Re:cover

UPDATE: Polling is closed and the one we’re calling Invicta has won by a comfortable landslide.
Work has already commenced on making it production-ready and as soon as it is a launch date will be announced.
Thank you all very, very much for setting me straight.

As we approach the launch date for the first title in the new Teddy Quillfeather Mystery series, the delicate question of the cover gets progressively less easy to postpone.

The cover reveal for the Lempicka version garnered the observation that it didn’t really match the affable laughable personality of the Boisjoly universe. A valid and vital point, particularly in light of the fact that the first cover will to no small degree determine the aesthetic of the entire series.

So, I turn to the newsletter subscribers for help. I’m too close to this now to decide and very much need you to point the way.

Below is a slideshow (to allow them to be viewed in isolation) of four very drafty covers of the first Teddy Quillfeather mystery. If you’d have quick a glance and then scroll down and vote in the poll then we’ll be that much closer to the official launch of Hardy Haul at Hardy Hall.

There’s a description of the book below the poll but first impressions are really what we want here. It may merely be enough to know that it’s the funniest manor house heist mystery ever, including Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Hardy Haul at Hardy Haul

In the very first Teddy Quillfeather Mystery, the theft of an immensely valuable, immensely ugly necklace is only the beginning of the intrigues and tangles and turns at a country weekend at Hardy Hall where Teddy’s mother has sent her with strict instructions to select an eligible bachelor from among the wealthy, the aristocratic, the connected, and the criminal.
But when Teddy tries to set things right with her natural knack for applied shenanigans she instead uncovers more layers of legend, conspiracy, and corporate espionage stirring beneath the still waters of country house propriety. It’s a comedy of manners and caper of manors and the only solution, if you’re Teddy Quillfeather, is obviously another heist…

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7 thoughts on “Re:cover”

  3. It cannot be ‘the only criteria’. Criteria is plural.

    It must be ‘criterion’.

    Who writes this stuff. Can’t be the beloved author.

    Reply

    • It’s no defence, but I suspended process for that specific line.
      Normally, everything I write — from shopping lists to this reply — is made to sit in a dark room for a bit and have a good think about whether or not it’s saying what it means to say and doing so with good grammar.
      Hardy Haul at Hardy Hall is almost ready for release and a cover is one of the few outstanding points that want settling, and so I made haste which, famously, makes waste and, as we see, sentences which put singulars in apposition to plurals.
      Thank you very much for the flattering reproach.

      Reply

  4. Helleau!

    The Hardy hall got my vote, although I was initially torn between Invicta and Sunset Boulevard. I was puzzled by the fact that, to me at least, they all look American. Is Teddy an American? If not, then my gut feeling is that the artwork should be more British.

    Thank you very much for the terrific books, though. They appeal to me, as a pedant, in the most wonderful way.

    Juliette

    Reply

    • Now you say it, she does come over a bit American, doesn’t she?
      Teddy is English. She lives in London and the family country seat is in Berkshire, according to a character profile I wrote two years ago. I regard it a trustworthy source.
      I took the look from some era sketches by Coco Chanel but that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve still come out American. I expect it’s simply down to the iconography of ‘flapper’ being essentially American, but I shall reflect on your suggestion.
      Tangentially, the Lempicka version of the cover is nicked very obviously from a famous self-portrait of the artist driving a car in France, and I was initially tempted to flop the image so that the steering wheel would be on the right. I didn’t, in the end, but it did inspire the cartoon about Teddy allowing the penguin to drive the Invicta.
      I really appreciate the kind words, Juliette.

      Reply

  5. I would have chose the Lempicka Lift but for the fact that I picture Teddy with an intense and mischievous twinkle in her eye. Otherwise, I really like the close-up with her penguin side-kick.

    Reply

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