Chanel Cleeton On Cover Art & Trusting Your Art Department

I love talking to authors. Our experiences are so similar, yet so very different, that every one of us has a new story to share. Everyone says that the moment you get your cover it really hits you – you’re an author. The cover is your story – and you – packaged for the world. So the process of the cover reveal can be slightly panic inducing. Does it fit your story? Is it what you hoped? Will it sell? With this in mind I put together the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) Interview.

Today’s guest for the CRAP is Chanel Cleeton, author of Our Last Days in Barcelona. Chanel is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Next Year in Havana, When We Left Cuba, The Last Train to Key West, and The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba. Originally from Florida, Chanel grew up on stories of her family's exodus from Cuba following the events of the Cuban Revolution.

Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted your cover to look like?

I have a difficult time visualizing covers, but I am fortunate that the art department at Berkley Publishing is always amazing at taking my novels and depicting them so wonderfully. I did know that I wanted the cover to match the style of my other books featuring Perez family members while still capturing the essence of this novel. Sarah Oberrender has designed many of the covers for this series including Our Last Days in Barcelona and I’ve loved them all!

How far in advance from your pub date did you start talking covers with your house?

My editor and I started talking about cover ideas about a year before my release date.

Did you have any input on your cover?

I did! I’m fortunate that my publisher is great about wanting to make sure I’m happy with my cover. At the onset, they ask me for cover ideas, character descriptions, and any reference images or things I want to share with them that will be helpful. Having worked on a few books and having seen their gorgeous covers, I trust their instincts, so I usually just give some general ideas and provide some information about the book. I love seeing their finished product.

How was your cover revealed to you?

My editor emailed me the final cover to get my opinion.

Was there an official "cover reveal" date for your art?

There was! My first Perez family novel, Next Year in Havana,, was a Reese’s Book Club Pick, and Reese’s Book Club has been such a supportive community with my work. They revealed the cover for me on their social media about eight months before the release.

How far in advance of the reveal date were you aware of what your cover would look like?

 I believe I saw the cover about three months before the cover reveal date.

Was it hard to keep it to yourself before the official release?

Yes! It is always so hard to keep it yourself. I tend to look at the cover image over and over again myself before the release because I’m so excited!

What surprised you most about the process? 

I really love seeing how the art department interprets my books. I mentioned before that I don’t necessarily visualize my covers, it’s just not a skill set of mine, so there’s something really exciting about seeing how they put it together.

Any advice to other authors about how to handle cover art anxiety?

I’d communicate as much as possible from the beginning if you have a specific vision or things that are important to you about the cover. Having images that the art department can use as inspiration is helpful to give them a visual representation of your cover. I also think it’s great to consult the different departments involved in selling your book to get their opinion on the cover. They often have insight on what types of covers are doing well. I also recommend speaking up if there’s a cover you don’t love. It is a process and sometimes it takes a few tries to get a cover that everyone is happy with. Your agent can be a great advocate here on your behalf. If you’re able to share with some trusted friends that can be another way to get other perspectives on the cover. Ultimately, there’s only so much we can control in the publishing process so there is a sense of hoping for the best, but at the end of the day, the part we can control—the book—is always the most important thing so I think it helps to remember that.

Laura Griffin On The Importance of Setting

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein, I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewee’s mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Laura Griffin, author of Midnight Dunes Laura is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books and novellas. She is a two-time RITA Award winner, and her book Desperate Girls was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Publishers Weekly. Booklist magazine calls Laura's popular Tracers series "the perfect mix of suspense and romance.”

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

The spark of the idea for Midnight Dunes happened when I moved into a house built in the 1940s, which we had bought from the estate of an elderly lady who never married and lived in her central Austin bungalow with her sister for more than fifty years. My first project was painting a spare bedroom, so I climbed up on a ladder in the closet and discovered all these old postcards from a road trip this woman had taken in the 1960s. I was fascinated by the idea of the many stories a house holds—secrets about people and their lives and their love affairs. As a suspense writer, I took that idea and gave it a creepy twist—what if you moved into a house and discovered something that made you think a murder had happened there?

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

 When you’re planning a story, picking just the right setting is always important. As a teenager, I went on a camping trip to North Padre Island on the Texas Coast. We slept in tents and bodysurfed in the waves and spent sweltering afternoons in the shade of the van—windows open—playing Texas Hold Em. I fell in love with beach camping that weekend.

This coastal setting has come back to me again and again, and sometimes it takes on a sinister form. In Midnight Dunes, a body is discovered in the towering sand dunes of a beachside campground. Law enforcement swoops in to answer everyone’s burning question. Who was the victim? Meanwhile, a young woman moves to the island. She is cleaning and settling into her rental house when she finds an array of strange clues that make her believe her quaint beach bungalow might be the scene of a brutal murder.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

That happens to me all the time! In some books, I even decide to change the villain after the story is well underway. If I think the killer’s identity is too obvious, I have to shake things up.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

 I got my start as a newspaper reporter, and I am still a bit of a news junkie. I am constantly reading headlines and filing tidbits away for future stories. One small forensic detail that I read about somewhere could end up being the basis for an entire plot.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

 Often, I’ll be conducting research for one book and come across something that I think might be a good basis for a future story. I’ll start gathering articles, books, whatever I need, and then when it’s time to plunge into the next project, everything is right at my fingertips.

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

 My writing buddy is my sweet twelve-year-old Weimaraner. She sleeps in my office while I work and nudges me out of my chair for walks. Dogs are wonderful companions for writers because they force you to stretch your legs and get some fresh air—which helps the creativity flow.

R.S. Mellette, Matt Sinclair & Elephant’s Bookshelf Press on Indie Authoring & Publishing

Today's guests are R.S. Mellette, author of Kiya & The Morian Treasure, as well as his publisher Matt Sinclair, founder and CEO of Elephant's Bookshelf Press. They joined me today to talk about what works in indie publishing versus trad in terms of marketing and publicity, as well as the function that indie publishers serve - providing a home to not easily categorized works.

Listen to the Episode Now