The first thing we did was to provide Ezra a selection of the stories from the forthcoming book, so he could read them and see which inspired his interest to depict. I also sent him a number of images of the covers for JDC's published novels, as well as providing him the link to Crippen & Landru Publishers, so he could see what other artists have done with the covers of previous books.
I confess, I certainly had my own ideas about what I'd like to see on the cover. While there was some preliminary crossover of ideas, the best thing I did in this early process was to keep my mouth shut and let the artist find his material. The subject eventually selected was not one I had considered, and is much better than the favorite idea I had in mind: the fighter-plane dogfight in Carr's Ruritanian adventure, "The Blindfold Quest."
Ezra came back to us initially intrigued by:
* "The Will-o'-the-Wisp," a historical adventure, of course featuring a sword fight, written when JDC was just 15.
* "The Riddle of the Laughing Lord": one of Carr's few, but delectable, tales of supernatural horror.
* "The Legend of the Cane in the Dark," a ghost tale the premise of which so intrigued Carr that he returned to it multiple times during his professional career.
* Grand Guignol: Carr's crowning amateur work, a novella, which he rewrote into his first professional novel, It Walks By Night.
I suggested some moments from these that resonated with me--of course encouraging to disregard my ideas if he had ones he preferred--after which Ezra came back to us with four concept sketches from two of the tales. Enjoy these!
For anybody who has seen the final book cover, there is not much suspense in which subject we chose for its cover--but we didn't get there all at once!
I from inexperience/lack of expertise, Jeffrey from wisdom, decided to encourage Ezra to explore creating the cover in the style he preferred. After all, we were looking for a youthful take on stories written by a youthful JDC. So Ezra came back to us with this first cover vision.
Well, first, let me say of the initial version, WOW. Perhaps I'm easily pleased, but I really loved the illustrated look Ezra produced on the first pass. It looked very contemporary, very youthful. It was quite striking. By complete coincidence, too, it seems to have had an affinity with the cover for the Crippen & Landru Publishers book immediately preceding it (which neither Ezra nor I had yet seen), John Creasey's collection Gideon and the Young Toughs, introduced by Martin Edwards.
You can see that cover here: https://crippen-and-landru.myshopify.com/.../gideon-and...
Anyway, Jeffrey felt that there was more visually we could get out of this cover, and he encouraged Ezra to explore taking it into a full, painterly style. The image attached to this part shows the cover in transition. Seeking our input, Ezra commented, "I am currently working painting the background, I have included the noose on a tree stage right ( the cane layer is off at the moment, and the figure in front as well)."
Of course, fan of the C&L "noose" tradition that I am, I had been asking Ezra to find a home for that hidden somewhere on the cover. But as we'll see in the next part, Jeffrey had some more helpful ideas coming...
Jeffrey alertly suggested that the story could be more intriguingly represented if Ezra added some money being cast about the frame. (Being as vague as I can be so as not to spoil anybody's first reading of the story, money is an element of conflict in the story.) Ezra added, as you can see, some money. Jeffrey, doing his best to avoid channeling his inner Jerry Maguire, asked for a few more bills to be scattered about, and so we reached the final format of the cover art.
Afterward, Ezra showed us four variations of the title graphics (different fonts). Independently, Jeffrey and I picked the same version as our top choices (as we had, at the start of the project, the subject matter), and so it became the full book cover launched yesterday.
I hope you've enjoyed this look into how the cover of The Kindling Spark was conceived. Thanks for reading.
For those of you purchasing the book, my sincere gratitude: dollars flying around the cover notwithstanding, the truth is, production of a book like this is a passion project. All the right people, like Carr's estate, the wonderful publisher Crippen & Landru Publishers, Ezra, and even I get paid--but truly, not very much. This is not mainstream commercial publishing. A book like this is a genuine passion project, undertaken, as Jeffrey phrased it, to create "a good book, a lasting book." We do this because we love this author's writings and because we want to share the fun, the entertainment, and the joy of reading something so unexpected and new from him--after all this time--with you, the readers. There can be no better result, at all, than your doing so.
