Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Deadly Row to Hoe Cover

Cricket McRae

Here’s the official cover for my sixth Home Crafting Mystery, Deadly Row to Hoe. I’m really excited about this revamp! The book will release this November.

DeadlyRowtoHoe

Looks pretty different from the previous covers in the series, doesn’t it? This is the direction all the covers will be going from now on, and the earlier books will likely change over to this illustrated style in subsequent printings.

Now don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love the wonderful photographed covers put together by Midnight Ink’s Lisa Novak. She captured the clean, spa feel I wanted for a series featuring a woman who makes her living making soap and bath products.

However, the home craft featured in in Deadly Row to Hoe is vegetable gardening, specifically a community supported agriculture farm. Another photographed cover would have probably involved vegetables, and a few people have already commented that the books look a bit like cookbooks – despite the fact that one has soap and bath oil on the cover and another is all about fiber and yarn. Granted, though, a lot of traditional colonial crafts involve food. ; )

So this illustration captures the whole farm (and even includes a mountain that looks a lot like Mt. Rainier in the background – how cool is that?).

Many thanks to Midnight Ink for making this change, and to Lisa for spearheading the mockup and finding the illustrator!

Change is good.

6 comments:

Alan Orloff said...

Excellent cover! Good luck with the book, Cricket!

Lois Winston said...

Nice cover, Cricket! Good luck with the new book.

Kathleen Ernst said...

Beautiful cover! I look forward to the next installment.

Robin Allen said...

Very nice cover and I love the title! The third book in my Poppy Markham: Culinary Cop series takes place at a CSA farm. It'll be interesting to see what MI does with that cover.

Dru said...

I love the cover and can't wait to read this book.

Cricket McRae said...

Thanks Alan, Lois and Kathleen!

Robin, how cool is that? I'm sure they'll do a great job with your cover.

Dru, thanks!