Starling now has a cover. Of course, a whole bunch of you knew that, either because you saw Erin and I flipping out about it on Twitter or you’re paying very close attention to the bio at the end of my Penny Dreadful recaps over at Romance @ Random and saw the tiny, tiny icon version.
At any rate, we’re super delighted with our cover, even if the Alex in my head is muttering about how it looks like the porno version of his life (it is honey, it is).
Eventually, we’ll talk a little bit about why this cover works just so hard for us (beyond hot dudes and Hollywood), but right now that would be telling regarding some of the weirder things we’ve snuck into the multi-book story.
erincmcrae
Racheline Maltese
Avian30 
Once again, I love this cover! (My request form is still in the “submitted” stage, btw; might need advice when it comes time to work on the real cover on how to make it this fabulous?)
Sure. You know, we had a very clear vision that wasn’t anything like this, and I sent a mock up of it, with also the note “but we’re into your guidance for what helps sales the most.”
Now, despite this being nothing like my mockup, what the mock up did convey was that we like stuff that is stark, that we liked some mystery, that we wanted to telegraph the backstage elements of the story, and that we didn’t want the cover to be so traditionally romance that non-romance readers would innately shy away from it.
So what Brandon sent us was this, just with a different typeface. So we were pretty happy right off the bat. But my dad’s in advertising, so while I am not a designer I have _strong_ feelings about typefaces. So we wrote back to Brandon with what we felt like we wanted the typeface to be instead in terms of color and style and what it would suggest,and we got this back 15 minutes later.
So, in short: surprising, delightful, easy, and we are very happy. But don’t be afraid to either ask for what you want or to go in a totally different direction when someone gives you a better suggestion.