Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements
A.K.A. Goddess
Evelyn Vaughn
Sarah: I keep looking at this cover to determine how I feel about the out-of-focus image of the heroine. The background imagery with the arches and the medallion in the background does it a marvelous job of indicating the plot – but the fuzzy heroine? Hmm.
At first, my thought was, “All covers look like this if I don’t wear my glasses!” But as different as it is, I like it. I’ve not seen a cover like it in romance, and while I found it distracting at first, I think it’s an intriguing design. I’m not sure it would catch on with cover design, but it’s fascinating.
Candy: Look! It’s the Bionic Woman! Now with Blur-Tronic® Technology! Also featuring the hottest shade of Auburn Shimmer hair color, coming to retail stores soon, brought to you by L’Oreal Feria! (They don’t call it hair dye any more—only floozies dye their hair, classy dames color it. Ahhhh, love me some marketing.)
Anyway, the cover itself is quite nice. But the motion blur effect? I think it’s cheesy as hell. Moderation, people! Moderation! Plus with the mildly worried yet resolute look on the model’s face, I wonder if she’s actually worried about being smeared off the page altogether.
Best Contemporary Single Title
Bet Me
Jennifer Crusie
Sarah: I love this cover. LOVE IT. Luscious, sexy, sassy, and so perfect for the story. LOVE it. Crusie might have also have to be named an official Lucky Bitch® for this and her other recent covers. I love when a writer gets a distinctive design for her book covers that emerges in subsequent issues – Crusie and PC Cast both have almost iconic covers and the attention to design paid to their novels makes me so happy from a respect-from-publishing-houses perspective. I mean, why shouldn’t romance novels get kickass cover design?
Candy: Can’t find anything to snark about in this cover. It’s sassy, it’s beautifully-designed (look at the fonts! And the colors!) and the shoes are relevant to the story, and I could gush on and on but hot damn, that’d be so boring… One of the few instances in which a deserving book is graced with a truly wonderful cover.
Best Paranormal Romance
Blue Moon
Lori Handeland
Sarah:From the middle down I love this cover. But avast, me hearties! Man-titty ahoy! However, since it’s a partial image of a man, it’s some what more mysterious, and as I’ve said, I am a fan of the faceless dude. Faceless or neck-down images allow me to put my own face on the hero, which is much more satisfying. Man-titty aside, of course. Arrrrgh!
Candy: Strut on a line, discord and rhyme, he’s on the hunt he’s after you… After your support bra, that is!
And is the wolf howling in sweet, sweet sorrow at the presence of unnecessary man-titty in the cover?
Sorry, the boobage just ruins this cover for me. Bleh.
Best Inspirational Romance
Grounds To Believe
Shelley Bates
Sarah: Again, from the middle down, awesome artwork. From the middle up? What’s the message here? Is he God? What’s with the “Touched by an Angel” backlighting?
Candy: I am not a fan of the “dude leering over a landscape” type covers. I mean, da fuck? If he’s God, then God looks like baggy-eyed, vaguely pouty white yuppie scum? And Heaven is full of inoffensive pastel colors?
Ugh. Talk about Hell.
Grounds to believe… that this is a lame-ass cover.
Best Regency Romance
A Passionate Endeavor
Sophia Nash
Sarah: “I can totally see down your blouse, my lady.”
I’ve never understood the homogeneity of Regency covers (this after I get all giddy over iconic cover design for specific authors, allowing me to spot them at ten paces sans glasses). But similar design for a genre? Makes it easy to grab your Regencies, I suppose, but after awhile, is it possible to create something original in what has become a very standard cover design?
That said, that is a fine looking dude right there. Wish he’d appear on more covers than that other guy, the other Fabio.
Candy: “Ahhh, ma cherie, it is charming that you are attempting to read. But I know what it is like to be a woman, with your greatly diminished intellectual capacity. Here, let me help you sound out the words as you read.
“Ahhhh, yes, a fine book, ma puce. Let us begin!
“‘See Dick run. Run, Dick, run!’ Ahhhh, quel aventurier, our leetle Dick.”
Sorry. Something about the guy just brought to mind someone sleazy, French and condescending.
Not that I’ve EVER met good-looking French guys who were sleazy or condescending, or anything. *koff*
Best Short Contemporary Series
Miss Pruitt’s Private Life
Barbara McCauley
Sarah: Looks like someone has Miss Pruitt’s hair off-camera and is about to give it a mighty yank. Weird hair aside, Rwor! Nice sexy cover. Not enough overt sex oozing off the page to make me want to cover the screen with my hand, but enough to make it spicy.
Except for the hair pulling. I HATE it when my hair gets pulled.
Candy: This one’s all right. It’s not hideous, praise Jah. But it’s also kinda cheesy and brings to mind made-for-TV soft porn. The cover says to me, Harlequin Blaze: It’s the Skinemax of Romance!
Best Long Contemporary Series
John Riley’s Girl
Inglath Cooper
Sarah: Hey. HEY! Get a room! Not in front of the newborn foal! Maybe you want to go see why the burro baby isn’t standing up yet? Or are you looking at that riding gear over her shoulder and thinking, “Hmmmm!”
Candy: Oh, the poor foal. It has no idea what unspeakable acts are going to be perpetrated upon it by these two Stepford People, does it?
So much for no bestiality on our romance novel covers.
Best Long Historical Romance
Shadowheart
Laura Kinsale
Sarah: Is this a stepback? I couldn’t find a secondary image online. Anyone? Otherwise? Get the Crusie/Cast team of cover designers on over to Kinsale’s house, stat! We need some fabulous iconic designs for Miss Kinsale asap! Because for a great book, that cover is seriously yawnful!
Candy: Laura Kinsale is cursed to have either really awful covers (see: every original cover for every Avon novel) or really, really boring ones (see: every Berkeley release). Ah well, at least we are spared Fabio’s bountiful bosom. This book deserved a cover featuring a detail from a painting from the Italian Renaissance to do it justice. But y’all know what a freakin’ Laura Kinsale fangirl I am.
Best Short Historical Romance
A Wanted Man
Susan Kay Law
Sarah: At first I dug this cover, as it’s not usual that you see the waist-down perspective (huh huh) of a heroine. Not to mention that the title and the image are at odds – sure looks like she’s walking away and that there man is not so wanted after all.
But the shadow on the ground? Is he stalking her? Is it creepy? Is she running away because he’s a wanted man for being a creep? Is he going to start lurching down that path after her?
OK, now I’ve officially creeped myself out.
Candy: Eh. Pretty bland. But Sarah called it: kinda creepy with the shadow and all.
Best Romantic Suspense
I’m Watching You
Karen Rose
Sarah: Dude. DUDE. KICK ASS COVER! Deliberately creepy, and what a totally innovative angle for a cover. The fat gloved hand, the rearview mirror image? KICK ASS. WHOO!
Candy: OK, from the shrunk-down cover, it looked as if the person’s wearing oven mitts, which, as you might well imagine, drove the “What the fuck?” factor way, way up for the book. But upon looking on a bigger version, I now see that it’s not an oven mitt.
Anyway, pretty nice cover. It’s nice to see a cover that’s actually intentionally creepy, instead of hilariously creepy (see: just about every cover for Sandra Hill’s Viking series).
Mostly decent covers, although how damn big is the bed Miss Pruit is laying on?
As the two people are in a perfect ‘right angle of luuurve’ formation, it leads me to believe that they may be frolicing on one of those revolving round beds, a la Austin Powers.
“Do I make you horny, baby? Yeah!”
That’ll be the title of my Blaze/Desire novel.
Mine would be called “Serious Shag.”
It’d be an homage to wacky shoot-em-up video game Serious Sam AND Austin Powers.
Mine would be Solid Gold-Member, an homage to Disco and big wangs.
I think I need more coffee, but in my first glance of Grounds to Believe, I thought the guy looming over the landscape was wearing a Deepspace 9 slash Star Trek uniform. See how the hills kind of look like a line across his shoulders? See?
A little jarring.
Oh! Forgot to add, I like the fact that Ms. Pruitt’s man, although he is on a rather large bed, is on his back looking up at the heroine. Finally!!
Skinemax! Bwaahahahaa
X
I am seriously disappointed in you Bitches for failing to point out the somewhat questionable symbolism at odds with each other on the Crusie cover. Fuck me shoes and virginal cherries? And what exactly are they doing? Flying through the air at someone’s head? Or maybe they’re ascending…a suggestion that all good shoes go to heaven if only they stay pure.
That is sooo not a Lucky Bitch cover. It’s pretty goofy, if you ask me (of course, no one did, but you do leave the comments open so I stepped in anyhow!)
*snerk* In my capacity as volunteer librarian at my kids’ primary school I see a lot of book covers for teenage adventure stories and ‘A.K.A Goddess’ looks just like one of those…
I am seriously disappointed in you Bitches for failing to point out the somewhat questionable symbolism at odds with each other on the Crusie cover. Fuck me shoes and virginal cherries?
Are cherries strictly symbolic of virginity and purity? I know that for me, they represent sensuality, mostly because of their shape and color. Not to mention the whole tie-a-cherry-stem-into-a-knot thing.
And are the shoes fuck-me shoes? Pretty boring for fuck-me heels, aren’t they? I tend to think of something racier, strappier and higher when people say “fuck-me shoes.” Like these, for example:
And the weird floating-in-nowhere thing is no worse and in some ways a lot better than most novels that choose to use objects on the cover to represent the Goings-On Within. I kind of like the shoes floating in the sky. They’re being set free! Whee!
So there and nyah nyah 😉 .
Gasp! AngieW – you don’t like the Bet Me cover? It’s just. I can’t. I mean. Words fail me. What’s not to like? The blue background catches the attention and then there are the shoes with the cherries that I want for myself (and that have a role in the book). It says happy and fun and quirky to me.
And I adore covers like the one on that Miss Pruitt book – every time I see one like that it calls out to me with a voice like a siren and says “buy me…buy me NOW” and I inevitably heed the call. I’ve even got one that I don’t like all that much because I love looking at the cover and imagining what the story inside could be if it measured up to the image on the outside.
I know: shallow much? But I can’t help myself, I love ‘em.
At the convention, Jenny Crusie, Sandra Hill, and some other people did a talk about “When Bad Covers Happen To Good Books.” (I thought it was going to be about how to work around a shitful cover, and since I’m published in ebooks and some of those covers are, let’s face it, pretty damn shitful, I was anxious to learn this… only they didn’t talk about that.)
Instead, it was a rather interesting look at how covers come to pass. Crusie brought slides of the covers she rejected on the way to the shoes in the sky. Haven’t read the book (have it on tape and it’s going to motivate my ass when I get my treadmill in a week) but apparently her heroine is plump, so she vetoed all the skinny gorgeous models. Then they did a cover with the shoes on a green lawn… nice, but with a very phallic garden hose, so vetoed that one too. Then just a woman from the waist-down with the shoes, but her legs were too skinny, so another veto.
Finally the shoes in the sky, which I love, too. Very fantasy, very eye-catching, very lighthearted and Crusie-ish.
Oh, to be Jenny Crusie, to be able to say to the art department, “No, you fools, do it over, and this time get it right!” as many times as you want!
drowns in jealousy…
Forgot to add, Sandra Hill has an awesome sense of humor about her covers. She put up that one with the Viking grinning and beckoning with a finger (the pull-my-finger cover so excellently snarked by the Bitches) onto the big screen and joined in the laughter that filled the room.
She also shared a story about that cover. She said a reader had written to her and said that she was dying of cancer, and she planned to have that book placed in her casket at the funeral, cover up. Apparently this lady was quite the joker and wanted to make people laugh through their sorrow at her loss. Hill said that since that time, she’s not hated that cover one bit.
Classy lady. She and Crusie were very entertaining and funny.
The oddest thing about the boobage covered is the shave job. Other than swimmers, do hetero men shave their chest? And if I’m right about this, doesn’t it conflict with RWA’s standards? Signed,
Doug “Carpet Back” Hoffman
A very good point, Mr. Hoffman – what is it with the hairless man chest on romance novel covers? Aren’t most heroes inside the novel described with “crinkly” or “crisp” chest hair during Key Moments of Romantic Interlude?
“…what is it with the hairless man chest on romance novel covers? Aren’t most heroes inside the novel described with “crinkly†or “crisp†chest hair during Key Moments of Romantic Interlude?”
Well, I’ve heard it has something to do with the difficulty of translating body hair onto covers so that it doesn’t look like ground cover, but I also think it has to do with the fact that some of the cover models are also body builders, and they DO shave all over. It’s always one of the things that’s cracked me up about cover models—they are meant to be hyper-masculine, and yet one of the most prominent secondary traits of maleness is removed.
As to fuck-me-now shoes, I always thought they had to be backless so they could easily slip off one’s oh-so-round heels. The shoes on the Crusie cover fit that definition. Whatever, it’s a great cover.
I don’t care the Lori Handeland cover, because even though I generally like partial headshots, you can see enough to know it’s John de Salvo. He may be the nicest man on earth, but I don’t find his face attractive—something about the shape of his jaw, which is exactly what shows on this cover. I have to admit, however, I do like his body, even with the man boobs; his are certainly not the worst I’ve seen on a romance cover. As for no chest hair, I think it’s because chest hair doesn’t photograph well (it can make the chest look dirty), hides some of the muscle definition these guys work so hard on, and is even harder to do well in a drawing than a photo. At least, that’s my guess.
“If he’s God, then God looks like baggy-eyed, vaguely pouty white yuppie scum?”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously, this guy looks like every earnest-expression-proves-how-sincere-I-am Youth Pastor I ever had as a kid. “Okay, young people. We’re gonna rap now about the things you kids really dig.”
Hey, you down with G-O-D?
Yeah, you know me!
Baby Got Book
<——Best Christian Rap song EVAH!
As to fuck-me-now shoes, I always thought they had to be backless so they could easily slip off one’s oh-so-round heels.
Good point! But I always thought the point of fuck-me shoes was, y’know, getting it on with them ON 😉 . But as we’ve established, I do have a filthy turn of mind.
Aren’t most heroes inside the novel described with “crinkly†or “crisp†chest hair during Key Moments of Romantic Interlude?
Crinkly, crisp chest hair? Fuck that—I’ve read descriptions of plentifully befurred chests and thick, manly pelts, against which the heroines rub themselves like horny kittens.
And I always wonder why the chest hair doesn’t tickle the bejesus out of their noses and make ‘em sneeze.
I am a romance reader with no romantic soul, alas.
Seriously, this guy looks like every earnest-expression-proves-how-sincere-I-am Youth Pastor I ever had as a kid.
Robyn, you have nailed the look EXACTLY.
Aieeee.
He also looks like the type who loves to groove to Hootie and the Blowfish.
Oh shit. I just looked at the Baby Got Book link. That was beautiful.
“NIV with the ribbon bookmark….”
I was an NRSV Catholic edition girl, myself, since I went to Catholic schools most of my life.
Crinkly, crisp chest hair? Fuck that—I’ve read descriptions of plentifully befurred chests and thick, manly pelts, against which the heroines rub themselves like horny kittens.
And I always wonder why the chest hair doesn’t tickle the bejesus out of their noses and make ‘em sneeze.
My wife has never sneezed. But then, she’s never rubbed herself against me like a horny kitten, either.
Will someone please talk to the woman?
I just wish someone would snark on the regency heroine’s dress but as y’all won’t….
Dear gods! It looks like an evil bridesmaid outfit in which they wanted both ‘baby-doll’ and ‘long’ to feature. And the bride found the least appealing colour possible to make her bridesmaids look badly tanned and then – just to finish off – put a huge black velvet ribbon around the high waist to ensure their boobs were smaller than hers.
Forgot to say that the a.k.a. Goddess cover suggests someone in the art department has a crush on
a) Willow from Buffy
b) Sydney from Alias
and therefore created a soft-focus composite of them …
My wife has never sneezed. But then, she’s never rubbed herself against me like a horny kitten, either.
I’ve sneezed.
And I wasn’t even acting all that kittenish, either.
:red:
I have once again sprayed coffee over my computer monitor while reading. Thsi is getting ridiculous. I think it was the Man-Titty Ahoy that did it.
I totally dug the last cover, it was just the right amoutn of creepy to make me want to pick the book up despite the oven-mitt factor.
Small gripe with Regency covers: goddammit, if you’re going to have a Regency cover, at least have the frocks and other clothing in Regency colors and fabrics. Is that so much to ask? GAAARGH!
you can see enough to know it’s John de Salvo
Oh crap, Susan K, you’re right! Now all I can picture is that “can someone buy me a clue” look he seems to have in his eyes at all times. This makes it an extra good thing that they gave us the man-titty only and left his face out of it. http://www.johndesalvo.com/images-frame.htm
I just realized that Blue Moon won a prize (I know—DUH!) and that this is the same book that I figured I wouldn’t want to read based on the first chapter. So, I guess this means it was pretty good and I should give it a chance despite the double whammy of John DeSalvo on the cover and its labyrinthe-like (labyrinthetine? labyrinthe-ish? O hell, you know what I mean!) first sentence.
The oddest thing about the boobage covered is the shave job. Other than swimmers, do hetero men shave their chest? And if I’m right about this, doesn’t it conflict with RWA’s standards?
Oh, shaved mantitties isn’t the problem, it’s the female appendages that corrupt the innocent little minds of Romance readers.
Though maybe, hairy manly chests would do so too, and the whole Fabio cover thing is another plot by a certain woman. :cheese:
Thanks for giving me a laugh in the midst of doing my hideous taxes. Love the comments!
Robin (who is smirking because she has a killer cover for her next fantasy)