Book Covers

Some publishers design the covers for all their books, and the author is not allowed any input. However, we’ve been very lucky with ours. (As a type-A control freak, having some say on what the completed book looks like is very important to me.)

For our first book, 31 Months in Japan: The Building of a Theme Park, we had intended to use a photo of the two of us at Universal Studios Japan on the cover. However, when we submitted it, we discovered the resolution was not good enough. The book block had been approved, and we were very close to the publication date. Larry went to work and sketched the Universal Studios entrance archway and the pagoda in Kyoto. He faxed them to me. (This was in the days before everyone had scanners at work.) I loved them and showed them to some colleagues who agreed.

When we got home that night, he said he would do formal versions of them. However, I love Japanese Sumi-e painting, and his simple pencil sketches had the same quality. So, he scanned the sketches. (We had a scanner at home.) I did the layout and added the background color. We ended up with a cover I love, but poor Larry never got the credit for the artwork.

 

My next book was the first of our five (to date) romance anthologies, Snowflake Secrets. I knew exactly what I wanted for the cover and even arranged four crocheted snowflakes on a large piece of poster board and sent a photo to the cover artist, Melissa Summers. She took the idea and ran with it, creating a terrific cover. (See mock-up and final cover below.)

Melissa has done all the subsequent covers for the anthologies. I send her suggestions, and then she interprets them to create terrific covers which convey the ideas of each of the novellas in the books.

She also worked with me to create the covers for our mysteries. I wanted a bird of paradise on the cover of the first one, Murder…They Wrote, so I took lots of photos and sent her half a dozen of the best. I also said I pictured a woven reed background. She sent a couple that were just wrong. Since we had intended to write a series, I wanted the same background for all of them. I finally laid a placemat on the table, shot a photo and sent it to her. It became the background for the first book as well as the second, Murder in Paradise, which uses another of my photos of outrigger canoes.

The publisher for Larry’s short story anthology, Lakeview Park, provided a cover design. We didn’t like the front cover image, but the back cover one seemed to work with the book. We asked to have the background changed from the original lime green to teal, and loved the results.

I worked with a new publisher for my fantasy, romance, mystery, Ghost Writer. When I received the initial cover, I was appalled. It was clear to me that the artist had no idea what the book was about since the cover showed two half-naked people and would have worked well for an erotic romance. (I only write sweet romance—with no body parts.) Larry mocked up an idea and sent it back. The artist, Karen Phillips, did a great job using this image, and I was delighted with the final version.

Now we are working with award-winning artist Jenifer Ranieri on the cover for our latest book, the Memory Keeper. Our good friend and fabulous artist, Robert Schwenck (http://www.schwenckart.com) has allowed us to use one of his paintings for the cover. I’m confident we’ll end up with a terrific image for the new book.

Does the cover make a difference to you as a reader? Do any authors have stories (good or bad) about getting the right cover designs for their books? How do you like ours?

Adding Reality to Fiction

Today my partner in life and in crime—novels, that is—Larry K. Collins is my guest. See how we create reality in our fiction.

During a conference presentation, I was asked this question: “I write fiction. What kind of research should I do? And how much?”

My answer was: “As much as you can. The more reality you put into your fiction, the more believable it becomes. As a rule of thumb, I put in a true fact, a fact, a fact, a fact, and make up a fact. If I do it well, my readers won’t be able to tell which one is made up.”

WRITING A REAL LOCATION

In our second mystery, Murder in Paradise, our protagonist, Agapé Jones, retired NYPD detective, was supposed to drive from Honolulu to Hale’iwa. While doing research on Oahu, I drove the same route, noticed the outrigger canoes parked along the Ala Wai Canal, and shopped at the Foodland in Hale’iwa. Then Agapé did the same things in the book. We know our readers will never forgive us if we mess up their town. And if our hero drives the wrong way on a one-way street, we’ll never hear the end of it.

While writing a story in a real place, I surround myself with photos, clippings, and maps of the area I intend to write about. Anything to keep me grounded in reality.

Sometimes a picture will inspire a scene. In Murder in Paradise, I had the grandmother character tell the story of growing up as a child on the North Shore and visiting the Hale’iwa Hotel, a beautiful Victorian-style inn featuring a two-story lanai and luxurious dining room. Opened in 1898, the building was torn down in 1952. As inspiration, I purchased several early photos of the old hotel from North Shore Photo Hawaii and hung them on the wall over my computer. The pictures themselves never appeared in the book, but my descriptions became more accurate because I could visualize being there. Hopefully I passed my vision on to the reader.

WRITING A FICTITIOUS LOCATION

Lorna and four friends created the fictitious town of Aspen Grove, Colorado, as the location for their anthologies, Snowflake Secrets, Seasons of Love, Directions of Love, and An Aspen Grove Christmas. This allows the authors to invent shops, restaurants, churches, B&Bs, etc. to fit the various novellas. They placed Aspen Grove in the mountains west of Denver on the road leading to the ski resorts. Even though it is fictitious, it needed to have the real look and character of the area. Aspen Grove became a composite of several real towns.

Walk down the main street of Idaho Springs and you expect to see Daisy’s Diner and the Book Nook. Wander along the lakefront in Georgetown to find Drew’s log cabin and on through town to the stone building housing the Presbyterian Church. Several readers have remarked they would love to visit Aspen Grove. So would we.

WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION

Not only do the locations need to be correct, but also the specific time period. The events, language, customs, clothing, and props must all fit the era.

In historical fiction, it is even more important to do accurate research. Our latest endeavor, The Memory Keeper, concerns life at the San Juan Capistrano Mission between 1820 and 1890 as seen through the eyes of a Juaneño Indian.

For inspiration, an original etching by Rob Shaw, published in 1890 by H L Everett, showing the mission grounds, currently hangs over my computer.

Our bibliography is running about five or six pages and growing. We have also enlisted the aid of the local San Juan historian and a Juaneño native storyteller as beta readers for historical information. We won’t be satisfied until they are satisfied with the accuracy of our details.

Now that I’ve said all that, I have to remind myself. Never let the facts get in the way of the story. Too many details can turn a good story into a boring history lesson. In the end, the research should support and enhance, but not overwhelm. We must choose carefully which facts to include, leave out, and make up. If we’ve done our job, our readers will become so involved with the plot and compelling characters, that the facts just blend in. They’ll never know how much research went into it. But we will.

Guest Blog on Writing Mystery

This week, Larry and I are guest blogging on the Book Connection. We talk about how we got into writing mysteries and how we write them together. Drop by and leave a comment.

 

http://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2013/01/guest-bloggers-larry-k-and-lorna.html

Creating Characters

We’re often asked how we create characters. Do they just appear or do we make them up? The answer is “YES”!

The truth is that we sometimes start with a plot, and the characters emerge from that. At other times we ‘cast’ them based on friends or celebrities. Here are a few examples:

AGAPÉ JONES

We were attending the Maui Writers Conference when Larry got the idea of writing a mystery set at a writers’ conference. So Murder… They Wrote began as his brainchild.

The next day, we met Love Smith and talked to him about ten minutes. As we walked away, I said to Larry, ‘We have to write that guy!” Thus our protagonist Agapé Jones was born. He’s loosely based on Love. However, whenever we see him, we discover that we’re writing what he’s actually doing! So maybe we’re channeling him… And here we thought we were creating the whole story.

AMY & DAN

For my novella, “Winter’s Song” in the anthology, Seasons of Love, I decided to use our friends Amy and Dan as the inspiration. He’d been after me for years to write their story, and this was the perfect opportunity. (I used their real first names with their permission. Find out what happened after the story here: )

Of course, I fictionalized most of the story. At least I thought I did.

Amy’s mother is a member of our writing group. Several times we’d read a chapter and she’d say, “How did you know about that?” I’d answer, “I thought I’d made it up.” Then she’d proceed to tell me the real story which was eerily similar to what I’d ‘made up.’

COUNTESS ELEKTRA ROZANSKA

For Murder… They Wrote, we decided to create an older lady as one of the suspects. Larry’s speech teacher in grammar school was Countess Elektra Rozanska. I said, “I’d love to use her real name!” “So would I,” he said. So we tried to locate her family without success.

We decided to use her name anyway since she was long gone and she’d have loved being a suspect! So we wrote the character based on her with a few embellishments. (Find out why she was so important to Larry here: http://bit.ly/cERPQc)

A couple of years after the book was published, we were contacted by her grandson. He was delighted that we had written her as a character, and he agreed that she’d have loved her role. He later contacted us to let us know that, although she’d convinced Larry that her title and exploits were all true, she had actually made up not only the name but also part of her back story! Still, we’re so happy that we could pay homage to this very special person in Larry’s life.

LOVEY JONES

Another special lady in my life was Lovie Cooper. (You can see her photo and read about her on our website (http://bit.ly/LBSdjM). When we created Agapé, we decided he needed someone to confide in. Thus was his dead mother, Lovey created, based on our own Lovie. She’s really easy to write since I just close my eyes and imagine her talking to me.

KIMI MCGUIRE & JASON NAKAGIRI

When we first discussed our anthology, Directions of Love, I knew I wanted to take the west. I love Hawaii and wanted to set at least some of my novella there. So “Finding Love in Paradise” was begun. I also decided to take advantage of our own experiences even farther west: Japan.

In this case, Kimi grew out of the storyline. She had to be at least partially Hawaiian so she had a connection there. I’ve seen many lovely Hawaiian girls in our many trips to that special place. We also know many young Japanese women. So Kimi’s appearance was based on a composite of them. Since she was raised in the US, her personality, speech, etc. were easy to write.

Her love interest, Jason, needed to be Japanese/Hawaiian for the story to work. Again, he grew out of the story. However, one night we were watching “The Mentalist” on TV, and Detective Cho (Tim Kang) walked onscreen. “That’s Jason!” I exclaimed. From that moment on, Jason looked like the actor.

However, that wasn’t the end of the story. A couple of years later, we were visiting Oahu and decided to spend a day at Queen Emma’s Summer Palace. We were assigned a docent, and when she appeared I gasped. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you look exactly like a character I created for a book.” I went on to describe “Finding Love in Paradise” to her. It turned out that this young lady shared many characteristics with Kimi. Both were Irish/Hawaiian. Both studied anthropology at UH. Kimi was a docent at the Bishop Museum, and this one was at the Summer Palace.

And once again I wondered just how much I’d made up.

NAN BURTON & MAX MURDOCH

The character of Nan Burton in my new novel Ghost Writer is loosely based on the young ladies I worked with at my last job. I tried to capture their speech patterns and language since they were close to her age.

Max Murdoch, the ghost, was really based on some of the characters portrayed by Clifton Webb in his old movies, particularly Three Coins in the Fountain (http://bit.ly/JucuHy). He is an old curmudgeon, egotistic, and insensitive. He’s also a bit arrogant and British like the character Jonathan Harris Played in the TV Show Lost in Space (http://bit.ly/5n79q).

Even though I think I made them up, I have a sneaky suspicion that, given my record to date, I may actually meet people like them someday.