JO. B. CREATIVE!: THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK COVER REVEAL

THE STORY

BEHIND THE COVER REVEAL

OF ALIAS JEANNIE DELANEY - BOOK 2 -

THE OUTLAW'S RETURN

It's a great story (the story behind the reveal). Let's start at the beginning...

First off here's the cover of Book 2 - The Outlaw's Return. To those of you who don't know the story, my epic western trilogy Alias Jeannie Delaney follows the life of a devastating and charismatic pants-wearing cowgirl who's the fastest gun in the west and a magnificent lover to both men and women. This is her journey to find her true self on the wild frontier throughout deadly confrontations and personal tragedies. Will she find happiness or will her tomboy beauty, her powerful persona and her lethal gun finally be the death of her? Buy the series and find out!

That, in a nutshell, is the story.

And now for the story of my cover reveal! I collaborated with my cover designer Shaun Stephens of Flintlock Covers to do this. As an artist, I was determined to do it. The image below is what inspired me in the first place.

I must have been sixteen or thereabouts in the late sixties when I drew it in the sixth form common room at school in between lessons. I used a black and white film still for reference and replaced the rider with Jeannie. I remember doing it. Clearly my fascination for the wild west and my heroine, Jeannie, was gaining pace even then. I sent Shaun, my designer, several images, including this, and he created the cover from them. I'm very pleased with the result.

New novels need a cover reveal - a tantalising glimpse on social media of the spanking new cover of your yet-to-be-released next novel. It was time to create a cover reveal and I had a great idea. I'd watched reveals on YouTube, when an intriguing something is revealed from under a wrapping. One of them was a beautiful material - velvet perhaps - slowly rolled back to reveal a display of sparkling jewellery. I liked that a lot! I had created something similar for some of my artwork and uploaded it to YouTube - that was fun! I could do something similar for my novel cover. I considered a rustic material for a wild frontier feel. Then it hit me. A 'wanted' poster with Jeannie's image on it. Of course!

I created one on my graphics site, Canva. I used an original drawing I'd done, again many years ago, this time after I married. It was a drawing of Jeannie based on a western film still of Marlon Brando leaning against a wall, his hands clutching his gun belt. I changed him to her. What's bemusing me hugely is the fact that I'm using images created years ago in my current marketing strategies. Who'd have thunk ought it, huh?! 😄

It's not a pristine, crisp image, and it's old. Great - I need scruffy! I cropped the image to use her top half and used western fonts. The reveal would show hands ripping the poster to expose the book cover, I thought. Then Hubby said: 'Set fire to it.' Of course! Much more original and fun. It's a western! (Thanks hubby!). Also, I'm a naturally scruffy artist who finds it hard to be neat (that applies in life...), so lucky for me. I printed out three posters. After all, I was going to set fire to one, and if that didn't work...

Next job - scruff up the posters using coffee grains, tea bags and water and rough up the edges. Fun, and it worked a treat.

Next - the setting. Inside my garden cabin. Just inside the door away from breezes. That cabin is another story, to be told at the end.

So - on with this story...

I blue-tacked a print of my new cover on Book 1 for support and set that against the back of my old wooden chair. (That chair, a Windsor I think, has yet another story). I stood a vintage beer bottle in front of the book and leaned a poster against it. I set up my phone into video mode and hubby lit the bottom corner of the poster. It burned like a dream and it took one take. Yes - as I boasted to our son later - one take!

Lastly I edited the video on the editing app Clipchamp, removing hubby's hand with match, and set music to it - 'Cowboy'. The result was fabulous! I managed to fade the music out at the end so that it didn't finish abruptly. Lastly I posted it on social media and the result has been a huge success. I'm incredibly pleased. And here it is - ta-da! (Turn up the volume...)

And now for the other stories. My cabin. I'd wanted a cabin ever since I was really young and my family had spent a day in a cabin in the New Forest courtesy of my dad's cousin. I remember the sounds of stream and rainwater most of all, but it must have been glorious because I became determined to have a cabin of my own. Achieved, oodles of years later. A frontier cabin in my back garden. It's brilliant during the summer under the porch.

And now - the chair. I can't quote precisely, but I think it's the chair in which my great granny died sitting bolt upright in my uncle's kitchen in Westminster during the fifties. It was getting on a bit even then. It ended up in my parent's early 1900s bungalow where I grew up, next to our old boiler in the kitchen. My dad would sit in it and little me would sit on his lap. He'd open his knees and I'd fall between them, squealing with giggles. Later, as a sulky schoolgirl, I'd sit in the chair slurping my cornflakes before school, barely awake. I grew up. As a twenty-plus person I had a party, and one of the boys ended up in the chair chatting to my mum. People felt very at home in that chair. Many, many years later my parents died and I inherited it. It moved around a bit until it found its final resting place in my cabin. Couldn't be more appropriate. Its latest adventure is as a prop for my cover reveal, although you can only just make out the back of it. Oh, if only that chair could talk.

So there we have it - the story of my novel cover reveal. I'm delighted with the whole thing. Last but not least, the novels are available on Amazon.

FEET UP IN MY CABIN!