I’ve seen a preliminary draft of the cover for His Forgotten Fiancée! I’m so excited. I can’t share it here, since it’s not the final version, but I’m still jumping up and down inside. It made the book seem so much more real.

They did a photoshoot with models. Real people, posing as characters from a story I made up. Bizarre.

And not just people. One of the secondary characters in the story (Elijah) is a kitten, so I’d asked if they could put him on the cover. For some reason, I had thought they’d just photoshop a cat onto the background, but no. The Harlequin team went and got a cat model for the photoshoot, bless them.
Even more impressive, the kitten on the cover looks exactly like the kitten I had originally based Elijah on. Black and white and adorable.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Vicki Essex wrote a blog post about her experience as a Harlequin cover model. They brought a horse into the studio for that photoshoot. Up an elevator.

I learned something else today. I’d listened to other authors gush about their beautiful covers, but I never understood why they were so proud. It’s analogous to bringing home a new baby. To someone else, a baby looks nice enough, but to its proud parents, it’s the most beautiful baby ever. I have no doubt that other people could find things that might need improvement. But I can’t see any.

I will share it later, when the finished version becomes available. For now you’ll just have to take my word for it. It’s the most beautiful cover ever. At least, it is to me. 🙂

Here’s an excellent post on what makes a good book cover, with some great examples.