We editors tend to get attached to the manuscripts we work on. It’s hard not to after spending weeks (sometimes months) inside characters’ heads.
It can sometimes be jarring when we later see the cover of a book… even when it’s a good one. That mental world we’ve spent so much time in is given visual life, and chances are a cover artist’s interpretation doesn’t align with ours. This can be a letdown, and I personally have found myself quickly forgetting a cover, reverting to how things were in my head.
But every once in a while a cover comes along and blows our expectations out of the water.
That’s what happened to me recently when the cover was announced for Carcrash Parker, a book written by the wildly talented Ian M. Rogers, published by Vine Leaves Press, and copyedited by me.
A cover for a book like this is particularly difficult to nail due to the fact that this story has one foot in our actual world and another in an imaginary one, and I had been wondering how this would be pulled off with the final art.
And holy cow I was blown away. You can see what I’m talking about if you follow this link (where you can also preorder the book directly from its publisher): https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/carcrash-parker-and-the-haven-of-larpers-by-ian-m-rogers
Carcrash Parker is legitimately one of the finest stories I’ve ever had the honor of working on, and my next post will talk a little more about why I love it so much, but the cover turned out so good that it inspired me to write this post on covers first.
Stay tuned.
Timothy