Cover Concept
For a long time before publication, the first book in the Soulmates Saga was called One Half.
Secretly, I always wanted to call the book Chasing Pavements (Adele's song of the same name is one of my favourites of all time and it sums up the main theme of the book perfectly!) but I thought that surely, someone else has already used this amazing title and enjoyed great success with it too. And would sue me if I copied their title, even though it would not be in breach of copyright law.
So I had the difficult task of finding a name that, deep down, would never feel as good as Chasing Pavements.
Luckily, I had a brain wave and thought to look through Jamie's song-titles first and foremost, and voila, One Half seemed like a good replacement. It tied in nicely with the soul mates idea that Jamie believes in, and it was the title of a song that came to him at a critical point in the story.
Below are some of the covers I designed for One Half... [There were others, very early on, but too embarassing to post]
The blue flame ties in nicely with some of the themes in the book... holding a flame/candle for someone - Jamie for Sarah, Mukti for Jamie, Henrik for Mukti...
Mukti likening Jamie's eyes to blue flames burning in the darkness...
I really liked this cover concept. Even though it's quite simple, it's striking too. But, just as the River Thames running through the Chasing Pavements cover wouldn't work with the title One Half, the title Chasing Pavements doesn't work with the blue flame idea...
When I found that Chasing Pavements had yet to be the title of a well-known or bestselling novel, I decided to grab it for my own. Therefore, the cover image had to be changed and the idea of having the shape of the River Thames running across the front just felt right. It didn't start off as this....
.... but luckily it ended up as this:
Before the professional (Peter from BespokeBookCover.com) came in and produced this in Q1 2014 and I suspect I will keep this cover for a while because it's AMAZING:
In 2016, the cover was this:
But of course, by the end of 2018, I re-branded the series, and with the new title, the book had a new cover also:
