I thought you'd like to see the process of creation of the cover of my latest novel, Stormteller.
The cover illustrator is the awesome Elaine Franks and she happened to take photographs of every stage of the production of the artwork, in her Garden Studio. From a variety of thumbnail ideas to the finished digital artwork, the publisher has compiled the images into a video.
Part of the process of creating the cover involved showing drafts on Facebook and inviting people to choose the one they liked best. I enjoyed the process of crowdsourcing opinions, because I got an idea of what engages readers. Thank you to everyone who took part in that process.
I have made a Pinterest board of images connected to the novel. Amongst other things it contains some of the photographs I took while researching the location of the novel, as well as some of the cover images that Elaine sent.
Since the novel contains detailed descriptions of places, I found the process of taking photographs essential for understanding the landscape. I'm a very visual writer and want to 'see' the scenes I describe.
Besides the location, the research included investigating the legends that I used as a basis for part of the book, and the science of climate change – particularly as it applied to that location: Borth, Taliesin, Pumlumon and so on, which is also the same area that is used as the setting for the successful Welsh TV series Hinterland.
I've collected all this together on my website here. There's also a link on that page where you have until December 10 to enter a competition for a free copy!
