It’s that time of year when for some of us a walk in the woods means feasting our eyes on a carpet of bluebells and funnily enough, I used that image to create a scene from My Mother’s Secret. I was trying to picture somewhere serene for a graveyard for stillborn infants to be laid to rest and that sprang into my mind. In fact, I think I probably hoped that the cover for My Mother’s Secret might have been something along those lines but, as you may or may not realise authors have little or no input into the cover design of our books once we are signed to a publisher.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the cover of My Mother’s Secret; the colours are striking, and the woman could easily be Danni, the main character, but it wasn’t what I had envisaged. That said, my initial ideas for the cover design for my self-published books didn’t always work.
I had a lovely lady called Angela Oltmann (introduced to me by my friend and QVC colleague Debs Flint) who took my original ideas and developed them into something we were both happy with. The covers for the Liberty Sands trilogy were all pretty much as originally conceived by me, but Angela really wasn’t keen on my first idea for Alice in Theatreland.
If you’ve read the book, you’ll know that it is set in the West End theatre district of London and Alice auditions to be in a show called Theatreland. I apologise for the drawing (I’ve always been terrible at art) and with the benefit of hindsight the concept was not right at all… it was far too fussy and didn’t really give the correct ‘feel’ for the book which was in places quite dark and broody.
I don’t remember who come up with the idea of the red velvet curtains being slightly open, but the shaft of light and the platform shoe lying in the mud were definitely mine. I loved the eventual design however I do have one regret. The ‘SHOUT’ line, ‘the show must go on’ should have been bigger!
Talking of cover design, it shouldn’t be too long now before I get to see the cover and title (yes, Bookouture decide that too) of my latest book. I have been really hard at work getting the structural edit finished and I’m pleased to say it was sent to my editor, Ruth yesterday ON TIME! Normally, I would probably have gone away for a few days, maybe to Spain which would have been quite appropriate as parts of the new book are set there, for this stage in the editing process. You need a clear head for moving things around, so 3 – 4 hours of editing spread across the day with the rest of the time sitting in warm sunshine would have been ideal, but at the moment that’s not possible because of Covid 19.
I don’t know about you, but much as I want to head off abroad again, I don’t want to risk anything both for the residents of the country I’m visiting and then when I get back home, so I will be patient. When we do eventually go, I will take My Mother’s Secret with me (and maybe the next book too as it’s out in August) as I like to take ‘location’ photos of them.
I thought I would share a few photos of my ‘books on tour’ with you, starting with Life’s a Beach and then… This photo was taken by my daughter, Sophie on the beach in Portugal when we went on a family holiday to celebrate my 59th birthday. Don’t be deceived by the sunshine and blue skies, despite it being June, it was very mixed weather and very windy at times.
We took If He Really Loved Me… to Barbados when we visited in 2018 as part of the action was set there, including one of my favourite scenes in the book, where Holly and her much-loved son, Harry have a huge row against the backdrop of crashing Atlantic waves on the east coast of the island.
And this photo of me holding It’s Never Too Late to Say… was taken on a small pebbly beach near Javea in Spain, which has a gloriously sandy one called the Arenal.
Happy memories of travels abroad.
Where would you like to feel the sand between your toes once everything opens up again?
Do leave me a comment below.
See you next week
Much love
Julia xx
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