It’s Monday! And you know what happens on Mondays…Cover Snark!
From Reader Lisa: I saw this in my BookBub email today, was immediately perplexed and knew I had to send it to you. That HAS to be horrible photoshopping, right? That head/face is not even close to being in proportion to the body, and the face is far too round and smooth to belong with the chiseled body. And the hair… I just don’t understand. WTF is going on? Is this Highlander so elusive that he has a stunt double for his head so no one can identify him?
Sarah: I wonder if the surprised look is because he doesn’t know how his head became attached to that body, or where all the ab and pec oil came from…
Elyse: I almost screamed.
Is that a joke!?
Amanda: I feel like you can still see part of the shape of the dude’s head underneath the Photoshop.
Sarah: Nope. Not a joke. That’s a real cover.
I know there are some rules about proportion, and I’m pretty sure one of them is not, “The head should have its own climate.”
Carrie: Maybe he’s like the Clancy Brown character in The Highlander and when he repaired his almost but not quite severed head he did it wrong.
Sarah: Maybe this is what happened to all the heads from the years of headless covers we’ve had in romance. I used to imagine them all in a support groups, lots of heads propped up on plastic chairs talking about how good they looked and then SFFFT! their heads were cropped off.
Maybe they’ve fought their way back but haven’t quite found their correct torsos!
Which means the torsos probably have a support group as well.
Carrie: “Sometimes I wonder if she would even still love me if I stopped waxing. I mean, I want to be loved for me, not my glistening hairless quality!”
Amanda: He probably has to wear tanks tops because there’s no way he can fit those biceps into a sleeve without splitting a seam.
Sarah: Wowser. I don’t think he fits in most compact and standard rental cars, either. He’d bend the doorframe.
From Reader Rebecca: I thinks this is “Anne Geddes meets bat wings.”
Sarah: I think it’s Anne Geddes meets DragonTales.
Elyse: Nope
Redheadedgirl: NO
Amanda: Can you imagine the hell these babies are going to wreak once they become toddlers? TODDLERS WITH WINGS?!
Redheadedgirl: Uh…it’s watching me.
Amanda: Anyone else have an urge to boop that nip? “Boop! Put that away!”
Redheadedgirl: “Do we need to have a discussion about what actually is tasteful underboob?”
Sarah: It looks at you wherever you are in the room.
Ask me how I know.
Amanda: I just picture you moving back and forth around your office. “How about here? Yep. What about here? Still looking at me. What if I back up?”
Sarah: Under the futon with the cats? Yup, still looking at us.
Elyse: It’s like the Eye of Sauron except The Nipple of Sauron.
Sarah: I think it’s winking. Wink Nipple.
Sounds like a 70s game show: And here’s your host, Wink Nipple!
Elyse: I’m picturing a plaid sport jacket and that weird long, thin microphone.
GODDAMNIT SARAH NOW I HAVE THE PRICE IS RIGHT THEME IN MY HEAD
Redheadedgirl: Da da dada dada da da!
Trying to laugh silently, as husband is asleep next to me. I was doing ok until The Price Is Right theme. Aborted laughter explosion woke him and the cats.
Is it just me, or does the poorly-photoshopped head also really need an opthamologist to correct his strabismus?
It looks to me like they stuck a woman’s head on the highlander and then gave her facial hair.
And nothing says romance quite like a font with blood splatter patterns.
From the description of The Tiny-Headed Highlander:
But he is murdered on the eve of his wedding. Not willing to accept his death, his mother, a Druid priestess, performs a geas to keep him alive.
So maybe somebody DID chop off his head and it got screwed on crooked. In which case, we should be admiring the specificity of the cover art. Some people would settle for a generic guy with his head on straight rather than splurge for custom art.
Also:
But something went awry because, as the last word of the geas was spoken, Alasdair is trapped in time where he wanders the earth for centuries. The only one who can bring him back home is his betrothed. He has given up on ever finding her until she walks into his office in twentieth century Manhattan.
There can be only one, dammit! (Highlander has been on cable fairly recently, and trust me, one was more than enough.)
Re flying mischief for kids. I would still be into that. “No Flying in the House” had a less than Marvelous ending. Maybe fashions have changed…
His hed iz pastede on yay! (Sorry, it’s too early & I’ve been saving that old fandom wank joke for forever.) Oh god I need tea stat.
His hed iz pastede on yay! (Sorry, it’s too early & I’ve been saving that old fandom wank joke for forever.) Oh god I need a cup of tea stat.
One of Anne Bishop’s Dark Jewels books (forget which one) does have a toddler with wings. And it’s about as bad as you’d think. But he’s cute and his parents love him, so the mayhem is all on his part.
The guy on the Unexpected Hero cover is so disproportionned and lumpy I would probably just scream and scream and scream if he showed up to save me from peril. Especially if he was unexpected.
Hey, Mr. Wink Nipple. I got a big pastie right here for ya!
So that synopsis basically read like Highlander fanfic, which I’m confident exists. Highlander: There Should Have Been Only One (although if I’m being fair, I have a soft spot for the TV show, did love watching it in my adolescence).
Unexpected Hero guy reminds me of Randy Couture.
“Toddlers with wings” might be one of the more terrifying combinations of words ever typed. I mean, not the *most* terrifying, because *gestures broadly at everything* but it’s up there.
That last guy is getting ready to pee, and he’s trying to keep his shirt out of the stream.
Also, only one one of the babies has wings. Poor wingless baby.
Is Wink Nipple holding up his shirt with his teeth? And has anyone thought about what his hands are up to behind those books?
Do you ever hold your sword behind your shield (to add to all the other things wrong with the highlander)?
And I don’t think I want to know what Wink Niple is doing with his hands …
Is… is that the face of Jesus Christ on the cover of The Elusive Highlander? Am I seeing things now?
Cover 1: Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Maybe he should seek medical attention! The lengths some people will go to for the perfect selfie angle.
Cover 2: Someone’s gonna pay….just as soon as our unexpected hero raises his tiny gun to eye level…which might not be physically possible.
Cover 4: The randy goat-shifters series: they will chew on anything. And we mean anything !
Yes. We went there. Don’t judge us.
How is it that the Highlander’s faceis white while his body is a dark tan? Does he go outside with no shirt but a hood covering his head?
How is it that the Highlander’s face is white while his body is a dark tan? Does he go outside with no shirt but a hood covering his head?
The Illusive Highlander has two left ears. It accounts for his slightly stunned look. An object of compassion. We should not laugh at him it is bound to make it hard for him to find a woman to share his life. Very Sad.
I had twins, so the concept of flying toddlers gives me the cold sweats….
Dragon babies!!!!
CLICK!!!
I am getting so predictable.
And, yes @Ulrike, that was my question as well. Why does only one dragon baby get wings? Are they different breeds? Are they crossbreed twins where one takes after human parent & the other takes after the dragon parent? So many questions.
Honestly, the idea of romance with a man who thinks women want to see a little nip slip is just exhausting. The nip-narcissism is off the charts.
Maybe the Highlander attempted Blue Steel and then bam! The Wind Changed. Now his head is forever frozen at that awkward angle, expressionless and colourless …
Wow. The Celia Kyle “toddlers from hell” book has rave reviews on amazon, and a lot of them. Apparently it is late in a series of 7 books. Anyone read that series? Any good?
My thoughts…
The Elusive Highlander: It’s not so much like bad photoshopping as they had the dude with the hair stand behind the other dude and they hoped we wouldn’t notice that the hair is nowhere near the dude in front.
Unexpected Hero: Eww…too big and veiny.
Hatched: How come the baby on the bottom doesn’t have wings? Is this explained in the story?
I agree, that is a woman’s head, added facial hair and stuck to the highlander body. And then next cover with the big arms. Those arms are not only huge around, they are way too short for that body.
@DonnaMarie – please read and let me know! I’m curious if it’s a plot point or simply the artist acknowledging the limitations of Photoshop.
I think the guy in the first cover is a relative of Nearly Headless Nick from Harry Potter. It’s his cousin, Someone Else’s Head Norman.
Why doesn’t the Elusive Highlander have any man nipples?
If I saw the Unexpected Hero in person I would probably think he was on the homely side and had a serious illness affecting his arms.
How come only one baby has wings? And is that the mothership behind them? I would not want to be the one who had napping babies without diapers.
Dirty Desires: Forget the Wink Nipple. What is he doing with his hands?
@Ulrike, sadly, the dragon babies are a sequel to one of the other books (possibly #2), with a must read previous books warning. It’s going to be a while.
@Marcia, my thoughts about the Highlander dude, exactly. Actually, my exact thought was, “That looks like the face of Swedish Jesus that’s on so many stained glass church windows.”
How is he so elusive when he is tall enough to have his shadow go halfway across Gazpacho Lake behind him?
How is he so elusive when he is tall enough to have his shadow ghalfway across Gazpacho Lake behind him?
Actually the badly Photoshopped cover is a literal rip-off of a mainstream publisher’s cover. The original artwork is by Aleta Rafton, a gifted artist, for Must Love Kilts by Allie Mackay, published by Signet in 2011. By the way, there was no shield on the original cover, that you can easily find on Amazon.
I wish there was a way to prevent this kind of theft but I know several of the good artists, including Jon Paul and Albert Slark, are getting ripped off by mostly independent authors doing their own covers or unscrupulous cover designers working for them. It’s slightly better when the cover is used directly as it was previously published, because at least the artwork is still beautiful, unlike this monstrosity.
Perhaps Unexpected Hero should invest in some craftans.
Okay first item on my wish list, doctor dogs like Bouton from Outlander. Second item on my wish list, twin dragon babies!
@Meredith – Respect!! My 2.75-year-old twin nephews already run like Usain Bolt on amphetamines; put wings on those little buggers and we’ll only be able to corral them with a tractor beam. Toddlers with wings would be a total nightmare.
Incidentally, on seeing those wings, my subconscious did not go to dragons, it burped up the dickbats from SwearTrek. I think I need more sleep.
I think the guy on the last cover is taking part in a Free The Nipple Campaign.
He’s t-shirt actually says ” This is what a feminist looks like”. 😉
Authors always describe the hero’s arms as “corded.” Until seeing Unexpected Hero man, I didn’t realize they mean telephone cords.
Am I the only one who thinks that last guy’s arms have been stuck on backwards? It’s a little distressing…