations/portugal/algarve