Unlikely Path to an Award-Winning Cover

​“It’s too grim.”  College classmate and author Leslie Garis stared at the poster displaying the cover of my not-yet-completed memoir, Banged-Up Heart.  “What do you think?” she asked Marjorie, standing nearby.  “I agree.  Can you re-take the photo?”  I swallowed hard and shook my head no. 
 
To gauge classmates’ interest in my memoir, I’d asked a graphic artist to create a poster display for my college reunion.  I gave her a photo of a burned out forest -- skeletal black trees, some standing and others strewn like matchsticks across a carpet of green grasses – to use as a book cover.  To me the grasses symbolized re-growth.  Perfect for my memoir, which is about courage and resilience in the face of heartbreak.  And especially meaningful because my story focuses on my life with John who took the photo.  But in the poster, the grasses looked more beige than green, almost invisible.  My classmates were right:  too grim.  Even if the grasses were greener, the overwhelming feeling was one of desolation.  Reluctantly, I gave up the idea of John’s forest photo as a cover.
 
Months later, after landing a publisher, I found myself facing the cover question with a deadline looming.  “Take a look at memoirs in bookstores and see what kinds of covers grab you,” my publicist suggested.  In the bookstore I found several with forest covers but these books were about actual treks through forests.  The covers that grabbed me were brighter in color but I was no closer to knowing what I wanted.  Audibly fretting, I heeded the advice of artist friend Lewis Hawkins:  “Get a pencil and paper and start doodling.  You’ll come up with something.” 
 
At breakfast one morning, I showed my doodle -- banged-up looking letters for the title separated from the subtitle by a rose – to my husband Frank.  “Here,” he said, pencil in hand.  “Break the stem of the rose.”  Eureka!  By breaking the rose stem, he captured the essence of my subtitle, Dancing with Love and Loss.  I shared our doodle with friends at dinner who applauded.  Why the rose?  I can’t tell you.  It must have been subconscious.  In fact, roses frequently appear in my memoir.  But it was graphic artist Scott Gerber, publisher of Terra Nova Books, who turned my doodle into a winner.  The cover of Banged-Up Heart:  Dancing with Love and Loss won first place in the 2017 Southwest Book Design and Production Awards competition.

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