Cover Art Part 5

Pete Worrall • July 12, 2018

Frustration and indecision

When it came to the new book, The Devil’s Accompanist, I thought I knew what I wanted and I had stumbled upon this book cover last year (see above) and I just loved the tone, the colours and image and thought something along those lines would be great. Good news followed soon after as early stock images searches unveiled this quite brilliant picture (see below) and I thought, ‘yes, that’ll do nicely’. Things were looking up. What I liked about it is the way it portrays loneliness with a hint of despondency, a woman lost, unsure of herself while walking around an old building…or at least that’s what I saw. It was perfect for the story.

Of course, it’s never that simple. When you look through stock imagery, the site usually brings up other pictures that are either, part of the same collection, by the same artists, similar pictures or, in many cases, all three. Sadly, this picture is not part of a collection, it was a one off, but at least I had a cover, right?

Yes, I did have a cover, one cover, but the problem which arose soon after was similar to The Eyes where the second cover is far superior to the first cover. I was never really happy with the first cover and I thought, with the coming of the first story’s full length follow up, here is a good opportunity to re-release Thank You For The Music with a lovely new cover. This is when the trouble started.

The problem I had was the differing lengths of the books. Thank You For The Music is a short story (18,000 words) and The Devil’s Accompanist is a full length (90,000 words). Could I successfully release the books as a part 1 and part 2 with the over-arching name of The Brazen Suite?

I had done some research into the best way forward and found that serials sell better than stand-alone books. It might not sound correct, but we humans love serials. Most of our TV dramas are serial based with cliff hangers keeping you on the edge of your seat until the following week. Hell, it’s the very basis our binge watching, box set culture is based upon. Ok, so I now have a part 1 and part 2 but they are of differing lengths, does this matter? Possibly, readers like something to get their teeth into and 18,000 words for part 1 is probably not going to cut it, but I was struggling to combine the two stories into two 54,000 word books. I then thought about splitting it into 3 parts. Part 1 would be the original 18000 word short story and parts 2&3 would be the new full length split into 2 x 45,000 word books. I went with this idea for quite a while but felt Thank You For The Music was not a good a title as The Devil’s Accompanist. Surely, if I’m going to make them a series, the titles must relate as well. I came up with The Devil’s Composer and The Devil Likes to be Serenaded and was quite happy with the way the series was shaping up. Sadly, the cover art had other ideas.

Three of the tips for creating serialised cover art is to: 1, Make them look like they’re related so they at least look like they’re part of the same series. 2, Have a human element to it. 3. Use fewer colours. The problem with making it a 3 book series was suddenly having to produce three front covers that adhered to these tips. I already had one I was happy with, yet the cover for Thank You For The Music didn’t look like it was related to The Devil’s Accompanist, nor did it have a human element. So, two covers had to be created to complete The Brazen Suite series…simple, yes?

I was going to need help so I got in touch with my good friend Chris Linaker again and we both set about discussing what the themes were and potential ideas. What followed was a period of passing back and forth possible covers and images that might spark some inspiration. I was up to my old tricks of being very vague about what I wanted, I just knew what I didn’t want. It didn’t help that I was indecisive about the book titles as well. The names changed around so often that they became meaningless for the cover art. It was a case of, ‘get the artwork sorted first and I’ll worry about what to call it at a later date’.

The following designs were quick mock ups by Chris and myself. I knew I wanted something to relate to the image for The Devil’s Accompanist and so went for pictures that were dark, had a woman in the image and were fairly mysterious. Although frustrating Chris to the point of distraction, he did keep me on track by asking the very simple question, ‘does it represent the book?’ Almost all of the time it didn’t, and he pointed out that some of them, although darkly lit, could pass off as romance book cover rather than the horror/mystery story I’d written.


Because producing just one of the two required covers was creating headaches, I decided to back track my decision on making it a three part series. So, Chris and I were back to creating just one cover and I made the executive decision of keeping the titles of The Devil’s Composer and The Devil’s Accompanist, the former replacing Thank You For The Music.

Chris asked me about other themes in the book and he came up with some different ideas including a woman overlooking London, a picture inside a picture and the hands of the devil, which I think is utterly brilliant but not suitable for what I was after. It has gone into the, ‘for use later’ folder, so we may see it again at some point.

Looking at other writers and their serial covers, I noticed a few serials used the same picture but altered a certain aspect of it. I approached Chris and suggested the idea and somehow, I’m yet to find out how, he managed to remove the woman in The Devil’s Accompanist. This opened up ideas of replacing her with another woman either listening to music, playing music or in a different pose. I liked these ideas but we never hit on anything that I was 100% behind, that was until Chris just moved the original woman and added a shadow. That was it, I was sold. All the weeks of frustration could all have been avoided if only either of us had thought of moving to woman slightly to the left. Chris added a gramophone and I asked him to darken and then fuzzy up the shadow a bit more and, tadaaaah, it was almost there. From the window on the right I added more of an orange glow which I really liked because it just took down the amount of colours (see tip 3) and the overall brightness. That was it job done…sort of.

I gave Chris the correct names and he finished of the titles. The downside was the fact that these covers would be for the individual ebooks. I wanted to create a version containing both parts so I could offer readers a combined paperback version. Part 1 has never had a paperback release and some people have not read it because they don’t have a kindle or ebook reader. In my mucking about, I had bought an image of a chair on fire (nice) and thought it fitted the imagery of the story quite well. I took some of the colour out of it and made a slight change in its hue. I had it in my design program and by sheer fluke I accidentally put The Devil’s Accompanist cover over the top of it. Instead of removing it, I made the white transparent and the result was something that really appealed to me. I liked the way the woman was walking in the flames and the chair is iconic to me and hopefully anyone else who has read the story. I liked it enough to make it the front cover for the paper back with the reverse including the covers of the book’s individual parts. I passed it over to Chris for a final opinion and once he put the titles on it, that was it, job done…until next time.

I’m really happy with the way the cover art has turned out for The Brazen Suite. It’s probably the most frustrated I’ve been when creating covers but I think they’re my favourite out of all the covers Chris and I have produced so far. It’s all been worth it...just.

Quatermass and the Pit 1967

By Pete Worrall • February 7, 2022
I recall watching Quatermass when I was young, however, I don’t think it was the Hammer productions, instead the BBC adaptations. Because it was a long time ago I can no longer remember what the Quatermass films were about and what happened in them. The only recollection I have is the middle-aged, bearded scientist image of the leading role, Bernard Quatermass. Amazon Prime have, or at least had, I’ve not checked in a while, both 1955’s The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II and I watched The Quatermass Experiment not so long ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it from a story point of view and thought the ideas and the way the plot unfolds was really good. My least favourite aspect was Quatermass himself played by Brian Donlevy. Spikey and uncharismatic, I felt the film would be better off without him and wasn’t 100% sure what he brought to the proceedings. However, the 1967 version of Quatermass and the Pit was in my Hammer Boxset and I was eager to find out what was in store and what Andrew Keir could bring to the role of the scientist From IMDB A mysterious artifact is unearthed in London, and famous scientist Bernard Quatermass is called into to divine its origins and explain its strange effects on people.

The Devil Rides Out 1968

By Pete Worrall • February 7, 2022

For some reason I thought I had already seen this Hammer Horror classic and maybe I had when I was younger but I could not recall the opening scenes suggesting I had not. I recognised imagery from the film thanks to trailers, clips and segments in Iron Maiden videos; perhaps this was the cause of my mistake. My expectations were high when hitting play as some, especially in the British Horror Group I am a member of, herald it as peak Hammer with the great Christopher Lee often siting The Devil Rides Out as his favourite Hammer film. It had a lot to live up to, however, invariably such films fail to deliver due to unmeetable expectations, but Christopher Lee, Devil worship, Charles Gray, directed by the great Terence Fisher…what could go wrong?

First of all, it was lovely to see Christopher Lee starring as the protagonist, not the action type, that was the job of Leon Greene, but as the wise council and voice of reason, no wonder it was Lee’s favourite Hammer film, he got the chance to play a good guy for once.

The film doesn’t hang about, as soon as Leone Green lands his plane and is met by Christopher Lee. He asks about someone called Simon and within a few lines of dialogue we’re at Simon’s new house because they’re worried about him and hadn’t seen him for at least three months. My first thought was he’d met a girl or taken a new job but it turns out he’s having a dinner party and hob nobbing with a group of new friends from an astronomical society. Of course, Christopher Lee suspects they’re all devil worshippers ready to sacrifice chickens. For me, it was a stretch for him to conclude this within the first nine minutes of the film and I wish more time was given for his suspicions to embed. A general decline in Simon’s behaviour perhaps or more clues gathered to Simon’s new ‘hobby’, it all happened a little too quickly, especially as Simon’s behaviour is quite pleasant and not sinister at all. Simon’s bought a new house, I’ve not seen him in three months that means he’s dealing in black magic. Simon insists Greene and Lee leave (this would make more than thirteen at the party and thus unable to perform the ritual) but Lee punches Simon’s lights out instead before kidnapping him and slugging the butler at the same time, it was all a little clunky for me.

The Nanny 1965

By Pete Worrall • February 6, 2022
One of the best Christmas presents I have ever received, yes, even greater than the roller-skates when I was seven, and I wrote that correctly, they were roller-skates not roller-boots which basically meant they were flipflops with wheels, was The Hammer Collection box set. 20 Hammer films including all their classic movies (although that’s a matter of opinion), some I have seen a long time ago and some I have yet to watch. I’m planning to cover some of them in this blog…well, I’ll see how I go. The first one I fancied out of the box was 1965’s The Nanny with Bette Davies and Wendy Craig, a film I had not seen and the IMDB premise piqued my interest. There's just something not quite right when Bette Davis stars as an English nanny. And is her 10-year-old charge an emotionally disturbed murderer or just an insolent brat? The film opens with Bette Davies carrying a parcel through a playground and a park and all is good with the world, it has to be, the music by Richard Rodney Bennett tells us so. She eventually ends up at her employers who are having a to do where the mother is in tears and the husband is telling her to pull herself together, why? Because their son is coming home. Bette swans about as if this is a regular occurrence and already the husband and wife relationship is an uncomfortable watch with the prickly James Villiers, who also played a prickly role in For Your Eyes Only, instructing Wendy Craig to put some make up on while she bawls into a pillow.

Get Out

By Pete Worrall • December 19, 2018
I sadly missed Get Out when it was on at the local cinema and I’m quite glad I did because I’m not sure I would want to squirm in my seat in public for 110 minutes. I don’t think I’ve felt so uncomfortable watching a film, not even watching The Wicker Man. In fact, if you’ve not seen it, stop reading this and try and grab yourself a copy. From IMDB: Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behaviour as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

The Descent

By Pete Worrall • December 13, 2018
The Descent, a well renowned, critically acclaimed British horror flick from the director of Dog Soldiers, had somehow passed me by over the years. With Google Play offering me only 99p to rent it for 48 hours, I thought I’d give it a go. From IMDB: A woman goes on vacation with her friends after her husband and daughter encounter a tragic accident. One year later she goes hiking with her friends and they get trapped in the cave. With a lack of supply, they struggle to survive and they meet strange blood thirsty creatures. I thought the opening was very interesting. It set up the extreme sports loving Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and her friends, Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid) as we seen them white river rafting. Sarah’s other half and her daughter were at the bottom waiting for them and even in this short scene it was insinuated that there was something between her husband and Juno. On the way home, Sarah was distracting her husband whilst he was driving leading to a fatal car crash resulting in the deaths of both her husband and her daughter.

Mama

By Pete Worrall • December 13, 2018
2013 scares from Andy Muschietti and a film that had been in my ‘to watch’ library for a while but, for some reason, never put aside enough time to watch. But, after the clunkers, Annabelle and IT, I was keen for at least a solid scare fest and, thankfully, Mama delivered. From IMDB: The senior partner of an investment brokerage, Jeffrey Desange, has a breakdown due to a financial collapse and kills several co-workers and his estranged wife. He then kidnaps his two young daughters, Victoria 3 and Lilly just 1. He drives his car recklessly through a winding snow covered road. He loses control of his car and drives off an embankment. He finds an abandoned and isolated cabin where he plans to kill his daughters, but the children are saved by a dark ghostly image. Jeffrey Desange’s twin brother, Lucas has been on the hunt for his missing brother and his family for five years, almost pushing himself into financial strife himself because of it. His girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) is a punk rocker, more interested in her band than having a child, and so we begin her story arc as we witness her relative disinterest in the two children when they are found five years later in the same abandoned cabin.

The Mummy (1959)

By Pete Worrall • December 8, 2018
The Horror Channel’s season continues with Hammer’s The Mummy. The myth of the Mummy is perhaps as old as horror itself and, for me, I’ve always found the start of such films more interesting than the final act. If you have a weakness for tombs, ancient tales of evil and grave robbing in your movies, then The Mummy always works because the creature is always hidden underneath a shroud of mystery. Only when the Mummy actually appears does a film usually fall into a chase movie. There’s nothing wrong with this but I’ve always felt the set up was always far stronger than the pay off because, and this is purely personal, I don’t find someone wrapped in bandages all that terrifying. The film starts with a team of English archaeologists breaking into Princess Ananka’s tomb, and, before they are about to enter, Egyptian, Mehemet Bey, warns the archaeologists not to go into the tomb, but his wise words are ignored and rightly so because otherwise the film would have only been ten minutes long, including credits.

IT

By Pete Worrall • December 5, 2018
I don’t particularly want to waste too much time writing about IT The Movie because the less time spent thinking about this tedious affair the better in my opinion. The film has a good reputation, a decent IMDB score and I was genuinely disappointed when I missed it at the local movie theatre. After the first five minutes I thought I was going to be in for a thrilling ride because the start was brilliant. When Georgie runs down the rain soaked street chasing his boat only for it to fall down a drain and we meet Pennywise for the very first time, I felt the dread because Bill’s Skarsgard’s portrayal of the clown, the script and cinematography in those few moments were sublime.

Annabelle

By Pete Worrall • December 5, 2018
The third film in Warner Brother’s Conjuring universe focuses on the Annabelle doll first seen in the original Conjuring film. One cannot deny the Annabelle doll had a creepy presence in that film, especially the scene where was sat in a chair and her head slowly moved. Pediophobia is a relatively common so if you’ve going to include a weird looking doll with an uncomfortable stare in your movie then you’re already onto confirmed success, right? Not quite. The film focuses on John (Ward Horton) and his heavily pregnant wife Mia (Annabelle Wallis) who live in a neighbourhood where people do not lock their doors and everybody goes to church. Mia collects dolls and, after upsetting his wife with a comment he clearly hadn’t thought through, he gifts her the Annabelle doll because Mia had been searching for it to add to her collection. One night, two members of a satanic cult break in their house and attack Mia. Thankfully, Mia and baby suffer only a modicum of stress, however her attackers were not so lucky. Once is shot by the police and the other slits her own throat whilst hold the Annabelle doll. From then on, strange things begin to happen around the home.

The Blackwell Ghost

By Pete Worrall • December 1, 2018
I noticed this film on Amazon Prime while I was looking for some alternative horror. I was drawn towards the thumbnail which is the portrait of a mature, lady with a thunderous expression and dressed in an early 1900’s garb. I thought I was going to get an old fashioned ghost story similar to the BBC Christmas ghost stories from yesteryear, but The Blackwell Ghost couldn’t be further from a Victorian spine chiller. Although, it does have something in common with the BBC, in style only, and that is 1992’s Ghostwatch. At only an hour long, this mockumentory follows the exploits of Turner Clay as he puts his zombie movies on hold to look into whether ghosts are real. After putting out a call for paranormal experiences, only one piques his interest, a house in Pennsylvania where the owner experiences ghostly activity almost every day. It turns out a previous owner, Ruth Blackwell, had killed several local children and hidden the bodies in the drain beneath the house. What a lovely lady.