Cover Snark: Mer-Bikers & Hot Dogs

May we offer you some Cover Snark in this trying time?

Lincoln Shaw by Ciana Stone. A greasy shirtless man is astride a motorcycle in front of a metal bridge.

Amanda: Wow those are some proportions.

CarrieS: I looked at this without my glasses and thought, “You know, we don’t see many Mercyclists these days.” I would read The Mer-Bikers of Texas.

Catherine: I was more thinking bike-taur… so kind of the same.

Sneezy: I like both your versions more.

Charlotte B: I’m sorry I can’t get past how dirty his hair looks. Like you’d touch it and it would feel sort of crunchy and sticky at the same time.

Sarah: I looked at this on my phone and also thought “merman on a cycle? How does that work? Does he ride side saddle?”

Sneezy: And is the bike waterproof? How would it operate under water?

Ellen: There’s a lot going on here and I hate all of it.

A Matter of Manners by Terry Graham. A naked woman is wrapped in a red satin sheet. What skin we can see is oddly smooth and rubbery looking. A man is lounging on the bed in the background, gazing upon the smooth bean woman.

Sarah: I’ve never seen a cannellini bean shifter romance before.

Susan: I finally got Slack working on my laptop again and that was the first thing that popped up.

Sneezy: An auspicious start!!!!

Tara: It’s like an alien wearing a human suit and the dudebro who loves it.

Maya: She’s giving me Gumby realness and mostly I just miss Gumby.

Lara: This alien did a terrible job choosing their human suit – I’m pretty sure that head doesn’t belong on that body.

Ellen: Someone get this woman some skele-grow, STAT!!!

CarrieS: When I was growing up sometimes someone would overheat a Barbie – if you left them on pavement in the sun in summer they would get all soft and bendy. Clearly that has happened here.

Catherine: I have to keep counting her limbs because it looks like she has too many. (She doesn’t, but I don’t quite believe it…)

Hot Docs on Call: New York City Nights. A man and woman are canoodling above the NYC skyline. The cover isn't as snarky as the title.

From Emily: I saw this Mills and Boon book in my local bookshop (I’m in the UK), and 100% read it as “Hot Dogs on Call”. Not sure it quite qualifies for Cover Snark but still had the urge to send it along!

CarrieS: I did the same thing, and thought, “The cover isn’t too bad but the title is terrible!”

Sarah: I can see why she’d make that mistake.

Also Hot Dogs on call would be much more of interest to me than Hot Docs on call, but I’m a little odd in that preference I’m guessing.

Elyse: I saw dogs too

Amanda: I read it as dogs as well and I got excited because I fucking love hot dogs.

Sarah: ME TOO! I want one now, in fact.

Tara: Now I want it to be a hot dog food truck romance.

Shana: I’m clearly in the minority here, but I was relieved b/c I don’t like hot dogs but love watching Grey’s Anatomy.

CarrieS: Samesies, Shana.

Maya: Enemies to lovers: Chicago hot dog truck vs. NY!

Tara: Take my money

via GIPHY

Maya: Ok, so there’s one street corner–NY hot dog cart that’s been in the family for forever (fun fact, vending licenses in NY for food carts can be extremely expensive depending on the corner!) and then this upstart Chicago hot dog food truck arrives. There are fights over whether there should be onions on hot dogs! Relish vs. no relish!! BUT THEN, the Health Department starts some heavy handed inspections that threaten to shut down both their businesses. They come together to start a business group for all food vendors to come together to advocate for themselves and fight city harassment. We learn fun things about city regulations for food service! There are drama-filled city hearings! A politician is accepting bribes from brick and mortar restaurants! An intrepid reporter who loves all kinds of hot dogs breaks the story of city corruption! And there will be hot dogs at the wedding.

Sarah: So you’re writing that yes?

Maya: Well, I think I’ve got marketing figured out!

Sneezy: If you don’t write this story, a Blackhole of Tears will open in the universe, and all meaning, life, time, space, ALL MEANING, will be LOST

Claudia: Seconded!!

Maya: Thanks yall, but also I was trying to find a good writing gif, but mostly I got stuck on how very…phallic this one is!!

An illustrated woman holding a giant pencil in the rain. Lightning strikes and the pencil breaks in half

Catherine: Maya, I too would read your story.

Sneezy: I enjoy the phallic interpretation of this gif. The interpretation of a dick being snapped off by thunder.

Wind River Protector by Lindsay McKenna. A very serious cowboy sits on a fence. He is joined by the happiest looking yellow labrador.

Lara: It’s not so much the cover… as the mismatch between “super serious cowboy” and “goodest boy who wants to play fetch”

Tara: Which one is the protector?

Catherine: The dog. Definitely the dog.

Sneezy: The super serious cowboy can go do…whatever super serious thing he’s constipated about. I’m flouncing off with the goodest boy to a field of daisies for fetch and snuggles.

Also, do the colours look weird to anyone else? The background, figure, and dog all look like stickers pasted on top of each other

Charlotte B: I would read this if it were narrated by the dog.

Ellen: The dog is definitely the protector, right? It’s the dog. The real treasure was the dogs we met along the way (and not the constipated cowboy).

CarrieS: I kept thinking: “Why is it cut in half?” and then I realized that he’s sitting on a fence. The doggie is a good doggie and I love him/her.

Comments are Closed

  1. Heyah says:

    How about doing a cover post with only cute animals outshining the humans? I am sure that’s its own category, I can already name half a dozen. And that’s without looking in my kindle.

  2. Todd says:

    Looking at the biker merman, to me it looks like he has a navel placed off-center … can’t get past that.

  3. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    Obviously the hot doc was so busy being on call (and, judging by his attire, being a groomsman at someone’s formal wedding) he had no time to shave his neck beard.

  4. Jazzlet says:

    I have my doubts about that dog being a good dog, but admit my views on golden retrievers are coloured by one I fostered that would not recall if she felt like running off, but who also pulled like a train on the lead, Fortunately she was rehomed before she pulled my arm out of my socket as we weren’t getting anywhere fast with the lead training, rehomed to someone with a lot of space for her to run in to her heart’s content.

  5. Julia F says:

    The last cover is particularly problematic as the designer matched the line of his shirt with the line of the fence and it really makes it look bad, splitting the eye at that point.

  6. Maria says:

    But it is a bizarro fence, the top slat is going through him, and he is sitting on the middle slat. I can’t imagine he is very comfortable with a fence going through him. Perhaps that’s why he is super- serious. Indeed, it would be a medical emergency.

  7. DiscoDollyDeb says:

    @Maria: The cowboy should contact the hot doc. I’ve been assured he’s on call.

  8. EC Spurlock says:

    Hot Dogs On Call, pandemic dinner delivery service.

    Is that biker’s hair really cornrowed? It looks like that to me.

  9. Madam Shiny says:

    So the merbiker’s face tells the tail (tale – did you see what I did there Sylvia ?) that
    a) he’s having to sit in the mother of all guff smells and he can’t run away from it, poohwee !
    And b) he is also fed up of sitting on motorbike made up of strange things; the seat and metal bar came from a cheap metal seesaw and the engine is a pair of bongos that he is keen to play for the photographer and assistant to distract them from the fact that he couldn’t be arsed to wash his hair but needs the money pronto.
    In wind river protector, the serious looking cowboy is very pained because sitting on the fence is playing havoc with his piles.

  10. Sandra says:

    Haven’t we featured a Cotton Creek cover before? I seem to remember lots of comments regarding men’s underwear brands… What do you want to bet he’s not wearing his Fruit of the Looms?

  11. Nagarajas says:

    “dick broken off by thunder” ?

    I think that’s an MCU tag on AO3, lol.

  12. denise says:

    Hot Docs on Call–her head looks a little too Olan Mills pose compared to him.

  13. Jaws says:

    That cowboy isn’t super-serious — he’s constipated from a cowboy diet of all red meat and no beans in the chili evah. I mean, look at that almost-grimace after four days on the range. Which also explains why all of the buttons on his shirt have popped off.

    Worse yet, he doesn’t have any toilet paper for when he can go. The dog brought him some, but it was drooled on. Some protector.

  14. BellaInAus says:

    Sandra, I was thinking the same thing. I’m sure we snarked a Cotton Creek cover before.

    And the cowboy cover has so many problems. The cowboy looks like he was posing on a bar stool, only they photo shopped him into leaning on a fence. His shirt lines up with the top of the fence and then they lined up the bottom of the authors first name with the top of the fence as well. And there’s not enough similarity between the view behind his shoulders and behind the fence, so it looks like the top of the cowboy is posed against a snow capped mountain and the legs of the cowboy are posed against another snow capped mountain. No wonder he looks constipated.

    Unless by Wind River Protector they mean he has gas and that’s why the river is all rippled.

    And I have no idea why that doggo is photo shopped in there.

  15. Taylor says:

    a dick being snapped off by thunder…wouldn’t it be…Thor

  16. Nina says:

    I thought A Matter of Manners was about time travel. She is a modern Pantene cover girl with super lustrous hair and eye makeup. He is a transported Regency hero who is unaware that in this century men button their shirts up.

  17. SB Sarah says:

    @Nagarajas: I just spewed my coffee!

  18. Kris Bock says:

    In A Matter of Manners, it’s not that she has too many limbs, it’s that she has limbs that don’t belong to her. I’m skeptical that any of those limbs came from the same person, and the left arm isn’t even attached to the thing she uses as a torso.

  19. kc says:

    looking at the Wind River Protector with the dog in the corner: I figured shifter cowboy! Usually the shifter books have the critter form in a corner so we know bear, dragon, wolf…in this case, golden lab?

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