New Cover for The Seven Second Kiss

I thought that my original cover was pretty good. It was a seventy-eight rpm record with a thirties style label with the title on it. The other visual imagery consisted of the New York skyline in the thirties and a saxophone.

I still think it is pretty good but something about it bothered me. It didn't have something people could identify with.

I finally came to the realization that I had been promoting the book in a less effective way than I could have been doing. I wasn't selling the sizzle as it were.

What the story is about is Connie Neiland's struggle to get herself out of a very difficult situation. She starts by making things worse and then complicates it with a desire for something she never imagined would be within her reach.

I wanted a more immediate human appeal so I finally came up with a new cover design. I think this turned out better.

With this cover I have a close up of Connie's face and she is singing into a nineteen-thirties style microphone. The shades of grey convey the type of black and white images commonly available in that era in movies and in the press. The gold lettering suggests brass, a metal used to make brass instruments and saxophones.

In addition to that the design has allowed me to make a landscape variant on the cover. That gives me the opportunity to show that variant in places where the long portrait image is at a disadvantage.

I think this is a more appealing cover. It lacks the New York skyline but I think the human element more than makes up for that.