I received this private message on a social media site.
"I read your book and it was cute, actually from the
time Rhonnie and Marc started going through Meleseus'
room I could not put it down, but what do
the bricks on the front cover have to do with the story?"
Well, the bricks represent more how I felt at the time the cover was made.
- Stuck between a rock and a hard spot! -
My original book cover idea had been the profile of a girls face towards the top of the right side of the book, she would have long, red hair and big green eyes, and she would be looking at the Amulet in the bottom left corner. I drew it out. I worked on it obsessively. I tried several different layouts but it always looked like every other cover I had seen that had somebody looking at something.
I wanted something different!
I was off to the drawing board again but I was stuck. I could not think of anything that would not resemble another book in some way. I just didn't want a person on the front of my book! Then, I saw the Talon Series covers by Julie Kagawa and they are unique.
They are their own.
They are the skins of dragons.
They are beautiful.
Amazing!
So, I had a new thought! Why not a landscape, some rolling, green hills or a field? The more I tried to incorporate a landscape the more I saw other book covers in my cover and I was once again stuck searching for new ideas. A picture that would cover the whole cover had become my goal.
I seemed to be smooshed up against a brick wall by a giant boulder!
As I thought about my cover and how I was never going to publish my book because it would never have a cover, that brick wall became more foreboding. I began drawing pictures of bricks, nothing fancy, just color swaps here and there, and a new idea formed. Atleah, the book, is named after the castle in the book, why couldn't my brick wall represent the structure of Atleah? Why couldn't those bricks that had taunted me be turned into my book cover?
Before long the bricks had formed a wall, and that wall formed a cover for my book! I did not stop there. After the stress I put myself through with the first cover I began to struggle with the look of the next cover until I realized I can use my bricks again! I can combine my books into the Gurruffallo Series by their covers!
Once I figured out what I was doing and what all I could accomplish with my bricks, the idea of a cover no longer bothered me. I like my bricks and they mean something to me because they represent more than the castle walls of Alteah, they also represent my struggles.
I hope this answers your question!
Atleah can be found at:
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