While the fifth Steve Martinez novel, Tracking the Beast, goes through the hoops at Five Star Mysteries, I'm fooling around with possible jacket elements.
There must be four basic elements for the cover: the title, an illustration, a background, and the name of the author.
The title and illustration together set the theme: homicide involving railroad cars, specifically covered hopper cars. So, for the announcement of the book on my website, I cobbled up a new home page with the title printed on a hopper car and a human skull replacing the railroad company herald.
Knowledgeable readers will notice that that's not an illustration of a real hopper car, but a photograph of a HO scale model car. That'll work for the website, but not for a book jacket. I'm sure the designers will come up with something entirely different, as well as professional—and maybe not with the same elements.
There must be four basic elements for the cover: the title, an illustration, a background, and the name of the author.
The title and illustration together set the theme: homicide involving railroad cars, specifically covered hopper cars. So, for the announcement of the book on my website, I cobbled up a new home page with the title printed on a hopper car and a human skull replacing the railroad company herald.
Knowledgeable readers will notice that that's not an illustration of a real hopper car, but a photograph of a HO scale model car. That'll work for the website, but not for a book jacket. I'm sure the designers will come up with something entirely different, as well as professional—and maybe not with the same elements.
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ReplyDeleteI enjoy your Steve Martinez books and look forward to the next one. I live in the lower peninsula and your books bring the UP adventure right to me. Thanks!
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