This is it – the big moment! Without further ado I’d like to present the cover for the first in the Flora Lively series of cozy mysteries (drum roll, please) …

Flora Lively cover

Thanks to Chris Howard, who has worked really hard meeting my brief for this. If he had a website I’d link to it, but he’s too busy designing to sort out his own website! My brief was to have a cover concept that can easily be replicated for each in the series, which wasn’t too ‘dark’ (it’s a cozy mystery, not a thriller), and that reflected the contemporary feel of the book and was young and funky-looking, like Flora herself.

I love, love, love what he’s come up with. For future books the colour palette can change, with a different silhouette and ghosted image, and of course a different number on top of the flower. The tree with the swing, and Otto the pug, are key elements in Book 1, and I wanted to keep with the tradition of cozy covers containing clues to what’s in the book, without going to detailed or literal. The most important thing was to get across that Flora is a young, contemporary heroine, and I think this cover does that perfectly. And with ‘Murder’ so prominent in the title, it’s pretty obvious what genre it’s in.

So, what do you think? I’m working hard on the blurb now – sometimes the blurb is harder to write than the book! – and I’m on schedule to launch in early September.

Related articles