This beautiful book cover for Cairo Mon Amour has an interesting evolution. It was actually designed for a self-published edition of the book, but I offered the artwork to my publisher, who was happy to take it over.
When I first discussed the project with my designer Rachel Ainge of Tribe Creative Co, I imagined a cover that tried to tell the story. I cooked up the idea of an aerial shot of Cairo with a pair of women’s shoes (containing feet) on the ledge of a building.
Rachel took things in hand: “Don’t try to tell the story. Leave it with me.” We’d had this discussion before when I’d talked her into creating covers that told the stories of two other books of mine. They were lovely covers, but did they help to sell books? I wasn’t sure. Here they are, along with one of my crude sketches:
Rachel came back to me with the idea of branding the three books under a common theme, including new covers for the older books, and a new title for one of them.
Over to me for the theme. I thought hard about what linked the three books: A contemporary Australian political satire, a psychological drama set in England, and a thriller/romance set during the Yom Kippur War. How were they connected?
It came to me in a flash while I was walking on the beach (that’s where my most creative thinking takes place): Love, betrayal and redemption. That’s what I really write about.
This gave me a formula for uniform subtitles for the three books:
- Love, betrayal and pure theatre
- Love, betrayal and genteel crime
- Love, betrayal and espionage
Incidentally it gave me my elevator pitch: Stuart Campbell writes quirky novels about love, betrayal and redemption.
Next, Rachel asked me for an iconic scene for each book. “I’ll give you the blockbuster treatment – a big dramatic sky and characters looking into their destiny,” she said. I came up with Martin Mooney looking at the distant mountains, Jack Walsingham approaching a rural cottage, and Pierre Farag and Mark Bellamy riding towards the Pyramids. This is what I got:
And I’m very happy with the result!
Cairo Mon Amour will be published in late June 2017 by Austin Macauley Publishers, an independent trade publisher with headquarters in London and New York.
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Stuart Campbell author 