If you were made into a book, what would your cover look like?
What design choices would you make that fit your personality? Genres! Fonts! Design trends!
(Example: Like would Elyse be a gothic romance cover with a spooky house and dark haunting woods or would she be a cozy contemporary with a basket of yarn on the cover? Or both!)
Carrie: Mine would be a sleeping sloth with a dream bubble and the bubble would be all filled in with animals and landscapes and people and slogans and plants and fungi and hot air balloons and tea and cocoa and food and of course books in the late 60’s psychedelic art style, and the title would be “A Million Dreams”
Sarah: Upon discussion with Amanda, wherein I asked, “Is there a cover image for cranky misanthrope?” her reply was:
“Yes. A dragon.”
So I’d be a dragon book cover with a large, illustrated dragon who gives absolutely negative fucks, probably reclined on a pile of books with wine and snacks, and blankets, and absolutely nothing on the to-do list, or the calendar.
Lots of wine, too. Lots and lots of books and wine.
Catherine: The cover would be extremely colourful and probably have a few too many elements on it. (I can never have too many colours, or too many tropes)
If it’s a book that reflects me, it would probably be one of those cosy covers with plenty of baked goods on it. Maybe a really fabulous cake. And a cat poised to walk across the icing. And an impossibly large stack of books on the verge of collapse. (Apparently my personality is colourful and sweet, with an air of impending disaster.)
Amanda: This one is so tough because I feel like I have two distinct moods. Cozy or annoyed. Maybe I’m a duology!
Cover one is a cozy bed, like a small town romance cover that’s like the inside of a quaint in. But it’s just a big bed with lots of blankets and a fresh, hot bowl of soup on the nightstand. Maybe some night cheese.
Cover two would definitely borrow from the current trend in fantasy romance, with dark florals and sharp weapons. It’s gonna get sexy, weird, and there will be a murder eventually.
How these two fit together in a plot? I have no idea!
Sneezy: Aaaah!!! I like so many things!!!!
Okay, so I’m a smut monster, overthinker, and a chaos demon. (That’s chaotic good to you, thank you very much.) So my book cover is the interior of a magic library that clearly has influences from several cultures across a plethora of parallel universes. It might have had a shot at internal consistency – if only there weren’t so many time space continuums jammed together. Cats, dogs, horses, orcas, and some sea turtles would be romping about, nipping from one dimension to another. The library looks like fragments of several libraries from different times of day stuck together.
In the middle of all this sprawls an enormous cat, about the size of a small bus, with luxurious long fur, who just sneezed a bit of fire. Two women are lounging on the cat in beautiful embroidered brocade silk robes that are partially undone. Scrolls and books and food are suspended in the air, and strewn on top of them and the cat. The woman with stars in her afro shows the fox spirit lady something in a book while the fox spirit lady feeds her an osmanthus cake. A void dog is trying to play with the fox spirit lady’s tail. There’s two braziers in front of them, a pot of tea on the smaller one, and a pot of soup on the slightly larger one. Several cats are sitting around the smaller brazier like it’s a summoning circle, staring at the tea pot. A floating tea set is pouring rose and jasmine tea for the women, and some rose buds and jasmine flowers sparkle in the light as they tuck themselves back into their respective jars.
Tl;dr – women having a great time eating and reading with their animals all around them in the middle of a chaos magic library. Somehow they can eat and drink and heat food all they want, while lounging on their fire breathing cat and nothing burns down or gets oil stains because magic. No need to worry about ants or animals shredding the books or eating what they’re not supposed to, also because magic.
So tell us, if you were fashioned into a book, what kind of cover would you have?
Against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling, left-to-right, stuffed-to-the-brim bookshelves, under a glittering disco ball, three women are arrayed: one wears a vintage 1970s Pucci jumpsuit and the big hair/bright makeup of that time; the next is a “woman of a certain age” holding a small child’s hand whilst juggling two babies in her arms and trying to keep track of several dogs; the last is a blissfully-tucked-up-on-a-comfy-chair older woman with gray hair, headphones, and a kindle on her lap. If we’re going for the interactive cover, “Try Me” by Donna Summer (the ne plus ultra of disco music) plays when you click a link.
Tag line: “In the seventies, I was a Disco Dolly; in the eighties, I was a Reagan-era Go-Go Girl; then one day I woke up and it was 1999 and I’d been married ten years, had three kids, and was teaching Sunday School. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘how did this happen?’”
Ooh, fun. 🙂 If I were fashioned into a book, the cover would feature me at my roughly 36-yr-old best; wearing a black ballroom costume that looks like a tailcoat over tap pants with fishnets and very sparkly shoes and a top hat; standing on a cartoon map of the US, with a trail of flattened men leading from East Coast to West; in one hand I have a glass of red wine; the other is resting on a hip-height stack of books. The title is Mama Told Me Not to Come and it looks like a sign from the Vegas strip. 🙂
Remember a couple days ago when PLAYING WITH FIRE was in the BOS post? That’s my book cover. Something you think you know everything about based on appearance until the gouts of flames incinerate you.
And puppies.
Cover 1: A woman in her early 30’s, sitting on a blanket on an empty beach. Her long hair is blowing in a light breeze. It’s autumn, so she’s in sweater and jeans, but her shoes are off and her toes in the sand. She gazes out to the ocean, not smiling, but not sad.
Title: “And then…”
Cover 2: A throneroom with an empty throne. A crown sized for a woman hangs off the back, like a hat on a hatrack Same title.
There’d be a grey-haired woman cross-legged on the couch. I’d have a laptop on my lap, a tablet to one side, and a phone connected to earbuds in my ears. A lab-mix dog would be curled up by my side, and there would be a window behind me and a horse would have it’s head in the window looking over my shoulder. I would be kissing it’s muzzle. On the coffee table in front of me would be minis and a DM screen (from Dungeons and Dragons) with the words clearly saying, “You Can Certainly Try…” (title of my book) Around on the floor, table, walls are half-finished projects.
Mine would be a forest, but in shades of black and iridescent black. Maybe a grim reaper or monster shadow in there somewhere or Henry Cavill in period dress.
Mine would be a large library with floor to ceiling books, a ladder, a comfortable chair with a small table, and a crackling fire. In front of the fireplace, a dog is curled up on a rug. On the table is a glass of wine and the woman in the chair is reading. A stack of romances and mysteries is next to her chair.
An ancient dragon richly embroidered with colorful silks and metallic threads, eyeing the viewer in annoyance. The title: DO NOT DISTURB (I’m disturbed enough already.)
A woman in a Star Trek T-shirt sitting against a mausoleum reading a book.
I haven’t worked it all out but there would definitely be a library of many levels with tall ceilings and one of those swoopy ladder contraptions and furniture made from very large fungi.
Also, I would like to read all of these please.
Me sitting in a comfy porch swing outside of a remote lakefront gingerbread cottage. Backdrop is moody trees and foreground is the lake. Colours are purples and silver/grey. There’s books stacked to one side and a small table in reach with hot tea and my favourite snacks. I have wings.
Mine would doubtless either look like or incorporate a bar of chocolare.
Hmm, that should have said chocolate!
I would totally read the Sneezy book! (Which is also a fun sentence to say.)
My cover would be slightly warm burgundy leather from an unknown beast, flaking a bit at the spine, with thick, uncut pages and swirly secret endpapers. The book would not actually open, but continued efforts to pry it open would result in a single red eye slowly opening in the center of the cover and fixing its curious gaze on the intruder.
@Pam G drops mike as she leaves the comments.