Vann Turner's Blog: The book jacket - Posts Tagged "mainstream-gay"
The Jewel Cover, Sometimes
The decided uptick in sales, I think, is evidence that I’ve finally gotten the cover for Sometimes Lovin’ is Hurtful right. I think it is both true to the content and appealing to a wide readership—both men & women, straight & gay. I call it the jewel cover. (Look at it on Amazon, blowing it up in size, front and back. Perhaps you’ll agree.)
I retained the ethereal lighting, but incorporated Quasi, an important secondary character, into the design. He’s a gray dog and so that necessitated a dark border so that he’d stand out. And he’s not just Bob’s dog, but he plays an important role in the novel, appearing in the prologue, in dramatic moments and on the last page.
It has been a sixteen month struggle to get it right. That arose in that Sometimes is an m/m romance. But it is not a romance in the way you think about romances. There is only one sexual encounter between the protagonists—one straight, one gay—and that severs the budding friendship. Later on, you’ll find protestations of love, one to the other, are completely absent.
But Sometimes is a love song of sorts.
It's a rhapsody to repressed love.
These are the permutations the cover went through:
I retained the ethereal lighting, but incorporated Quasi, an important secondary character, into the design. He’s a gray dog and so that necessitated a dark border so that he’d stand out. And he’s not just Bob’s dog, but he plays an important role in the novel, appearing in the prologue, in dramatic moments and on the last page.
It has been a sixteen month struggle to get it right. That arose in that Sometimes is an m/m romance. But it is not a romance in the way you think about romances. There is only one sexual encounter between the protagonists—one straight, one gay—and that severs the budding friendship. Later on, you’ll find protestations of love, one to the other, are completely absent.
But Sometimes is a love song of sorts.
It's a rhapsody to repressed love.
These are the permutations the cover went through:
The book jacket
Wherein nuts and bolts, extraneous to the art, find a shelf
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