Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover: Crescendo

Here we are, once more my friends, with "Anatomy of an Erotic Romance Cover V".

I'm sort of dreading writing this one because publishing Crescendo was a somewhat unique process.

If you've kept up with this series, you know that I begin working on covers before the final draft of the manuscript is even finished. (To that point, I have tentatively finished the cover of the third SILVER CITY STORIES book and I'm only about 8,000 words into the draft...) While it didn't take me terribly long to write what I now call Crescendo, personal issues had delayed the editing process.

During this delay, my mind started concocting other stories related to Crescendo, four of them, to be precise. And so SILVER CITY STORIES was born. Crescendo would be the first book of a series.

Except it wasn't. 

Somewhere along the way I got the idea for Crossfade, which, chronologically would take place before Crescendo. I based the cover for Crossfade off, what was then, the final cover of Crescendo.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's start with the working title. I didn't have a title nailed down until very late in the process, so the working title was AprilMay, after the two leads. At first it was going to be called Music Box but that made no sense, then One Night Only. 

I was trying for a sort of promo flyer/punk vibe.

But that too, didn't make sense because the heroines don't spend only one night or performance together. They're always together, doing press, or making appearances at parties, and so forth. Somewhere along the way I decided on Crescendo for the title. It stuck. 

Dutch Angles are all the rage.

Ok, I kind of like this! It has the indie label feel.

Then, I found that fluorescent light font

Nothing says high class like neon!

Behold! A cover for a novella. Isn't it beautiful? It would have to wait to see the world,however because by now, I was in the middle of writing Crossfade. I modeled the aesthetic of Crossfade's cover to this one. 

And then I published Crossfade and once more looked at this cover. I realized it looked like some sort of Young Adult runaway-from-home-and-became-super-heroes-or-something cover. It had to go.

Once more into the trenches of free images. Then, I found an image of a girl in a gown at a piano and it looked like it was ripped directly from a scene in Crescendo. The exact scene I used as a teaser in the back of Crossfade, to interest people into buying the book and continuing on with the series.

So, this became the final cover. 

Original image by Ashley Byrd

So, what have we learned from this dive into book cover creation for fun and profit? Same thing as always: be flexible. Sometimes going to square one is for the best.

In an era of Britneys and Christinas, 17 year old April Lee hit it big with her debut album "This Girl Punx", and the hit singles "Skid Sister" and "Confusion".
She was top of the charts and took the pop-punk world by storm. Now, at 22, she's hit rock-bottom.

May Hart is a Victorian goth fae princess. She’s all tortured wailing and flowy skirts. Snow white skin, jet black hair, ice blue-grey eyes. She’s part Ice queen, part murder of crows. As front-woman for the band Ethereal, her haunting vocals made hits out of the songs “Plastic Garden”, “The Eternal” and “Take me from Death”. Now is the time to go solo. Can she succeed? Of course she can.

When both women are tapped to record the theme-song to a new super hero movie, they begin to grow close. But the business is very two faced and both April and May carry with them dark secrets. Can they look past each other's hurt and find love and stellar careers?

CRESCENDO is part of SILVER CITY STORIES and is a first-time lesbian erotic romance intended for adults only. It deals with dark subject matter, abuse, violence and celebrates sexual expression between consenting adults.

CRESCENDO (SILVER CITY STORIES #2) is available for preorder for 2.99 USD or FREE with Kindle Unlimited