Ideally, the cover of a novel will make a good first impression and pique the curiosity of potential readers. It might also telegraph the nature of the story, suggest a key conflict in it, or offer a hint about a leading character.

For the cover of my latest novel, In This Ground, a key challenge was how to convey a conflict within the main character. To give you a sense of that conflict, let me share the book’s jacket copy:

Just as his indie-rock band was poised to make it big, Ben Dirjery traded it all in for fatherhood and the stability of a job at Bolster Hill Cemetery. Now closing in on fifty, the former guitarist finds himself divorced and at loose ends, and still haunted by the tragic death of his former band’s lead singer, who is buried, literally, under Ben’s feet.

These aren’t Ben’s only troubles. A court-ordered exhumation of a nineteenth-century eccentric has protesters rallying at the cemetery’s gates. Ben’s boss is blocking his push for green burials, which he hopes to offer in time for a dear, dying friend. And a new gravedigger is pressuring Ben to bring his guitar out of the closet to accompany him at an open-mike performance.

Meanwhile, Ben’s daughter, an aspiring musician, discovers his band’s music and begins questioning a past he has tried to bury. If he can face her questions, he might finally put to rest his guilt over his band mate’s death, and bring music back into his life.”

Although Ben used to love playing the guitar, he’s given that up, having come to associate his once-deep connection to music with all that he has lost. Yet as Ben discovers over the course of the novel, old passions—and feelings of guilt—can’t be buried so easily, and ignoring them has consequences.

With Ben’s story in mind, my publisher, Laurel Dile King, and I presented the following questions to the cover designer, the talented William Boardman: (1) How might the cover suggest the conflict between Ben’s present (as a cemetery manager/gravedigger) and his past (as an avid and talented guitarist)? (2) How might the cover suggest the novel’s cemetery setting without being overly depressing?

As one idea, I suggested a cover image melding the following two photographs, with the shadow of the gravedigger replaced by the shadow of the guitarist.

 

 

 

 

 

As an alternative, I suggested a cover featuring cemetery statuary that is not completely bleak.

William came back with a few different takes on these ideas, including the first one below, which nicely conveys both the setting of the novel and the importance of music to the story. (Note that the title type is backgrounded by the shadow of a shovel, and that the “I” of the title is a microphone stand.)

Although I liked the content and composition of this cover, Laurel and I were concerned that the shovel shadow would darken the mood too much. Also, we were concerned that the microphone might not be distinguishable, especially when the cover is shrunk down to thumbnail size.

Rather than just tweak the previous cover, William went back to the drawing board and came up with an entirely new concept that, after some rounds of revisions, became our final choice. (See the second cover below.)

Laurel and I loved the way the guitar and shovel convey two key aspects of Ben’s life (as a gravedigger and former musician) and the tensions between them, and between his present and his past. This image also gets across the novel’s larger connection between the cemetery and music. (At night, Ben’s daughter hangs out in the cemetery with her band mates, just as Ben used to do.)

Laurel and I are also hoping that this cover will spark interest in potential readers who know nothing about the book—that they will be curious about the story that the title and central image hint at.

If you end up reading In This Ground and have any thoughts how well the cover does, or doesn’t, connect to the story, I’d love to hear from you.

For more details on the cover-design process, see this blog post.