This week’s update is about the cover for Acts of Faith. Andjela has again come up with a brilliant cover for the story, and this time, it’s a scene from the climax of the tale. I will be revealing the full cover in due course, but looking at it made me wonder about previous covers and what they showed. It also made me ask the question, should a cover show a scene from the story, or a representation of it as a whole?

When I was looking for a cover for my mystery, The Saddling, the designer (not Andjela) came up with an image of a pagan festival wreath and that kind of summed up the story nicely. I, though, wanted someone walking into the action, and to feature a scene from the village where the story is set, and we ended up with a man, Tom Carey, innocently walking into the village through the mist and heading to the church where… You’ll have to read it to find out.

Then, looking at the Clearwater series I realised we have a mix of covers. Deviant Desire shows the two main characters with the threatening evil behind them, Twisted Tracks shows them running for a massive locomotive, the third book shows a mix of story moment and main character (Silas Hawkins), and the fourth cover, Fallen Splendour, has a grabbing image that also sums up the story. And so on through all books to the Clearwater Inheritance which shows us the Orient Express (kind of) charging through snow which is in fact music.

I often have a person on the cover as I think that helps link the reader to the characters, even though it’s only my image of what a character looks like. In the Larkspur series covers, we see (in order), Joe Tanner, Joe again (on horseback), the baddie for book three, the ghost for book four, Edward Hyde for book five, evil again for six, and finally, the Legacy, Clearwater’s ship.

The theme continues with the Delamere Files, where, so far, we have: Larkin Chase and Jack Merrit, Jack and the four old-school boys from the story (including Larkin when younger), Jack and his brother Will Merrit on book three, Will alone for ‘Where There’s a Will’, the villain and Ronny on book five, Jack and Baxter on ‘Grave Developments’, and, for ‘Acts of Faith, we have…

You’ll have to wait for the full cover reveal in a week or so. Meanwhile, I can tell you that my target today is to finish the last chapter of the first draft. This one has taken a while to get down because of Christmas, a trip away, illness and my knackered shoulders, but we’re getting there.

Before I go, I know people are switching off from Amazon and KU because of the far right politics of the USA, but I must continue to use it because it is from where I get 75% of my income, and I couldn’t survive without it. So, if you’re still okay with supporting authors who have to rely on Amazon, you might like to look out for some new series starters from this list. Click the banner to take a look at all the titles.