You May Not Be Able To Judge... by Betsy Ashton

... a book by its cover, but you can identify a series if the covers are done right. I love series, often reading several books in a row. Covers with a common look help me zero in on the next one.

Take a look at my friend Terry Maggert's The Fearless fantasy series. Each bookmark and cover have beautiful women and muted backgrounds. Not hard to see that he writes paranormal fantasy. Not hard to identify his books on Amazon or on a bookshelf in a bookstore as belonging to the same writer and series.

Think about the great Sue Grafton. Her Kinsey Millhone mysteries are branded with a large single letter befitting a series that began with A Is For Alibi. Small changes in variations of shading on the letters, but overall the typescript is similar. Ditto are the backgrounds similar. Bold colors with no images hidden behind under the letters. No one can pass a Sue Grafton book and wonder who wrote it or if it is part of her series.

My good buddy, Michael Murphy, writes Jake and Laura mysteries set in Hollywood's heyday. His book covers scream Hollywood noir,  whether it's Yankee Club, the first in the series, or All That Glitters. The reader knows at a glance what to expect. A hint of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett oozes from the cover and flows into the pages. (Enough of the purple prose, Ashton. Get on with the message.)

And now look at the covers my publisher pulled together for my two Mad Max mysteries. The bookmark accurately depicts two different looks. The top one, Mad Max Unintended Consequences, carries the essence of a rich woman with the little black dress and pearls. The gun warns that this has mystery elements. And the pearls and drops of blood hint at violence and, well, death. That's not a spoiler, because my publisher put, "And when her daughter is murdered" on the back cover. Bad boy!

The lower one for Uncharted Territory doesn't look like it's part of a series, other than it picks up the red lips from the first book in the red lipstick shotgun shell. Again, the shotgun warns of danger.

My publisher is excellent when it comes to working with his authors on cover designs. We tried to keep the black band in the middle with the shotgun and shell in the loser third for Uncharted Territory, but we couldn't find an evocative image for the top third. Since the book takes place in post-Katrina Mississippi, we tried images of desolation, actual photos from after the tidal surge, an Air Stream trailer, a fancy RV. All are part of the story, but the images didn't work.

With book three in progress, I wonder what we'll do for the cover. Book three takes place in a hospital. I'm thinking of a hypodermic filled with blood...

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.