As if I wasn’t eating enough at the moment, I have had to humble pie this week as well.  Remember how I was moaning about the cover of my July book?  I’d gone to all the trouble of sending them a photo of a lovely Scottish castle, and what did I get?  A wedding cake!  That was the last time I was going to have anything to do with the artwork, and so on and so forth.  Then I came home the other day to find a box of books under the bush in my front garden, and lo and behold! there was the North American edition of Newlyweds of Convenience, which, as you can see, has a completely different cover.  

So I had to take it all back, and admit that not only had the artist looked at the photo I’d sent, s/he had thought very carefully about the backdrop.  Usually the front cover picture is the same for the UK and North American editions, but apparently Scotland is a big turn-off for UK readers, hence the wedding cake. 

It was very interesting to read Larry Roibal’s account of how the covers are produced on Liz Fielding’s blog last week.  Clearly a lot of thought does go into them, even though I often look at my own covers and think ‘Why on earth did they choose that?’  I can’t say the hero and heroine on Newlyweds of Convenience look anything like how I’d imagined them, but the picture on the back cover is excellent.

 I really like the way the North American covers have a picture of the setting on the back, although they’re not all as evocative as this one. 

I’ve just looked at the back of Promoted: to Wife and Mother, for instance, which is set in a fictional city in the north of England.

I hadn’t noticed it before,  and I’ve been trying to work out now why this looks like anywhere but an English city.  I think it may be something to do with the shutters – or the steps on the front cover.  This looks to me like a Dutch city, perhaps, or an American one (not that I know anything about either, or that it matters – I’m just interested because it ties in with the research I did for my thesis).      

Anyway, I think I will have to stop grumbling about my covers and just accept that Harlequin know more about what will work and what won’t than I do.  I just wish I could have more like Barefoot Bride … sigh.  In the meantime, I’ve been sent double quantities of my author copies again, which means I now have 70+ copies to get rid of somehow.  Newlyweds of Convenience isn’t out until July, but if you’d like to read it now, just email me with your address and I’d be delighted to reduce the pile by putting one in the post to you!

On the writing front, I gave myself a day off on Saturday, but should be well into Chapter 9 by the time you read this, and I hope that the next time I get round to updating this I’ll be able to report (with a very big ‘phew’!) that the book is finished.  However, it’s not done yet, so with the words ‘chickens’ ‘counting’ and ‘hatched’ ringing warningly in my ears, I’d better get on with it …