Which Beautiful Beautiful Cover Do You Like Best? PLEASE VOTE!!!!!!

Recently, Author and Cover Designer, J. Gordon Smith has been helping us with our cover concepts. (You can check out all of John's books here! He currently has a fantasy, vampire, and NA series available.) As many of you know, my husband designs the covers of my books. He's a fine artist and has worked hard to learn graphic arts. However, there is a lot to learn! One cover we've particularly struggled with is Beautiful Beautiful. So John was generous enough to develop a couple of draft covers. But it's been hard (impossible!) to choose the best one. Would you please take a look at them, and vote in the poll at the bottom of this post?

Thank you for helping out!

About Beautiful Beautiful:

Every night, Kerrin tells her daughter a fairy tale. Mirabella's favorite is "Beauty Beauty"--the story of when her mother met her father. As Kerrin spins the tale wrapped around the most dark and equally light, period in her life, she considers these questions:

What is beauty? When is it nourishing... and when is it treacherous?

Indie-film director, Kerrin Mayham is the frontrunner for the Golden Pinnacle's "Director of the Year." Winning means generous financial backing for her next project, and the most beautiful men in the industry competing for the leading role. The opportunity Kerrin has sacrificed to achieve is within reach. So are her personal demons.

The novella is a retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen tale "Beautiful."(Adult language & situations, no explicit sex)

Which Beautiful Beautiful cover do you prefer?

A. The man with the girl

B. The cutaway of the man

C. The man only

Poll Maker

Scavenging

It's a desperate search. The one for my next read. I'm sifting though all of my books in the Cloud.

It seems like I'm downloading and opening every last one of them. I start reading one and get hung up on the fact that a truly frantic writer would stab pages with inkless indentations rather than ever consider rationing ink. But when I try to imagine balling up a notebook…it's on to the next one. It's pretty well-written, but honestly, I'm just not that into vampires so…another teenager in the snarky first person who's passed over for…the smell of bread…for two whole pages…the first ones...maybe a computer game…Wait. Is he being tortured? Did you watch Scandal last night? Nope. Not interested in reading about torture. At all...a birthday party with dad's girl friend, ticking off her flaws…first one up: that lead-in discussion of lip gloss…okay, maybe the hard-core fantasy with dragons…Oh. The prerequisite bar scene and brawl…onto the sci-fi sex club. Have degenerate sex clubs become a sci-fi trope? I mean this isn't the first one I've come across…in less than a month. SIGH.

Finally. I settle on Until Tuesday. A dog. A golden lab. With sad eyes, a big goofy smile, and a regal bearing. Yes. This was the book I was trying to find.

A Hysterical Paranormal

I am reading The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. It's more historical fiction than vampire/paranormal. Qualification: I'm only halfway through the very long book, although I have to confess that at 48% I'm thinking Rosebud and when will Orson Welles show up; and at 49% I'm thinking, OMG, here comes Dr. Freud. It's kind of comprehensive like that.

Or if not Dr. Freud, then maybe Dr. Jung. And everyone in the vicinity of THE INSTITUTION of Princeton could just self-actualize before it's all said and done. But that's not Jung that's Maslow…see how confusing all these historical figures are, and, now, alongside fictional figures?

I mean…if Sherlock Holmes can show up with Woodrow Wilson Grover Cleveland Teddy Roosevelt and Upton Sinclar, why not the others? I know, I know, The Accursed is set well before Citizen Kane's TIME, 1905-1906 to be exact (and the book is very exact about that time frame) but … maybe there could have been a premonition…or a foretelling…or a vision…better yet…A NIGHTMARE. You know about the sleigh. Sled. Okay.

It's also hard not to think about Abraham Lincoln Vampire Killer, I mean Hunter, although I only saw the movie—didn't read the book...

So I picked up The Accursed in a Joyce Carol Oates frenzy. I'd just finished The Falls which, I have to tell you, I loved madly. It's exquisite, telling the story of Ariah (like pariah with the P left off—and you've got to wonder if that's a coincidence or the author being clever) anyway…where was I?

Oh, yes. The story of Ariah that is told in The Falls. I love it because it is a story, basically, about how life breaks you down, pulls you apart, puts you back together, and then sets you free. See, I wrote that JCO is mean to her characters (she is) (she is really mean to her characters in The Accursed. Am I supposed to like Annabel?) but at the end of The Falls there is Juliet and Bud and, well, they are grace.

Personified.

But so far, The Accursed, is kind of like a hysterical paranormal … you know … kind of like those Salem witch trials.

There's Too Much Blueberry Jam on That Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

I read Adair's tale in The Taker as I put down the book I can't help but think of Louis in Interview With the Vampire—a pantheon of overwhelmed men taken by immortality.

It's all so gothic.
So much sex and lust expressed sideways, squeezing out the sides like too much blueberry jam on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
You just want to lick it all off.

Lanny is getting lost in the shuffle, maybe she will resurface.
I hope so.
She's the character I like.