Book Cover - Front Cover

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.

Book cover - Back cover

The need for a jaw dropping front cover drove the hiring of a photographer, make-up artist and model. Part of the plan was to also create imagery for the back cover at the same time. Unfortunately it was only after the shoot I realised the back cover images didn't work when contrasted against the front cover, and that was here to stay. The back would need to be uniquely stylised in a different way - if the front was of Sarah at an advanced stage in the story, the back would now show her in a moment from the beginning. Somehow.

A result of the photographer's planning and schedule for the photo-shoot was a good number of 'before' pictures, although many were unusable as they were taken while we were still figuring the 'Sarah look'. The bonus though of hiring a professional model was we got so many different looks and one image in particular stood out.

Except of course you can't just throw a very sharp image of a model in a jacket stood in front of a white screen onto the back of a book. In my mind it needed to be stylised with a blurred background that told a little of the early story. So I packed my digital camera and went into town. I got pictures of park benches, the pond, the canal, lots of the high street and every alley I could find.

The next stage was a problem. While I'd always known I would create the book cover, I'd never imagined THIS journey! At this stage I needed to create concept art, something I could give to the book's designers. The trouble was I had no idea how I was going to do this. I knew I would use Photoshop but hadn't spent any time getting to grips with its complex and broad features. With two weeks to create stylish concepts for both the back and front cover I needed to learn fast. Thankfully the internet took me to Amazon where I found Scott Kelby on Kindle and Google kept pulling me to a website called lynda.com - a site full of Photoshop video tutorials for free. I studied Scott on the train and Lynda at nights and soon I'd almost mastered Selections and Masks in Photoshop. Now I could try and create my image.

A lesson I learned while writing the book is that you probably don't know if something's going to work unless you try it. And that you should try everything because the idea you settle on will probably only come from trying everything else. This happens so often, at least in my creative realm and it's admittedly exhausting. As I tested the different images it became clear those of the high street/canal/park bench weren't going to cut it. A wistful Sarah with these backdrops rekindled the nemesis of non-fiction. Fortunately I had quite a few shots of alleys and one in particular stood out for its perspective and the texture of the bricks that looked quite foreboding.

I cut out the left section of the alley and moved it over to create a narrower sense of perspective. Then to make the image darker I used a cut out from a different shot of the alley to block the light at the end. All I needed now was Sarah and to stylise! Fortunately cutting Sarah from her existing image wasn't too difficult once I almost understood Channels and Layer Masks and how to Refine Edges. Photoshop also has some incredible features for blending two images together although my lack of knowledge meant I didn't quite get this right. Once Sarah was placed in the alley she needed resizing and then it was all about stylising. I needed to take away the sharpness from Sarah and have the perspective pull you into the image - playing with and eventually using an assortment of blur effects.Then I blended colour tones across the whole image. I wanted the shadows to contrast but I needed a light tone as Sarah starts the book in the best place in her life she has ever been.

And then once everything was blended and styled I cropped the image down to fit the back of the book and still have room enough on the space across the wall for the back of the book blurb. The book design people may take one look at the image and giggle hysterically at my Photoshop kudos and blow out their cheeks at the 500 technical aspects for a back cover I got wrong, or never thought of. But I'm pretty sure the back cover will look something like this.