Behind My 2026 Covers
What do my new book covers for The Lazare Family Saga mean to me, and how did my designer Damonza and I arrive at them? Let’s dive in!
One thing I did differently with my saga’s 3.0 covers was to poll readers for reactions on a site called PickFu.com. This service is far from perfect. Among other challenges, I couldn’t poll only “Historical Fiction Readers,” or people who enjoyed reading both novels and History books, or Literary Fiction readers, or anything that specific. The best I could do was “Fiction Readers.” That’s enormously broad, but at least PickFu’s polls gave me a quick method of determining if my cover drafts were sending the wrong signals.
Like the previous covers of Necessary Sins, the 2026 version features Joseph Lazare because most of the novel is close third-person from his point-of-view. The earliest drafts of this cover featured the man peering through a quatrefoil confessional screen, which looked awesome. However, too many PickFu respondents mistook that version for a thriller and assumed the priest was evil.
We needed the priest to appear benign and to indicate the story’s romantic elements, so we went with roses for the screen between the man and the viewer. Joseph and his star-crossed beloved are both gardeners who cultivate roses in their Charleston gardens. More on the roses’ color in a bit. I think their illustration style recalls 19th-century engravings.
The butterfly at the top isn’t a blue Morpho, but it’s symbolic of one that appears in Necessary Sins. The “old handwriting” background helps to communicate the 1800s setting.
I also like that the man representing Joseph has “big hair.” This was popular even for White men in the 1800s (check out portraits of a young Charles Dickens or Mathew Brady). Yet it’s also a hint to Joseph’s African ancestry. A real-life example whom I mention in my work: the French author Alexandre Dumas père, whose grandmother was African.
My author name and the title Necessary Sins are both challenging to format because they contain one long word and one short word. How do you position those? All on one line? If on two lines, are the shorter words centered? Left- or right-aligned? Counting the audiobook covers for my 2022 set, my previous designs had taken three different approaches.
I love the fourth choice my designer Damonza made on this set. I would never have thought to offset the shorter words like this. I think it gives the words and therefore the story within “weight,” contributing to the literary feel. I think this formatting works particularly well with these designs because the shorter words funnel the viewer’s attention down the characters’ facial features, linking them as the focal points.
When I got feedback from other indie authors, the size of my name garnered some criticism. It was too big, they claimed. I’m sure the designer chose this size to contribute to the literary aesthetic, to suggest I’m someone you should have heard about. 😉 I think the size of my name fits perfectly with these designs.
They’re very much a collaboration between author and artist. Initially, my designer used a plain sans-serif font for the title and my name. I was afraid this would contribute to a thriller/mystery feel. But a traditional serif font didn’t work either. Not only Necessary Sins but also Native Stranger begin with the letter N, which is spindly and difficult to read in almost all serif fonts. I thought this made the titles look weak.
Then the dusky pink color of the roses my designer had chosen gave me an idea. This shade reminded me of “ashes of roses.” That’s the color of the dress Meggie Cleary famously wears in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, which was the primary inspiration for my saga. Actress Rachel Ward even wears the ashes of roses dress on the cover of the miniseries. I wondered if we might allude to The Thorn Birds in another way by using the title font from the original cover of the novel.
I asked my designer to try it, and I loved how it looked. Not only was this font an homage, I thought it was the perfect compromise between serif and sans serif: it was easy to read and important-looking but it still had flair.
All four of my 2026 covers went through about ten rounds of drafts, but Lost Saints had the most variations within those rounds. How did we communicate that Ésh wasn’t “playing Indian” but biologically (mostly) White yet culturally Cheyenne? I attempted to get feedback in a Facebook writers’ group on an early draft, and the comments quickly became a “This is racist” pile-on. I was even accused of being a troll because I couldn’t possibly be serious about such a story. I couldn’t possibly know whereof I wrote. Therefore, the Plains Indian elements are more subtle here: Ésh wears no visible Cheyenne attire, only his hair in two braids.
The feather style gave us the most trouble. The colors don’t “pop” like they do on Necessary Sins because there isn’t as much contrast between the “screen” and the man’s face. But more stylized feathers or feathers in a contrasting color weren’t evoking the American West. People mistook the cover for fantasy. I love the colors we ended up with. I think the cover looks earthy, lived-in, and authentic instead of fake. I think it successfully evokes the Great Plains and Cheyenne culture. Specifically, these feathers symbolize raptors like hawks and eagles, whom the Cheyenne revere for their hunting skills and their nearness to the heavens—as well as owls, whom the Cheyenne fear as harbingers of death.
That map in the background? It isn’t just any 19th-century map. It’s a real 1859 map of the American West that I found in the Library of Congress’s digital collections. Along the top is the route of the Overland Trail, where the Lazares’ lives intersect with the Cheyenne Nation. Zoom in to see the Platte River, Ft. Laramie, and the Sweet Water River, all important locations in Ésh’s life.
Now for my favorite of the new set! With this cover concept, the main focal point of each design is the character’s visible eye. I think this worked out particularly well on Native Stranger because of the two moles beneath Clare’s left eye, which are part of the story. In this design, they really say “Look here!” and then the amber color of Clare’s eye draws you in.
Clare wears her mother’s pearl drop earrings, which appear in the novels. The glimpse of her dress is based on this 1860 ball gown held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The blossoms are Carolina jasmine a.k.a. yellow jessamine, a vine native to South Carolina and the state flower. I think it gives the cover a lush, tropical feel—perfect for semi-tropical Charleston.
The jessamine camouflages two “Easter eggs,” details you’ll notice if you look closer. In the bottom right corner is a Monarch chrysalis. In the top left corner is an adult Monarch butterfly. Clare is a “wild child” who raises Monarchs. They symbolize not only her love of nature but also her longing for freedom and unconventional pursuits—as well as her resurrection in Sweet Medicine.
The musical score background represents Clare’s love of music and her “feminine accomplishments” as a Southern belle.
For the first draft of Sweet Medicine with this cover concept, my designer used a red background and dark green leaves still attached to branches. The man’s clothing was dark too. He literally looked like a serial killer hiding in a bush, spying on his next victim! I was horrified. I needed the cover to look romantic, not creepy!
I sent the designer a YouTube clip of the climax of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice film adaptation. I told them I needed “Mr. Darcy striding over the fields to declare himself to Elizabeth Bennet, who gasps in anticipation because she aches for him too” energy. I didn’t specifically ask for an open shirt like Darcy wears in that scene, though I like the way it makes him look not only sexy but also vulnerable.
Can you spot the Easter egg on this cover? Look closely inside the man’s shirt collar. I had the designer include the silver chain of David’s Cosmas and Damian medal, a gift from Clare that symbolizes his devotion to her more than to the saints.
While not all the leaves are the right shape, they represent the falling leaves of quaking aspens and David’s sojourn in the Colorado mountains. I lived in Colorado during middle school and high school, and jewelry made from golden aspen leaves is popular there. I still have two pairs of aspen earrings.
The background with its decorative scrollwork frame represents one of the journals David keeps of his Western travels.
What do you think? How many of the references in these designs did you pick up on, especially if you’ve read my work? I admit they’re less literal and more abstract than my previous covers, but that’s part of the literary/book club aesthetic I want them to convey. Cover design really is its own language—one I’m still learning, seven years on!