A Novel Cover Up: Tom Sanderson on The Elemental Series by Brigid Kemmerer

A Novel Cover Up is a semi-regular feature that looks at how covers are made. Thanks to Much-in-Little, for the Storm by Brigid Kemmerer UK Blog Tour, I have been fortunate enough to invite back Graphic Designer, Tom Sanderson to discuss how he designed the cover for The Elemental Series. Other than the final covers and the TV show poster, all images in this post are copyrighted to Tom and used with permission, and can be clicked to enlarge.

Hi Tom! Can you tell us about the covers for The Elemental Series? What do you hope it tells readers about the story?

Hi Jo, With the Elemental covers the first design issue that I had to think about was getting a strong series device that could be used to link all the covers together, as I knew there would be a several covers in the series. I was told when Constable & Robinson commissioned me that they would be publishing the novels in print but they would also be publishing the linking novellas as eBooks, so I would need to translate the series into this format as well. For me the most straight forward way of linking these two series of books together would be through the typography, so quite early on in the briefing I realised I wanted to do something interesting with the type. I also wanted the covers to have that cool filmic approach that very much works with the YA genre, so my early reference also included looking at quite a lot of movie posters to get the right kind of look. I’ve been a fan of the marketing imagery used on the ‘Fringe’ TV series and the poster of the butterfly with the shows type was an early reference point for these covers. I really like the 3D elements of the typography and thought this would be something I could use with these covers.

First Class Post (58) & Weekly Recap

First Class Post - because this post is first class!

LGBT+ April Poetry Challenge

Week Three of LGBT+ April, hosted by Fighting Dreamer and Laura Plus Books! This week's challenge is to create - in some way, shape or form - LGBTQ inspired poetry. I very recently used book titles to tell the story of my friendship with my best mate for our friendiversary, so I just knew I had to do something similar for this, and here is what I came up with!

This is the story of a relationship between two guys, using the titles of LGBTQ YA.

Review: Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis (proof) - Amara is never alone. Not when she's protecting the cursed princess she unwillingly serves. Not when they're fleeing across dunes and islands and seas to stay alive. Not when she's punished, ordered around, or neglected.

She can't be alone, because a boy from another world experiences all that alongside her, looking through her eyes.

Nolan longs for a life uninterrupted. Every time he blinks, he's yanked from his Arizona town into Amara's mind, a world away, which makes even simple things like hobbies and homework impossible. He's spent years as a powerless observer of Amara's life. Amara has no idea . . . until he learns to control her, and they communicate for the first time. Amara is terrified. Then, she's furious.

All Amara and Nolan want is to be free of each other. But Nolan's breakthrough has dangerous consequences. Now, they'll have to work together to survive--and discover the truth about their connection. From Goodreads

Weekly Recap

I didn't receive any books this week, so no First Class Post, but here's this week's Weekly Recap.

Inspired by Faye of A Daydreamer's Thoughts's Weekly Highlights, here is a recap of my posts over the last week, and anything else I found interesting.

Reviews:


I read two books this week. Landline by Rainbow Rowell is amazing, such a beautiful, moving, yet amusing romance. Rowell can do no wrong!

LGBT+ April Discussion: Novels With Intersex Characters

As I said yesterday in my LGBT+ April Discussion: Where Are All the Asexual Characters? post, I also want to discuss intersex characters, in YA especially.

On Thursday, I was thinking about the books I'd read with intersex characters, and realised that all the books I know of, published as YA and adult, both those I've read and haven't, could be counted on just two hands (though when I was discussing it on Twitter with Cayce - one of our LGBT+ April hosts from Fighting Dreamer, she had to remind me of a few I had forgotten. D'oh!).

The following are fiction titles I know of that definitely include intersex characters. I did some looking up, but most of the others I found seem to be either non-fic, or I'm not sure enough to include them.

LGBT+ April Discussion: Where Are All the Asexual Characters?

I was reading through some of the LGBT+ April posts from other bloggers yesterday, and via Jim of YAYeahYeah, I found the QUILTBAG YA/NA Compendium on Daily Dahlia. Looking through the list, I couldn't find a single book that included an asexual character. I have read one, and thought I would bring it to fellow LGBT April participants attention in case you're unaware of it, but a post for just one? Not so great. So I did some research.

I found the post Confirmed Asexual Characters in Fiction on The Asexual Agenda (TAA) that highlights asexual characters in various forms of fiction, it includes the one I know of, and one other - plus a fantasy series that looks to be adult, but I'm not quite sure.