Guest Post: Lani Woodland on the Indelible Cover Story!

Thanks to Lani Woodland for stopping by today and providing this great guest post. Her books Intrinsical and Indelible are fun reads full of mystery and romance. You can read my review of the first book in the Yara Silva trilogy Intrinsical: here.  My review of Indelible will be available for you to read later in the week!

Over to Lani for the story behind the stunning cover of Indelible!

When we shot Intrinsical’s cover, we had a very clear idea of what we wanted it to look like.  When we came together to discuss the cover of Indelible, we didn’t. We had several different ideas instead of one firm vision. The funny thing is that while we ended up LOVING the final cover, it was nothing like we had originally envisioned.

There were a few things we knew for certain. One was that we wanted a red dress, we wanted to take the pictures at the beach, we wanted to use the same model that we used for Intrinsical (and we were lucky enough to get Stephanie again), and we knew the basic essence or mood the we were going for. Knowing we wanted to use the beach didn’t really narrow down the location. There are a lot of beautiful beaches in California so we started looking up different places. Kamilla, the president of Pendrell Publishing, and I found the pier and both loved it.  It was different than most of the other piers we have out here in California. To me it looked like a school hallway with water coming down it, and evoked a sort of spooky vibe.

We decided to shoot the cover for Inevitable (the third book in the Yara Silva trilogy) on the same day. So that required Kamilla (who did the hair, the make-up, and some of the photography for the shoot) to try and make Yara look younger in one photo and older in the other. To help Yara look younger for Indelible’s image she added extensions to Stephanie’s hair. We shot at two different locations and Stephanie had her make-up redone in the back of the car while we went from location to location.

Since we weren’t exactly sure which way we were going for the cover we also invited Delco—our model who plays Brent—to come along too. We didn’t end up using him for the cover but we did use a picture of him and Stephanie for the title page.

 No matter how well you plan and discuss a shoot, sometimes things don’t work. That is sort of what happened on this shoot. The one main idea we really wanted did not work at all. I’m not going to show you those pictures but believe me, things did not come together. So we ended up using some of the other pictures we had taken just to be safe. I will admit I felt like the Indelible cover was a bust. We uploaded the images and nothing was what we planned or talked about. But we sent the handful of pictures we did at least like to the graphic designer. She had been in the discussion with us from the beginning so she knew the mood, tone and main ideas we had wanted to incorporate into the cover.

She told me which shot she had picked and I looked the picture and was like, “Yah, it’s okay, but it doesn’t really work. The lighting wasn’t fantastic on it, etc.” So I wasn’t sure about it. But I was blown away by the amazing job she did it on it. It was perfect. It was the exact sort of feel we were hoping for. It also had the subtle things we needed the cover to have. Things most people might not notice. If you want to know what those are you will have to ask me about them AFTER you have read the book. :) But yes, I love the cover. It is from an important scene in the book. It is no less important but perhaps a tad bit less heart stopping than Intrinsical’s cover. But I am beyond thrilled with the final cover and am grateful to our amazing graphic designer.

Big thanks to Lani for stopping by the blog today and sharing the cover story and the photos behind Indelible, book #2 in the Yara Silva trilogy. Indelible is out now! If you've already read Intrinsical you'll be itching to find out what happens next!

Find out more:

http://www.laniwoodland.com/

http://laniwoodland.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/laniwoodland

http://intrinsicalthebook.com/

Additional images are © Lani Woodland and may not be used without permission.