When I decided to self-publish The Prophecy[1], Richard and I lobbed ideas back and forth, and ended up settling on a photo that highlighted the armband (with the Eye of Marnan etched into it) mentioned in the first few scenes.
The EoM armband found (fictionally) at Sandby borg was made of hammered copper. Richard started fooling around in his workshop to try to come up with something workable and ended up making a reasonable facsimile out of bronze sheeting (the kind used for nameplates on trophies).
We already had a cover model, but what should she wear? The Daughter wearing the EoM armband lived a few centuries back, so we settled on a historic-ish look created through swags of fabric. We used leather and shells to decorate the model's hair, and photographed her on a warm day in January in the field behind my sister's house.
We took about fifty pictures, then narrowed those down to four or five that were then forwarded to the cover designer, L.J. Anderson of Mayhem Cover Creations.
On the left below is the original photograph we took that went on to become the cover for The Prophecy, essentially untouched except to crop the model's face out of the picture. To the right is the finished cover for comparison.
Didn't L.J. do a fantastic job?
The white fabric is 100% cotton muslin, taken from my *ahem* stash of quilting fabric. The brown plaid is a homespun Richard and I selected and purchased from Deb's Cats N Quilts in Franklin, NC, with a lot of help from the staff there. I took a copy of the book by yesterday and Deb kindly offered to feature the cover on the store's Facebook page. That's the great thing about using local stores. They appreciate your business.
As an aside, while I was in the quilt store, a customer of theirs was checking out. As it turns out, this woman is a Beta reader. (Not for me. I don't use Beta readers. Long story.) She took down the name of the book, etc., and promised to look it up, so I want to give a shout out to her while I'm at it to thank her for all the great work she's done for other authors. That's another great thing about shopping local. You never know who you're going to run into.
We learned a couple of things while doing the cover shoot. First, Richard is a sucker for this sort of thing. He'd never done one before, loved the process, and now, he wants us to do this for every cover.
I vetoed that pretty much right off the bat.
Second, when you're out in a ten-acre field that's been hayed but not mown, don't drop anything like, for example, the camera attachment for the tripod. Five people and twenty minutes later, my son (the prop master) finally found it yards away from where we'd been conducting the shoot.
Third, it's really a lot easier to let your cover designer do the entire cover from start to finish, so for books two through seven of this series, that's likely what we'll do. The covers for other books might be another story (trust me, you'll hear about it), but L.J. is definitely my go-to gal for the Daughters of the People covers.
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Notes:
[1] It wasn't really a choice. I could publish it myself or let it sit in a file on my computer taking up space. The one thing I determined not to do (pretty early on, really) was go the "traditional" route. I have nothing against publishing companies, just a general lack of patience for anything that unnecessarily takes up a lot of time.