606. Behind the Scenes of Classic Cover Art: Shirley Green and Sharon Spiak

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 606 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today my guests are Shirley Green and Sharon Spiak. Shirley and Sharon are the duo behind many – and I mean many – of your favorite classic romance covers. They’re absolutely the duo behind one of mine, For the Love of a Pirate by Edith Layton, because there’s hair and there’s waves, and they’re about to do it on some rocks. It’s an amazing cover. I connected with Shirley and Sharon, and I got a history lesson in how cover shoots used to work. We are talking costumes, art direction, photography, modeling, and painting skills, and how all of those combined to make some of the most memorable covers. We also talk about the deliberate emotional care that went into making some of their photo shoots a safe space for the cover models. It is a fantastic conversation; I learned so much, and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Hello and thank you to our Patreon community. If you are a member of the podcast Patreon, you get bonus episodes, and this week I’m going to try something special: I have an outtake from this conversation where there’s some photographs and some show and tell, which obviously doesn’t work in an audio format, so I’m going to attempt to make a video and show you the images that Sharon and Shirley have sent me of the development of some really, really recognizable covers, so I’m going to try to do a bonus video. Either way, hello Patreon folks. Thank you.

I want to say a special hello to Cara H., who’s one of the newest members of our Patreon.

The Patreon keeps me going, makes sure every episode has a transcript – hi, garlicknitter! [Hi! – gk] – and it makes for a wonderful community of people who like this show and like romance and like reading. If that sounds like you and you like this podcast, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

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Are you ready for a history lesson about the creation of some absolutely glorious covers? On with the podcast, starting with Shirley Green.

[music]

Shirley Green: I am originally from Scotland, so if you, anybody hears a wee bit of a twang, that’s the Scottish part of me coming out. I have lived and worked in New York City doing the photography for the book covers for thirty years. We kind of gave a rough estimate that I have been shooting romance book covers probably about forty thousand total.

Sarah: Holy cow!

Sharon Spiak: That’s what I said when she said the number!

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: And I participated in them!

[Laughter]

Shirley: So if you do, if you, if you think way back in the day we were doing on average, average, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five covers a month.

Sarah: That’s more than one per day!

Shirley: Oh, well, a good cover, we were doing roughly five a day, six a day. ‘Cause it would be a one-hour – it was intense.

Sarah: Wow!

Sharon: One right into the next…

Shirley: One right after the next. We were, Sharon and I were like a well-oiled machine.

Sarah: When, when would this have been?

Sharon: Oh!

Shirley: So we’re going back to, so, thirty years ago? So we would start –

Sharon: In the ‘90s.

Shirley: – that would be the ‘90s.

Sarah: Yeah. My favorite era anyway.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: [Laughs]

Shirley: Yep, so that’s me. I’m, I’m the photographer.

Sarah: And Sharon, would you introduce yourself?

Sharon: I am – oh – Sharon Spiak, and I have been painting romance novel covers up till about 2001 or 2 or something like that, from the early ‘80s of that period, that twenty-year period from the ‘80s to the 2000s. I painted romance novel covers, and I painted the covers myself. And yeah, and, but at the same time, I was also, I went to school at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, and I studied fashion design, but my main interest was costume. So I – [laughs] – I used to make all, I, I still do make costumes, and hence I’ve become a stylist, since I didn’t really move on into the computer generation – [laughs] – so I don’t do Photoshop.

Sarah: So you do the oil or the art, the art painting.

Sharon: I, I did a, I did when they were doing them, yes.

Sarah: And now you do style and costume for, for cover design.

Sharon: …cover design, yes.

Sarah: Okay, this is so cool.

Shirley: So, basically, every, every photo shoot, I would say ninety-nine percent of every photo shoot I have ever worked on, Sharon has been the person that I have had style my shoots for me.

Sarah: That’s incredible. I have –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – I have so many questions. So I know that you have worked together on all of these shoots over thirty, forty years. What is the process like then or now or both, from design to costumes to shooting to, at that point, painting? ‘Cause one thing I think surprises a lot of readers that was surprising to me when I learned it was that these were originally oil paints on a board.

Sharon: That’s right, or canvas.

Shirley: So I’m going to let Sharon start this with you, because that realm of how, when I first started out doing the covers, I was primarily working with artists. I was doing what would be known as reference photography –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – and then it was, you know, either slide or print film, and then I would make copies and send it off to the artist, and then they would do that. What you’re looking at, what’s up on your wall is your oil and canvas. So that would be Sharon’s realm of when I first started, she was, I was…

Sharon: I…new to it.

Shirley: You were, you were actually styling when I first started; you weren’t painting.

Sharon: That’s right; I was already done painting…

Shirley: Yeah. ‘Cause I, I’m way younger than her; I was a baby, so. [Laughs]

Sharon: I’m an old lady. [Laughs]

Shirley: Yeah, she’s been around a bit. But anyway, so she, she, she’s part of the whole, when I first started it was oil.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: It was working with artists who were painting, so the difference between how it was back then is the artist had way more freedom, so there was less pressure on the photographer, because –

Sharon: True.

Shirley: – the artist could literally make John DeSalvo anything. He could be a blond; he could be a redhead. You know, I, I’ve done photo shoots where John DeSalvo was actually an Indian, and we did so many photo shoots where John DeSalvo would be a soldier, or he’d be a Regency. You know, so, but they could paint him to make him look like anything. So that was your, that was where the artist, for what I believe – and I might get into trouble for this, but – the artist really did the job of really illustrating the cover.

Sarah and Sharon: Yeah.

Sarah: Like the original green screen: you just had the photo of the two people, and…

Sharon: That’s all you had, yes.

Sarah: – fill it all in as, however you wanted.

Shirley: Yeah, and there were artists that would sometimes request you to shoot in black and white.

Sharon: So that color wasn’t a distraction.

Sarah: Oh, that’s so interesting! So you’d take black and white photography, photographs –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – and then the artist would use that, and –

Shirley: Yep!

Sarah: – there’d be fuchsia and teal and whatever colors – wow. So –

Shirley: So I would, you know, I had, I was, you know – look, I’m going back to the day where you went to school, you studied photography, you had a dark room, you developed your images –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – you know, you had your, your, your different copies. You had a, a light copy, a dark copy, so they could get into the highlights, the shadows. Then you would blow up the face so they could get really into – it would be an eight by ten!

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: Black and…photograph of just the two faces that they could then, Sharon would then paint! So my job was essentially done. Once I did the photo shoot, I would either drop off the slides at the lab or I would be in my dark room actually printing in black and white. Once I was done, I was finished. Then it was up to the artist to then do the painting. So I’m going to pass it on to Sharon, ‘cause –

Sharon: So what, what we used to do – I don’t know how it goes today with the art directors – is, the art directors would hire me to be the painter, and they, I would have to have the photo shoot. I would select the models. I would bring the, the, the costumes, and Shirley, or someone else, would shoot it.

Sarah: And then once you had the photographs, what did you do?

Sharon: I had the photographs; I would do three sketches of three different ideas that went along with the tip sheet that they would send.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Sharon: …the manuscript. In a lot of cases I would just get the galleys. They used to give us, as artists, lots of freedom; that doesn’t happen anymore.

Shirley: No.

Sharon: At all.

Shirley: Going back thirty years ago, it would be less pressure on the photographer and more pressure on the artist.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Shirley: Which is how it should be! ‘Cause really, the finished cover was basically the artist painting it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: You had a lot more leeway with the models if they weren’t exactly how they were supposed to look, because the artist would make them buffer, or she would have bigger boobs.

Sharon: …shot –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: – or an arm or a leg from that shot. [Laughs] I mean, it was, there was a lot of leeway with it.

Shirley: But, I mean, they’re still doing that with the, with the, with the digital aspect to all of it. Where I felt that it shifted was, a lot of the photo shoots that we did digital, sometimes the artist never came. They would send us a, I would get a, a, a sheet that would basically have descriptions of what the models look like. Contact the model agencies, I would have them send a bunch of models to the art director and the artist. I would contact Sharon. I would give her wardrobe, what needed to be done. Then the art director and the artist would look at all the models and ask which ones were better if it was a really sexy, hot, sometimes half-naked. Then I would be very specific about the models that I would send, and then they would choose the models, we would set up the shoot, and then sometimes it would just be Sharon and I in the studio with the models, and that was it. Then there were other times, if it was a big production, you would get the author, you would get the editor, you would get the art director. I mean it was like a whole mishmash of people, and then it would be very specific. I need the model to have blond hair, a guy. Well, we don’t have that many guys that have blond hair. No, I need blond hair.

Sarah: Right.

Shirley: So then we sometimes do a casting, and Wilhelmina would send us like thirty guys, and they would send us someone that we could use. Way back in the day, Wilhelmina was actually billing publishing companies over a million dollars in just what they were using their models. I mean, it was, it was insane crazy amount of the covers –

Sarah: Wow!

Shirley: – just being shot all over the city. So we could actually call up a lot of the top model agencies and be like, Look, we need to have a casting; we need to see new faces; this is what we’re looking for. And we actually could do that, and then we could get some really good models walking in the door. And then a lot of the times the way that it worked out with me was I actually got exclusive models that didn’t want to work elsewhere, because with my studio, with Sharon and me, we created a very safe space for the models.

Sarah: Yes. And these are very, I mean, these are very intimate poses.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: And Sharon, with her experience in painting and stuff, I mean, I have a very large studio where I would shoot, and they had their own space at the back, and so Sharon would be back there creating this moment with her and the female or the male. She would get a feel for the models, what was going on, how was their day, things like that, so she would be, like, the first point of reference, and then she would come into the studio and she would give me a heads-up like, This is where we’re at. So Sharon and I throughout the years just learnt to rely and trust each other, so we always had this safe space for the models. What ended up happening was I have a list of females that were just like, we just want to shoot at your studio.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: We don’t want to go elsewhere, ‘cause, you know, I’m coming in here, taking my clothes off and getting half-naked, and I feel that you and Sharon are actually going to take care of me, so.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: And then it became a case when it went digital that it was very, very specific, and it made my job much, much harder, because if the model had to be a redhead, they wanted a redhead. If she had to be blonde, they wanted a blonde. If she had to be brunette, they wanted a brunette. And I have some amazing artists that I’ve worked with throughout the years that could change –

Sarah: Yes!

Shirley: – a redhead to a brunette in Photoshop, you know? People like Aleta Rafton; if I worked with her, who was based in California, she would send me like twenty different sketches that I would actually show the models so that it was as if she was there. You know, Judy York was another artist who would literally be the model and show the girl kind of like the positions and the poses that she wanted them to get into. So there was a lot of the artists that you could actually participate with them; they were there to help you. And that would literally be six hours of a day, just one after the other, artists walking in and out, art directors coming in and out, models coming in and out, and it could be six covers in one day. Actually, it would be, the subway better not be late. [Laughs]

Sharon: Yeah, oh, and that, that happened. [Laughs]

Shirley: Sometimes we just couldn’t do it; we were just slammed.

Sarah: Wow.

Shirley: So yeah, that was how we can come up with the number that we come up with, which was insane.

Sharon: I guess they must have had much bigger budgets back then.

Sarah: Oh, I – yes.

Shirley: …just, yeah.

Sharon: Uh-huh.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Shirley: Yeah, the budgets were – and we also did step-backs too, so –

Sharon: Oh, yeah!

Shirley: – that would be an hour and a half, two hours…

Sarah: Because those are much bigger, like, physically bigger production.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: And it, it seems to me that the painting part is sort of a lost art. That that’s not being done anymore.

Sharon: It does, nobody does that anymore. I don’t know anybody that does it.

Shirley: No, but, I mean –

Sharon: [Laughs]

Shirley: – it might possibly come back, but, I mean, I, I, I know that one of your questions was in regard to the kind of book trends and what’s going on and where we are right now, and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – it’s a lot of this cartoonish stuff.

Sharon: Yeah.

Sarah: Yes.

Shirley: Like, we’re just not seeing models on covers at all.

Sharon: Or you’ll see, you’ll see some blurry figures with nothing going on.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Shirley: Or you have your cozy romance where it’s a, you know, a picture of a cottage on the beach and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – you know, pretty little picket fence and, you know, a pretty little straw hat sitting on a summer seat somewhere. That kind of –

Sarah: …landscape and situational, yeah.

Sharon: I think what happened was when eBooks came in, the, the, the cover wasn’t as big and, or as important as it used to be.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Sharon: And when you go into a bookstore, you look at the cover –

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: – you know? But –

Sarah: And the, the thing about a cover on an eBook is that the image that they’re picking has to work in what, like an inch and a half, inch high on, on a, on a browsing screen, so tiny little, tiny little image. That’s a different goal, right?

Sharon: They still can’t get the feeling.

Shirley: But a lot of the times, like, I have, I do, like, a lot of – so I get hired when the business changed and became photographic and less illustrative, I then became the artist, so a lot of the times I would get hired to do the entire shoot, and the art director would do in-house, so there would be no artist essentially hired to do the job.

Sarah: Right.

Shirley: And so in a lot of those situations, what ended up happening was, we got bigger budgets because it could, it ended up being a very stylized shoot, so then I could, you know, have Sharon come in and do like a half a day’s shooting ‘cause it was me that was the artist, so I could take the time and make it like a two-hour or three-hour shoot.

Sharon: And then a makeup artist would come in.

Shirley: Yeah! And it would be very polished.

Sharon: They did hair and makeup, which was very nice, and you need the, you need the –

Shirley: Right.

Sharon: – half a day to do that.

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Shirley: So I would go above and beyond and do, like, you know – so that could, so that, so in those situations, where there was a bigger budget and I was being hired as the artist, it was my studio, I could do that. But then it would be a hardback, a paperback, and an eBook, so I would be essentially getting a budget to shoot it for your hardback, then your mass market, and then, and then your eBook, so.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: But it was the same photo shoot; they just shoot it three different ways, which was fine.

Sarah: Right.

Shirley: And they were, and, and they were always fun shoots to work on, because they different, and they were exciting and fun, and Sharon and I could get to just really go shopping and get really the stuff –

Sharon: Yeah.

Shirley: – that we wanted to get.

Sharon: The contemporary ones, we used to…

Shirley: Oh yeah.

Sharon: …evening gowns –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: – and pretty dresses and shoes and…jewelry.

Shirley: Tuxedo.

Sharon: [Laughs] Wasn’t that fun?

Sarah: Sharon, was all of that in your collection, or did you have to rent costumes and everything?

Sharon: No, for the contemporaries, I just would go shopping.

Shirley: And we would buy them.

Sharon: And then we’d return them.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Shirley: But a lot of the, yeah, we would pretend that we had lots of weddings to go to.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh, that’s very funny. So you’re artfully, you know, pinning the tag inside the dress and –

Sharon: Oh yes –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: – I’m an expert. Yeah.

Shirley: Sometimes, yeah.

Sharon: And, and sometimes you have to take it in.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: I’m an expert remover.

Shirley: Yes.

Sharon: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wow.

Shirley: We actually, yeah, we, we, what was a, a, a Brooks Brothers cummerbund and bowtie that were like stupid three-hundred-dollar silk, and we’re like, Oh, we’ve got to, we, we just, we have to take this back! This is too much money!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Shirley: I still have it! It’s hanging –

Sharon: You know, Sarah –

Shirley: – hanging somewhere like –

Sharon: Oh dear.

Shirley: – somehow we couldn’t get that one back, but they were very specific about a plaid, silk –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – bowtie from Brooks Brothers, and so it ties into my Scottish thing. I think it’s actually tied around my Pooh bear somewhere, so.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Shirley: Pooh, yeah.

Sarah: Now, Shirley, you –

Sharon: Pooh bear’s…silk.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: Shirley, you mentioned that you work with the same set of models that you’ve created a deliberately safe space for what is essentially very intimate photography, and that you’ve worked with Nathan and Suzanne, who are on the cover of Edith Layton’s For the Love of a Pirate, and that they’re two of your –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – best models. I have to tell you, that is hands down one of my all-time favorite romance covers. I love that cover, because the passion is so real that he is kneeling on sharp rocks, and there is a wave –

Shirley: [Laughs]

Sarah: – about to take both of them out, and they’re like, Don’t care; we’ve got to go, got to go to Bone Town right now.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: Bone Town immediately is what we’re doing here. I love that cover so much. Can you talk a little bit about the process of working with models? What makes Nathan and Suzanne such a great pair, and what makes a good model for a romance cover? I’m sure the, the cover of a, a model for a cover is very different from a model for an ad, for example.

Shirley: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the way that that all happened is just serendipity. There was, she, I, I’ve had this conversation with Susie: her mom was definitely controlling the situation that day when I picked up that image from way back. Like I said, I’ve done so many covers I honestly don’t remember half of the authors.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Shirley: And so when I was talking to her and I was telling her about this cover, and then I mentioned who it was, she just almost, like, fell on the floor when she was telling me that it was her mom, and it was the last cover that she did before she passed away. And the, she wasn’t really that excited about the idea of the cover to begin with. She thought it was just absolutely awful because of the pirate with the, with the waves and on the, the rocks, and so what Sharon and I had to create was an actual uncomfortable situation for Suzanne to actually be sitting on that within some element of, I don’t want to use the word distress, but it was, wasn’t comfortable.

Sarah: No.

Shirley: There had to be that illusion that Suzanne was not having a good time sitting on something like a chaise or a bed or a nice squishy soft pillow.

Sarah: No.

Shirley: When I put Suzanne and Nathan together, one of the first covers that we did way back, there was a, a – Nathan, first of all, had really long hair.

Sarah: Yes.

Shirley: So he was our go-to Regency guy because anybody that had long hair, we literally were keeping you.

[Laughter]

Shirley: You’re, you’re, you’re staying here. And Suzanne was actually someone who I had become quite close to. She was a personal friend of mine? So, and she is one of the nicest people in the entire planet. She’s a practicing Buddhist. She is a mom, she’s got two little kids, and she is like a little wisp. She is just like white light; she is just pure, beautiful energy. She does these book covers, and your air conditioner blows up.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Shirley: Like, literally she goes to another place, and there would be models that she worked with like Nathan where we would just stand back and watch.

Sarah: Yep.

Shirley: It…kind of like a sense of voyeurism where you were like, we’ve just watched magic. Sharon would be right there. Sometimes I would have Sharon –

Sharon: Fixing the dress.

Shirley: Always.

Sharon: Always fixing the dress. [Laughs]

Shirley: Moving the leg.

Sharon: Or the shirt.

Shirley: Yep. Or she would reposition, you know, Suzanne, if you’re on your tippy toes and you arch your back, you know, then, Su-, then, you know, Sharon would be up pushing her, arching, to the point where you knew that, okay, if we go any further, Suzanne’s actually going to, like, you know –

Sharon: Break. [Laughs]

Shirley: – file a lawsuit, so –

[Laughter]

Shirley: – you will, you…it as far as you could within the sense of, if I felt it, then I knew that the author would be happy with the job.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: If I, if I was sensing something through my lens of what I was seeing, then I knew whoever went into a bookstore was going to be like, Oh my God, this fucking book cover’s so hot I have to buy it. Like, I –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – this, this is just oozing. So that was always my intention, and then I would direct them, when I was talking to them. Music was always a big thing –

Sarah: Yep.

Shirley: – so if I knew I wanted like a really hot, sexy pose, I would play really hot, sexy music to get them in the mood. Sometimes I would ask for a much more kind of chilled out studio vibe where there wasn’t a lot of talking going on, like just people kind of like standing back and just watching these two incredible people do their magic.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: Nathan and Suzanne just had something really special; they just did.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: And it was, it was one of those covers where, when they came in and told us what we were doing, Sharon and I were like, How are we going to do this? How are we going to make this work that it looks like she’s actually having sex on the rocks?

Sharon: [Laughs]

Shirley: This is, this is, this is crazy. So we, she sat on lots of sharp edges! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Shirley: We just used boxes and different layers, and he went –

Sharon: …boxes and…

Shirley: – right in there. We’re like, I need you to go right in between her legs and – sometimes you would use, you would be saying things, and you’re like, Oh my God, it sounds like I’m directing a porn, you know.

[Laughter]

Sharon: It’s, it’s fun too.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: When it’s, when it’s going well, it’s fun.

Shirley: Yeah. Sometimes you just know at the end of a, a, an hour. You’re like –

Sharon: You know when you’ve got…

Shirley: – that’s a New York bestseller.

Sharon: – you’ve got it.

Sarah: Oh yeah. So with the case of For the Love of a Pirate, Sharon, once you had the, the photo for reference, what was your process at that point?

Sharon: Once I got a sketch approval –

Sarah: Yeah?

Sharon: – I would get a big print made of the, of the picture, like Shirley was saying earlier, and, and, and I would sketch it out on canvas, and I would find all the reference for the background, and, you know, all around my canvas would be taped all my reference pictures.

Sarah: Right.

Sharon: So, like, if it was in a castle, or if it was outside and there were horses and, you know, things like that. I mean, that’s the way that worked.

Sarah: So what are some of the challenges in choosing the set and the clothing and the, and the pose? Like, I know you’ve said that having too many people in the room is essentially too many chefs in the kitchen, and –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – too many people’s opinion, especially when you have people whose opinion is not necessarily informed by a background in visual art? Like, that’s a skill set that you have to –

Shirley: Yeah. Yes, it is.

Sarah: Yes. Not everybody understands exactly what makes a good picture, or how to make it happen, how to make it, make it occur. What are some of the challenges for, for, for you, then and now, in developing covers?

Sharon: If you’re talking about just doing, you know, the pictures, the reference pictures, you, you don’t really need a lot of background, because you have to know where the sun is or if there’s a moon or if there’s a, you know, if there’s wind.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: If it’s outside, it’s probably got a little breeze.

Sarah: Yes.

Sharon: You know, I mean, these, you, you have to have a fan for, you know, or – a lot of times today they want these gigantic skirts that have to be blowing in the wind, or –

Sarah: That’s a lot of fabric! You’ve got to add that in after, right? You can’t ha-, there’s no fan that big.

Sharon: Well, I, all of the dresses that I make have great big skirts.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Sharon: Well, most of them. And I also have extra fabric that I can put around the bottom if they need it, you know.

Shirley: Yeah, and pillows, pillows are like your best friend.

Sharon: And petticoats and pillows –

Shirley: …yeah. Yeah.

Sharon: You know, you have to, you have to make it work, and a lot of times when, when the shoot’s happening I’m, I’m holding the skirts and doing this, you know. I’m –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Sharon: – I’m –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: – I’m whipping them up like a wind would, you know?

Sarah: Yep.

Sharon: And it’s stuff like that that…

Sarah: Are there particular fabrics that work best for a cover?

Sharon: Oh yeah; they have to be lightweight; they can’t be heavy. Silk –

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: – silk is good. Yeah, heavy doesn’t, only works for, like, Tudor or, or Renaissance, you know, that kind of thing.

Sarah: And if you’re looking for a brocade, you can shoot in a light fabric and then just add the texture.

Sharon: Well, I guess the people who do Photoshop do do that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: But, but I will, I like to work with textured fabrics, actually –

Shirley: Oh yeah.

Sharon: – when I sew.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: I like to work with textured fabrics.

Shirley: Well, and the thing is too is when you –

Sharon: Like jacquards or –

Shirley: – like – yeah.

Sharon: – you know.

Shirley: I like, I like, it’s one of the reasons why I’ve worked with Sharon.

Sharon: Brocades, brocades –

Shirley: Yep.

Sharon: – and such like that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: You have to have the texture, because the light hits it differently if you’re shooting velvet –

Sharon: Satin.

Shirley: – satin. You know –

Sharon: Yeah.

Shirley: – you’re going to get…

Sharon: …It’s all different…

Sarah: Yeah, light and velvet, light will react differently with velvet than it would with –

Sharon: Well, it’s the hardest thing to shoot.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Shirley: That would be like your medieval, you know, like a lot of your Tudor.

Sarah: Fur.

Shirley: You know, we would be like a whole series where we were doing, like, a lot of stuff –

Sharon: Fur.

Shirley: – I guess based on the Tudor TV show, so it was all Boleyn, Anne Boleyn –

Sharon: Yeah, mm-hmm.

Shirley: – things like that.

Sarah: Square necklines –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – snug hoods, yeah.

Shirley: Yeah. Sexy, sexy, sexy, though.

Sarah: Now, I hadn’t put this in my original list of questions, but I, I, it just occurred to me a lot of the covers in the ‘90s –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – you would fill in the setting, and there would often be an animal somewhere. Sometimes it was a horse; sometimes it was a bird! Sometimes it was a horse and a bird!

Sharon: …I don’t know if you can see, but…

Sarah: Yes, there’s a rearing horse. Yep.

Sharon: Almost all of mine have a horse in them, and – [laughs] – or birds –

Shirley: Again, there’s our dog…

Sharon: – flying. There’s dogs. I’ve, I’ve always got animals in –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: – in, in a lot of mine.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: So you get to pick which animals. Which animals are, do you think work the best? Is it the horse on a cover?

Sharon: Yeah, always the horse, let’s face it.

Sarah: Yeah?

Sharon: The horse. The horse is big. [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s big; it takes up space. It, it, it’s a symbol of virility.

Sharon: …typically love horses.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: There is something about that.

Sarah: So your, your covers are for all the Horse Girls who have grown up.

[Laughter]

Sharon: Well, you know, and they will tell you if they want a horse in the background too. They’ll, the, the, you’ll usually get direction for that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: …a horse. But I usually like to throw in some, some birds, fancy birds in the sky or, or on a beach or, you know, things like that.

Sarah: Yeah, I always like when the animals seem to be looking at the couple like, What are you doing?

[Laughter]

Sarah: I live here!

[Laughter]

Shirley: I had no idea that there was a collection of romance book covers – I don’t even know when they were shot – obviously, we didn’t do them – where it was dinosaurs?

Sharon: Oh God! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep! Yep, yep. Oh yeah.

Shirley: So that, that should be animals on a whole new level!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Shirley: And –

Sharon: I never had to paint a dinosaur. [Laughs]

Shirley: …go back…T. rex! And then, and then it was like, you know, one night we were, like, completely having a good time with too much wine, and we decided to google one of them, and it, they actually have an intimate relationship with some of them, and I, like, Wow! That, I’m so glad we didn’t get into that, so yeah.

[Laughter]

Shirley: Sharon and I have created, like, a whole stock portfolio where –

Sharon: Yeah.

Shirley: – we’ve designed and created our own –

Sarah: Wow!

Shirley: – cover stock with –

Sharon: Yeah!

Shirley: – cowboys and –

Sharon: Well, we’ve done a lot.

Shirley: Yeah. We’ve done it all, so, so that’s going to be, like, the next thing that we’re working on, where we’re going to create our own stock portfolio, because there’s a lot of self-published authors that, they didn’t have access to these types of photo shoots. They didn’t have –

Sarah: No.

Shirley: – the budget that the publishers, that they’re like, Well, this a New York Times bestseller list. Like, we’re going to make sure this works, and so – so we’re going to start working on that, so that’s why we’re, I’m working on a new website and getting it designed right now so that self-published authors who want to have access to people like Ewa and Nathan and –

Sharon: …nature.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: It’s, you know, it’s already got a self-made background.

Shirley: Well, but I also have literally thousands of covers that I have shot throughout the years where I have thousands of outtakes of, of images that I never used. You know, so.

Sarah: Yeah!

Sharon: Yeah, one thing that I, that, that I’ve noticed is that they don’t, they’re not doing any of the hot, sexy medievals anymore.

Shirley: No.

Sharon: At all!

Shirley: No.

Sharon: And that was huge when I was painting.

Sarah and Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: So that’s, that’s one trend I know that is kind of passé. I want, I don’t know what happened! [Laughs]

Shirley: Well, but even just like your hot, sexy bed shots, where I would be literally on a, a ten-foot ladder hanging over the top –

Sharon: And they’re just under a sheet –

Sarah and Sharon: Yeah.

Shirley: – and it’s, it’s – and that could be a Regency as well.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: That could be… [Laughs]

Shirley: They’re not doing them either.

Sharon: No.

Sarah: That’s really interesting. So all of the intimate in-bed shots are usually shot from above.

Shirley: Yeah, I’m directly above them.

Sarah: You ever, like, get a harness and just sort of swing?

Shirley: No; I wish I did –

[Laughter]

Shirley: – but not really. I, I’m, I’m going to tell you an interesting story: so I have a really good friend, Toni Busker, who was in Pirates of the Caribbean, one of the movies, and she, she was in a, Toni was in a lot of our covers as well, and she would do, like, the badass, like in the leather with the guns, and she’d also do historical, and she would literally just walk through the studio in a pair of high heels and a thong and nothing else.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Shirley: And that was it, right. So Toni would just be like –

Sarah: Okay!

Shirley: Oh…can I, can I have a coffee? Like, like, you know –

Sharon: [Laughs]

Shirley: – that was, that was Toni. But anyway, so, because I had such, like, humor, funny, telling funny stories, you know, trying to warm them up before, it was like, Okay, clothes off; let’s do this shoot. What’s going on? Toni was telling me this one story ‘cause I’m, I was always hanging over Toni somewhere, like, in a weird position like, Okay, I need you to move your leg; do this and that. Always be above Toni shooting really sexy, hot bed scenes; that was Toni. You know, you wanted a sexy bed scene: Toni. She would do it, no problem. So Toni was telling us this story, how she was literally at the weekend had been out with her boyfriend, and she was lying in bed and just started laughing for no reason, and her boyfriend’s like, What’s going on? And she like, Oh my God, I can just visualize Shirley hanging from the ceiling.

[Laughter]

Shirley: She’s like, I feel like I hang out with you like seven times a week doing these covers, and you’re always above me hanging over a ladder, literally like, Could you move your leg? Tilt your head. Do this. Open. So she said, I just had this moment when I was laid in bed with my boyfriend, and all I had was your voice in my head.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Move your leg. Tilt to the right.

[Laughter]

Shirley: And I was like, That’s not a good idea. We need to stop shooting you for a while, so.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now, you touched on this earlier: what do you think of cover trends now? ‘Cause there’s a lot of cartoon; there’s a lot of watercolor; there’s a lot of blobs. I don’t understand the blobs.

Sharon: Cartoons…I think they’re too immature-ish. I don’t know –

Shirley: I don’t know what’s been started with the pandemic, to be honest with you, or if publishers are just being cheap and don’t want to pay for photo shoots anymore and don’t want to pay for models, but I don’t like them.

[Laughter]

Shirley: At all!

Sharon: I’m not attracted to them at all.

Shirley: No. I, I mean, the thing that’s interesting for me is, I had to do a, a, a lesbian romance Regency two years ago –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – and I said, Okay…I’ll just call up some people and get some people. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll, I’ve got friends; I’ll, I’ll make it happen. And then all of a sudden then I did two Black women that were lesbians that were in historical clothing, so it was like, Okay, this is kind of cool. We’re opening up a whole new genre here –

Sarah: Yeah!

Shirley: – this is going to be an – let’s see where this is going to go. It didn’t.

Sarah: Oh.

Shirley: It, not, this, I saw the, the  –

Sharon: …very quickly.

Shirley: Yeah, and it was cartoons! So I said, Oh, I wonder if that maybe touched a nerve? Maybe the cartoons are a safer visualization; I don’t know. I think with what I’m getting from people that I’m talking to about what’s going on with the trends that it might end up coming back to where they’re going to actually want to see someone like a Nathan and a Suzanne, you know, where it looks like, you know, Nathan has just taken Suzanne on the rocks. Like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – that, that cover would be a joke if it was done in a cartoon format…

Sarah: Yeah. That’s –

Shirley: It would be like –

Sarah: – that, that kind of intimacy is not going to work so well –

Shirley: No.

Sharon: In a cartoon.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: But, you know, I, I guess the whole AI aspect of things, what’s going to happen to that –

Sarah: I was going to ask you about that, about AI’s involvement as well.

Shirley: Yeah. I mean, I, I think that the publishers are going to try and, and maximize that as much as they can? But, look, you get someone like a Nathan, a Suzanne, an Ewa, Megan, my redhead – I’ve been shooting Megan as a, everything, redhead, Regency, medieval, you name it, it was Megan. I just asked Sharon! I’m like, Who did we have as a redhead? Megan.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: Megan Channell; there was only Megan. That, that was my redhead that we used, and then if I wanted a blonde it would be Serene or Suzanne; if I wanted a brunette it would be Ewa, it would be Carly, it would be Toni, it would be Laura. These, the experiences and the working relationships that I had with these models lasted forever!

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: And we had people that come into the studio that ended up getting married. Like, you’re not going to get that in AI or doing these stupid cartoonish…We got to watch connections between people evolve into a love story, a real love story.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: So you wanted them to come back in and shoot that! We got to actually see that! Throughout the years, we got to see people connect, become partners, break up, find someone else. Like, Sharon and I were caught in all that drama, and some…

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh no!

Shirley: But a lot of the times we got to work with them and, and be a, a, a participant in what was going on in their actual real life. So how that’s going to work into this AI and the cartoons and stuff, you’re not getting heart; you’re not getting the passion; you’re not getting any kind of feeling when he’s grabbing her dress –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – you know, or he’s got her, she’s got her hand in the back of her, his hair –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – and she’s pulling him towards her, you know, so she’s the one that’s in control; she’s, she’s basically telling him, you know, Take me! Even if this hurts and I’m on the rocks, but right now, take me, I’m wet, the, the water, the boat. Take me!

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: How do they get that with AI and with cartoons? They’re not!

Sarah: No, you –

Shirley: Because the covers are just, they’re just not that good. I, I, I prefer going into a Barnes and Noble and looking at actual physical people on the cover.

Sarah: Yeah. ‘Cause you can’t fake chemistry.

Sharon and Shirley: No!

Shirley: No! No, you can’t fake chemistry, and if you’ve got models that don’t have it –

Sharon: [Laughs] What –

Shirley: – you can’t, you can’t make it.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And so that what make, that’s part of what makes you return to a, a model pairing that know each other, that know the space, that know the vibe you’re going for, but also have genuine chemistry that you can’t fake.

Sharon: Right.

Shirley: Right.

Sharon: Yeah.

Shirley: But if you go back to the day when it, like you said, you’ve got Ewa da Cruz – oh, it’s Ewa, Ewa, Ewa, Ewa – eventually what ends up happening is, it’s burnout.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: You know, the art director’ll say, Can we not use Ewa?

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: You know. Or can we not use Paul, or can we not use Nathan? Can, can we find someone else? And sometimes you could be lucky and, and have a casting and meet someone and be like, Oh yeah, I could use this person. I could work with that person. If you want a very specific pose, person who’s reading the book needs to buy the connection on the front cover.

Sarah: Yes. It’s part of the sales hook, right?

Shirley: Right…

Sarah: ‘Cause this is all marketing.

Shirley: Exactly. Like, if they don’t look like they’re having a good time, then I haven’t done my job.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: Also helps if they’re, if they, they, they are actors as well. And a lot of them are. I mean –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sharon: – you kind of have to be able to act.

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: Is it, is it weird for you then to go into a bookstore or go into a place where there’s a bunch of books and be like, Oh, hey, there’s Paul! Ope, there’s Nathan. Oh, I don’t know that guy! Is it like –

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: – visiting your friends?

Sharon: Yeah!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Shirley: It is! Or it was! It would be like – I mean, we would go straight into the New York Times bestseller list and we would look at the mass market, and we would kind of like have a look at how many books that we had actually shot, and then we would then kind of take it apart – [laughs] – and be like –

Sharon: [Laughs]

Shirley: – you know, Oh, oh, so they did this, and they did that, ‘cause we got to see the actual finished production –

Sarah: Right.

Shirley: – on cover, so it was taking my photograph and then putting it on the cover and how they put it all together. Mass market would be your paperback where we were literally doing twenty, thirty a month –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – at a time.

Sarah: And mass market is, is becoming smaller and smaller as a production type. It’s much more trade paperback now.

Shirley: Yeah. And then also your art directors that would be exclusively working on all of that, they didn’t have the same budgets anymore.

Sarah: Yeah. And I feel like you’re right: we, we will return to people on covers? But that, that is probably, I think the, the next people to re-adopt covers with people on them will be, like you said, self-published authors.

Shirley: Well, yeah, because I just don’t think that with the publishers, the way that they’re marketing the books these days, I feel that Sharon and I were in this at the right time.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: I would not want to be me right now coming into this industry.

Sharon: Mm-mm, no.

Shirley: At all.

Sarah: Oh –

Shirley: It, it’s a shit show. So when I first started out at twenty-five, you know, I basically had my own studio when I was thirty.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: So I was –

Sharon: Something like that.

Shirley: I was basically, the Italian guy that I worked for, he’s like, I’m not going, I’m not getting the…I’m not getting the camera, the equipment. I don’t want to do this. I’m, I’m going back to Italy; I’m retiring, so. But it was –

Sarah: Was that Pino?

Shirley: Nonono –

Sarah: Oh.

Shirley: – Pino was the artist, but it was Pino’s brother, Ferdinando Dangelico, who was actually my boss, who was, who was –

Sarah: No kidding!

Shirley: Yeah, so it was Photographic of New York, so Ferdinando came over from Italy so that he could do the photo shoots for Pino, so. I just don’t think back then when I was working and doing it, like, I, you, we had so many covers that we worked on.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: So we could call up Wilhelmina, Images, Ford, and say, Oh, I need a casting. Could you send me new faces? I’ve got a bunch of covers. Like, you know, Wilhelmina were billing a million dollars a year so we could have that, we could call them and we could get the models, so we could then look at all these different new faces and say, Yeah, we could work with this; we could work with that. We don’t have that anymore.

Sarah: No.

Shirley: We’re not bringing in twenty, thirty covers a month anymore, so the agencies are going to be like, Well, sorry, not interested.

Sharon: [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this interview; I’ve had the best time. Where can people find you? Where will – do you have a, a, a website for, in mind for your repository of cover images?

Shirley: I do, actually. It, it’s shirleygreenphotography.com. Two-thirds, it’s up right now, but we’re adding a bunch of stuff to it. But yeah, it’s all my covers; it’s some of my personal stuff, my travels.

Sarah: Amazing!

Shirley: And Instagram is, is my @rocky.rockstarr with two Rs, and we use Rocky to, actually, he’s in all our photo shoots.

Sarah: Well, I mean, he’s adorable; he has to be.

Shirley: Yeah, so it’s all our photo shoots –

Sharon: With the models –

Shirley: – with the models…

Sharon: – and some props.

Sarah: Yeah.

Sharon: [Laughs]

Shirley: Yeah.

Sarah: Rocky is –

Shirley: So that’s actually – right, Rocky’s my little celebrity star dog.

Sarah: Sharon, what about you? Where can people find your art?

Sharon: You can find my original painted book covers, and I, they’re, they’re for sale for, for, actual paintings and prints, on sharonspiakart.com.

Sarah: Got it. Thank you so, so much for doing this interview. It, it has been so much fun to talk with you both. I think this is a part of popular culture history that doesn’t get enough appreciation, because when you see –

Shirley: Right.

Sarah: – a romance cover from the ‘90s and the 2000s, you know what that is.

Sharon: You know, I call it pop art at this –

Sarah: Yeah! That’s a really good term for it!

Sharon: Yeah, and I would really like to see that, you know, move forward.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: I think for me, what I’m really excited about this as well is that Sharon and I both individually and together played a big part in what would end up being the finished result –

Sarah: Yes.

Shirley: – of a book cover?

Sarah: Yes.

Shirley: And I, I’m just very grateful that somebody’s actually finally given us the recognition for the work that we did that actually what was behind choosing the model, the right model, creating an atmosphere that we could actually get that shot –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Shirley: – that then ended up on a book, and somebody walked in a store and bought it. There was a lot of steps that went on behind the scenes that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – really nobody knew about, so.

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: And so I’m grateful, also, thank you for giving us this time to be able to share that with you –

Sarah: Oh –

Shirley: – ‘cause I think it is in, I think it’s important coming from a, a woman’s point of view –

Sarah: Yes!

Shirley: – as well, that I was essentially working in an industry in New York City where it was all male photographers that were doing this –

Sarah: Yeah.

Shirley: – and it wasn’t, there was no, yeah, I’m a twenty-five-year-old fresh out of NYU; they’re looking at me like…

Sarah: What are you doing here? Yeah.

Shirley: …you gone. So –

Sarah: And what –

Shirley: – yeah!

Sarah: – what you’re describing is now an industry, it’s, it’s something very common in the movie industry. Now there are intimacy coordinators who choreograph sex scenes in movies. They did this for Bridgerton, and you can see the difference because the intimacy coordinator on a film set is responsible for creating this illusion of sexual intimacy in a way that respects the actors’ boundaries, that doesn’t have them do things that they don’t want to do, that, that all of the intimacy coordinators that are involved in film, a lot of them, it’s choreography of the sex scene on –

Shirley: …we need to get a job! [Laughs]

Sharon: I know! 

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yeah! No, what, basically, what you’re describing is that you guys were intimacy coordinators for cover models, that you were creating an environment that was safe!

Sharon: …call myself…intimacy coordinator.

Shirley: Yeah, we did.

Sarah: Yeah!

Shirley: For sure.

Sarah: Thank you both so, so much for your time. This has been amazing, and I hope we can connect again, because I think this is such interesting, like you said, pop art history.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to Shirley and Sharon for sharing so much information and sending me so many amazing images. I will have links to all of the photography that they’re setting up for covers, all of the links that they talk about, some of the models and their Instagrams, and, as I mentioned in the intro, I’m going to try to do a bonus video where you see some of the photographs that they sent me and an explanation of how a photograph of some models with a very fantastic decoupage bathtub and some behind-the-scenes details led to a truly memorable cover.

I also want to say thank you to Susie Felber, who is Edith Layton’s daughter and met Sharon and Shirley by chance at a party and emailed me and said, You have to talk to them; I had the best time. It’s also very serendipitous that Shirley and Sharon and Susie all ended up at the same party, considering that Shirley and Sharon did so many of Edith Layton’s covers, especially the really, really good ones.

As always, I end with a terrible joke! This one is really bad, although I heard last week’s joke made many people yell out loud and then immediately tell other people, which is exactly what we want to have happening here, right?

Who hides in a bakery at Christmas?

Give up? Who hides in a bakery at Christmas?

A mince spy.

[Laughs] Mince spy! I think that is top shelf bad joke right there. And if you have bad jokes that you want to share, or you just want to tell me what you thought of this episode, or you want to ask me questions, I love hearing from listeners. If you’re in the Patreon, make sure to join our Discord, and if you’re not and you don’t want to join the Patreon – which is totally cool; the show continues – you can email me at [email protected].

As always, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

Mince spy. [Laughs]

[end of music]