CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS!?

Oh, dear.  I don't believe it. But the cover woes continue.

Now, after I've gotten used to Birdie with dark hair (not to mention rewriting the book to make her a brunette,) the folks at Bantam Dell Marketing have decided that maybe blond would sell better after all.

So they've come up with a new cover they're quite enthusiastic about. They've also insisted on a title change -- seems that Someone Important  felt that the title The Day of Small Things was a real yawn and wouldn't sell.

Arrgh!

I don't know . . . of course the name of the game is selling copies of the book. But this new look isn't exactly what I had in mind. . .

Oh, well . . . I'm only the author. What do I know?

They haven't gotten around to making the change on Amazon yet -- but for those of you who've pre-ordered The Day of Small Things, (for which, many, many thanks!) no need to re-order -- they'll just switch you over to Untamed Love.

 

 Happy April Fool's Day!

The Day of Small Things

 
Well, look what showed up on Amazon!

The book won't be out till September 28 but it's nice to see its shining face at last.

I wrote a while back in my newsletter blog The Goodweather Report,  about my trials with this cover and how I had to change my protagonist's hair color to suit the cover. I'm reasonably pleased with it (though her arms look a little weird to me -- and where's the rest of the fence? -- quibble, quibble.)

And I don't know why the bottle is there. Or what's in it.

Opinions?

Is She or Isn't She?

... only her editor knows for sure!

Yesterday Herself (my redoubtable editor) sent me preliminary cover art for the Miss Birdie book, The Day of Small Things!

I've been wondering what they would come up with as this book isn't part of the Elizabeth series -- and also because Jamie Warren Youll, the talented woman responsible for my previous covers, is no longer with Random House. Jamie always read (and said she enjoyed) the books before designing the cover and I think it showed.

But I was delighted with what Herself sent . . . as was my agent. It's a striking image -- a photo showing a young girl in a white old-fashioned dress, balancing barefoot atop a rail fence and looking at a misty pasture and deep woods beyond. You don't see her face but her long dark hair tumbles down her back.

As I said I loved it immediately. There was just one little problem. In the Birdie book, the young Birdie has pale blond hair -- moony . . . silvery-gold -- were two of the ways I'd described it.

But this cover was so compelling . . .

I immediately emailed Herself, pointing out the problem and offering to change the young Birdie to a brunette.

Herself responded by asking Art (a department, I believe, not a guy) if the image could be manipulated to make the hair blond.

But not too blond, I cautioned -- not golden blond!

Herself responded that they'd do the best they could but I might have to accept a compromise if I didn't want the figure on the cover to look like an old woman with long white hair.

Meanwhile I was skimming through my copy of the manuscript, trying to see just how much would have to be changed if Birdie went dark-haired. About six or seven references were all I found -- not bad.

I had a feeling that a blond girl on the cover wouldn't have near the impact that the dark-haired one had, that she wouldn't stand out against the muted background -- but I was certainly interested to see what Art came up with.

A few hours later Art emailed Herself to say that the change to blond looked too manipulated and Herself asked if I was willing to bring the text in line with the picture.

Out went the silvery-gold hair, in came a shining dark waterfall; out went pale, in came dark.

Herself said that this was the first time she'd asked an author to change the text to fit the art but she thought that it was worth it.

And so do I.

Of course I wanted to show you the cover but for various legal reasons I'm not allowed to just yet. But I really think it's a goodie.