I know some of you know I do book covers. This isn't a big part of what I do, because I haven't got the time or energy. But there are some people I really want to see get a good cover, and some who have trusted me with their work for quite a while now, and anyway. It is a very satisfying job to do, to create a piece of art that is the essence of a book, and lay out the text and design in such a way that it will (hopefully!) speak to readers and compel them to open it up. That's the job of a cover, after all. To make that first leap into the reader's hands, and get them to open it and start reading. The story takes it over from there.
A Pocketful of Stars is the first in the Applied Topology series, and I'm proud to have done the covers for all of them, and the spinoff series as well. The stories are great - it's Margaret Ball, of course they are! And yes, I did have a fangirl moment when we started working together on this project - and hopefully my covers convey the fun of the tales about mathematicians who start working magic. Well, not magic. Applied math, in really useful and weird ways math doesn't usually seem like it would be helpful... if you haven't read them yet, start with this one, and you'll want to read them all.
Then there are the covers that, well, I'm a bit cheeky about. This one, Tom was working on and had posted a draft. I came along and asked if he'd send me the stock art files so I could mess around with it. A short while later... I had put them into a somewhat more cohesive image. I probably shouldn't critique random people's covers - I really try not to do so unless asked, these days - but I consider Tom a friend, and furthermore, I like his stories a lot and wanted this one to have the cover that would help it sell well. Who can resist a Boogeyman turned private investigator and specializing in the strange? besides, noir cover design makes me happy to create.
Applied art. That's what book covers are for me. A way to use my art in aid of something greater than just pretty. Art done right should evoke a story, this is just... a longer story than most art hides in itself.