By Drew

After making what felt like a million versions of the third cover, (prone to exaggerating? Who me?) I was about to find a wall to bang my head on when out of the blue, Mik said "what about the smoothie?"

The scene: Me at the computer with a virtual trash can full of rejected covers for The Maudlin Wives Inn Book 3. Mik's  sanguine nature was finally starting to sag. Normally, I might have questioned the idea of a strawberry smoothie on a plate as the best idea for a book with a wedding theme, but I was too tired to argue. ('At last,' you could almost hear Mik think.)

And then it happened. Just like it had with the first two covers. And the pattern hit us both at the same moment...

We couldn't wait to get back to writing about Esther Quill and are delighted to announce that book two is in edit and on target for a print and eBook release by summer. 

The romance heats up a notch in this one and we've have introduced some lovely and not so lovely new characters who, together with the wonderful regulars of Sinbad, Mrs Kent, Jimmy, Tillie and Nana Fluffy, make Fisherman's Rest the best place to hang out for the summer.


Here's a sneak peek:

By Drew

Have you ever sent something out to the big wide world and wished you could pull it back and make it a little different? I had that with the original cover of the first Twitchers book. We'd agreed on a stylistic typographical approach and Mik's a big fan of white space. But it always felt lacking in some way to me.

When I was designing the art for some of the web material you'll see popping up more and more soon (especially on the official Twitchers site) I came to love the green vector image style and finally Mik suggested I just bite the bullet and re-design the book cover in time for the print release next summer in the US/UK.


The new cover is full of colour and feels more alive than the first one. The version shown here is a smaller sample taken from the new iPad cover, re-designed for the new high resolution retina display.

Compare that with the original version (left.)

One of the big differences is that the original didn't show the Two Old Twitchers, Tom and Charles. Instead, I used a stylized cuckoo. My idea was to theme each book cover with the bird used in each title.

I think the Two Old Twitchers are better.

Which do you prefer?

Regards,

Drew