Launch parties and covers

Well, it's July and this is the first cool day we've had for some time, which inclines me slightly more to sit in and write a new post and - start the new book!

First of all, launch parties. Yes, two of them! One, with real prosecco and cakes, is at my local bookshop, Harbour Books on August 16th, publication day, at 7 pm. The second is a Facebook launch at 7 pm on August 17th. There will also be a blog tour, about which I haven't yet got the details, but which is organised by a professional who knows the appropriate blog hosts. Most of my blog tours in the past have concentrated on bloggers who concentrate on romantic/women's fiction, but Jill, who is also organising my launch party, is a whole different kettle of fish. The only thing I'm worried about is that I might not be gory/tense/thrilling enough for crime bloggers. In our Loonies Reader Group we've discussed this before; the tendency these days is for edge-of-your-seat thrilling reads - even previously gentler writers are throwing their detectives into the fray.

Now, a little point that was made by a friend over the weekend - Accurate Covers. It was made by a writer, and discussed by writers, so I thought I'd get a reader's view point. She was complaining about the tendency of cover artists to portray period heroines in quite the wrong way - the wrong dress, the wrong stance or attitude, the wrong background - you name it, it was wrong. It's something that's always worried me - particulary in Regency Romances, where you see voluptuous heroines in positively abandoned attitudes posed with bare chested men. The clothes are frequently wrong, too. I didn't mean to, but I realised I was looking out for this sort of thing yesterday on my trek around t'internet - and I found it!

This was a book set during and just after World War One - in England and the Western Front. About English people. The cover showed a beautiful twenty-first century woman staring at a very twenty-first century young man against a misty, vague background. The - oh, look! Another one! This was a book by an American (I have nothing against Americans - I have one almost in the family) about Boudicca. This woman is an academic and a writing tutor and wrote the biggest load of tosh about her book I've ever seen. This ruthless warrior woman was portrayed as a beautiful wronged heroine (well, she was, but not the way she was portrayed) who took people out to a beautiful landscape - depicted on the cover) wearing a beautiful Greek-style dress (also depicted on the cover) for a PICNIC! And describes the food. No, I can't bring myself to repeat it. As I said privately to the blog host, my historian and archeologist friends would have had kittens - and as for my uni tutors - well! As a former tutor myself, I was horrified. She made every mistake it was possible to make.

Anyway, back to the point. Covers. Both those I've described were misleading and inaccurate and annoyed me intensely. This is why I'm so pleased that Accent have always gone for the sort of covers they give me. The houses depicted might sometimes be wrong, but they're near enough to give the right idea. So what do you think? Do the Wrong Covers irritate you? I really want to know.

If you don't already belong to our Reader Group and you would like to, we are Lesley Cookman's Libby's Loonies on Facebook. And no, I didn't choose the name...