Take a sneak peek at my next book’s cover

For several months now, you’ve been getting tastes of my upcoming book, but I have kept much of project under wraps, including the title.

The curtain goes up on that right now.

So roll the drums, please, and take a deep breath of anticipation. Here’s what I’m rolling out:

Do the title and image intrigue you? Pique your curiosity? Hold you for more than a split-second?

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, book covers – and magazines, too – are a specialized design challenge.

The ebook version has to work as a postage stamp, sizewise.

Print editions often get cluttered with pitches of all sorts, just in case one hooks a reader.

An effective title, of course, is a huge consideration, but not the only one.

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Creating a compelling image that matches the content has been especially difficult in this case. The book spans more than 400 years, and I couldn’t find anything that quite reflected the place or its people, now or then, or that extended an appropriate emotional appeal.

A seismograph didn’t do it, though several geometric zig-zag patterns looked cool.

One design that excited me featured a portrait of John Greenleaf Whittier’s mother, but others saw her as forbidding. What I saw calm and collected they viewed as sorrowful and inhibited. Oh, well.

But then, while going through my own photos, I came across a late-autumn photo of the Cochecho River, scene of much of the action. I loved its timeless mystery and beauty and the fact it didn’t look generic to just about anywhere else in the world.

One of my earlier posts pointed out that the cover should promise the reader something rather than mirror the story. It’s a matter of eliciting a gut-level attraction.

Somehow, I hope you feel this cover leads backward into time, with the drama of a storm on the way. Just what is around that bend, anyway?

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Please stay tuned for the release details in the days ahead.