I do not really know where my fascination for empowered females comes from. It is possibly an underdog thing, the meek rising up against the strong. I don't really know the why. But when I conjured the idea for Chasing Innocence, the very first thing I did, was switch out the initial main male character, for a woman.
For almost the entire duration of the book's gestation, I knew the title would be Chasing Innocence (CI), although in my efforts to entice agents it almost got changed to Hunting Demons. The title stayed as it was, and ironically, Hunting Demons is now the title of the sequel to CI. The mental image I had in mind for the cover, was always of Sarah Sawacki face-on, looking out from the book's cover. One side of her face would be shrouded in shadow, her expression would show her vulnerability, it would tell some part of her journey. And that she is a warrior. Of course, I had no idea how that would come to be, I just imagined it. It did become a very important question two years later, when I decided I would publish CI myself.
I would need to create the image I had in my mind. A photographer was hired along with a model and make-up artist. We took nearly 500 images and image 408 turned out to be exactly what I had always imagined for the front cover. The task of making that image into a book cover was given to a graphic artist. He added texture to the face and to the background, and very importantly, a font for the title, that made it very clear the contents of the book were fiction. There was of course a last minute panic. I would need to come up with a shoutline, a phrase I had never heard before. It is the quirky tagline on the front cover. The always reliable Renata came up with the wonderful: A woman, A Girl, One Hell. But it was rejected, in hindsight quite rightly, because it was too female centric. In the end we used the two line quote I already had that proceeded the stories prologue. And then after three months of driving to make a mental image a reality, it was done. I had wanted an image that would stop the casual book browser on Amazon in their tracks, an image that would stand out on the page and was unlike a normal book cover, it would be somewhere between book and DVD - a book cover for an evolving entertainment medium.
I now had it. Even more exciting, is the first proof copy of the book is now in the post from the printers, and you will see that when it arrives as well.
For almost the entire duration of the book's gestation, I knew the title would be Chasing Innocence (CI), although in my efforts to entice agents it almost got changed to Hunting Demons. The title stayed as it was, and ironically, Hunting Demons is now the title of the sequel to CI. The mental image I had in mind for the cover, was always of Sarah Sawacki face-on, looking out from the book's cover. One side of her face would be shrouded in shadow, her expression would show her vulnerability, it would tell some part of her journey. And that she is a warrior. Of course, I had no idea how that would come to be, I just imagined it. It did become a very important question two years later, when I decided I would publish CI myself.
I would need to create the image I had in my mind. A photographer was hired along with a model and make-up artist. We took nearly 500 images and image 408 turned out to be exactly what I had always imagined for the front cover. The task of making that image into a book cover was given to a graphic artist. He added texture to the face and to the background, and very importantly, a font for the title, that made it very clear the contents of the book were fiction. There was of course a last minute panic. I would need to come up with a shoutline, a phrase I had never heard before. It is the quirky tagline on the front cover. The always reliable Renata came up with the wonderful: A woman, A Girl, One Hell. But it was rejected, in hindsight quite rightly, because it was too female centric. In the end we used the two line quote I already had that proceeded the stories prologue. And then after three months of driving to make a mental image a reality, it was done. I had wanted an image that would stop the casual book browser on Amazon in their tracks, an image that would stand out on the page and was unlike a normal book cover, it would be somewhere between book and DVD - a book cover for an evolving entertainment medium.
I now had it. Even more exciting, is the first proof copy of the book is now in the post from the printers, and you will see that when it arrives as well.
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