Patti O'Shea's Blog

Demon Kissed comes out from Nocturne Bites in May and I received my cover yesterday. I’m posting a bigger version here than I have on my website.

For those who don’t know, Nocturne Bites are short stories that are released in electronic format. I discovered when I wrote my two shorts for Mammoth Books, that I had a lot of fun with the length and wanted to do more. About the same time, I read a news headline that someone posted on Twitter and I thought it was a great story idea.

The headline? Something about an exorcist being convicted of murder. I knew what the headline really meant, of course, but my imagination went off. What if the demons tried and convicted a demon slayer of murder? And so Bree and Andras showed up and needed a story. There wasn’t enough to the storyline to make a full-length book, not without doing a lot of work to beef it up, but it was perfect for a short.

Anyway, Bree has been convicted of murder by the demons. She’s been sentenced to death, has an executioner assigned to kill her, and a bounty put on her head. She doesn’t know this, though, or why there are so many demons after her. Andras shows up to help her and he fills her in.

I have an excerpt up if you’d like to read a little bit of the story.

Those of you who are regulars know that I turned my latest book in to my editor July 1st. (It still has no official title, BTW, so it’ll be interesting to see what it’s going to end up being called.) Along with the book being finished, there are a few other immediate steps. (There are other steps like revisions, copy edits, and galleys, but those come later) The first was writing some back cover copy for the story–my editor writes the official version, but she likes to see the author’s take on that blurb–and the second is the Cover Concept Memo.

I always consider the cover art information a type of author purgatory. I used to fill them out in excruciating detail–now? Not so much. No point investing a ton of hours in it. I’ve learned that the hard way. So what do I include?

Pictures of my hero and heroine. Lots of pictures if I have them. I always have pictures of my characters by the time I start writing chapter 4. Sometimes it takes hours and hours or even days to find just the right image, but once I see it, I immediately know it’s him or her. I use the pictures to keep details straight about the h/h and I figure a picture is worth a thousand words for the art department, which is probably staffed with people who are visual.

I also describe my h/h’s attitudes and give information about their height, eye color, the way they wear their hair, what kind of clothes they like to wear, and any other key information like in The Power of Two Cai always wears a ring. That’s important to know and if you look really closely at the cover, you’ll see the model has a ring on just like I said.

The art memo also asks for scenes I think would make a good cover, but I’ve stopped taking the time to describe those and just give the mood of the book. Dark or Very Dark. Those seem to be my defaults. If you look at the cover of my latest book, In Twilight’s Shadow, it’s not a scene, it’s more of a mood-type of cover.

After I do all this–and even with the cut down version of what I do now, it does take a lot of time–I send in the memo form and pray to the cover gods. Please, I beseech, let me have a cover that I’ll love, that readers will love, and if you’re feeling particularly benevolent, please let the characters on the cover bear a passing resemblance to my hero and heroine. And then I let it go and hope that I’m thrilled when I see my cover art.