By Mik

Charles Perrin and Tom Worthington are to this day, two of my favourite characters of all time. Finding them in my brain was a revelation and one I am very proud of even though they didn't come about easily. 

It all started with an idea for a TV series I was writing which never really had a name other than a tentative one of Full Circle. That to me should have been the giveaway that this idea wouldn't fly, but in saying that, it was great practice. I wrote six episodes of it and very quickly came to the conclusion that while the premise was good something crucial was lacking. Full Circle consisted of a group of five mature women who, through their community contacts and years of life experience went about solving crimes. It was familiar and comfortable. What it wasn't was right. Then one day, doing housework I heard a word on television that stuck with me no matter what I did to shift it. Twitchers. A very odd word indeed but one that for me, worked. Suddenly I had the platform on which Full Circle would work. Full Circle would be cut up and absorbed into a whole new concept, a book about two older chaps, famous in their field and well respected, who through circumstances beyond their control, end up in a village in England's Newforest with four rather wonderful female friends. They were four of the five women characters I had loved so much from Full Circle. 

So, the hard yards of rewriting and creating began all over again but this time the idea was sound and best of all, complete. I adore Charles and Tom and their dynamic, and hope that the adventures they get up to, the people they are surrounded by and the way they handle life is as enjoyable to you as it was to me.

Mik Mehrtens

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