Elma Young asked Caitlin Demaris McKenna:

How do you decide on what type of cover you will use for each book especially the back ground?

Caitlin Demaris McKenna Hi Elma! There's a lot riding on a book's cover - it's often the first part of my book that a reader sees, and it has to offer a hint of the whole story in a single image while also suggesting the genre and tone.

I'm not a visual artist or designer, so my process is to tell my cover designer as much as I can about the story, the genre, and the feeling I want the cover to convey. He then comes up with a rough mock-up of the illustration and we tweak it together. For Absence of Blade, I wanted the main alien species to be represented on the cover, as well as the landscape of the planet where some of the action takes place. In general, I think the background should hint at the setting of the book, while the foreground should hint at the characters and the action.

flag