Janeology by Karen Harrington

Did you design the cover?

No.

Did your publisher design the cover?

Yes, the JANEOLOGY cover was designed by award-winning designer Kam Wai Yu at Kunati Books. I lucked out!

Did you get to give any input about the cover design?

Being a new author, I naively thought I would have some input and I did offer a couple ideas early on. I had a magazine article that showed a woman's face completely made of puzzle pieces. This was the image I had of the Jane character for years. These were curtly accepted by the publisher. What I now realize is that I should have (and will in the future) trust the expertise of a design and marketing team. A lot of new authors probably make the mistake I did and are too bold or demanding in this area. But hey, you live, you learn!

Who is the cover artist?

Kam Wai Yu

Are you happy with the cover?

Yes. As you can see, Kam did incorporate some of the original puzzle idea which impressed me immensely. But more than that, the first time I saw the cover, I felt he really understood the story. It's interesting because I don't think I ever had that connection even with my early readers. But here was an artist who read the story (he did, he told me so) and interpreted it artistically. Wonderful!

Tell us what you think is the best part of the cover.

I'm no artist, but I do like covers that make you notice something new and different each time you pick the book up. For example, in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, it took me a while, but one day I held it up to the mirror and could read the script on the cover that was intentionally written backwards Da Vinci-style. That made an impression.

So the more I studied the JANEOLOGY cover, the more I noticed subtle elements. You can see the various DNA strands across the book. The young and the old woman's face and then you see, hey, it's not an old woman. It's a woman from another era. Because JANEOLOGY is a novel-in-stories linking eight of Jane's ancestors, I found the modern/period woman contrast incredible. And then, in the top right, you see a very faint image of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. The story itself is so layered and the cover reflects that in a way I could never have imagined.

Please provide your website link.

My website is http://www.karenharringtonbooks.com