Here’s another title and another take on the cover. 

The main color theme is yellow, for reasons which would be obvious upon reading the book. 

The previous cover used images of actual tribal societies. This one features a much more glamorous heroine, which, I must confess, I prefer.  🙂

I’m not completely happy with it — the bear is a bit too obscured by the title. The corn cob doll peeking out here is actually a corn husk doll, and not quite right, but the only thing I could find available in royalty free stock images.

This cover incorporates a lot of the themes: she is dancing (although I’m not sure you can tell); there’s a bear; a corn doll; and corn. Only things missing are the fae and the hunky hero. But I couldn’t fit everything.

One idea for a title was to name the series, “The Secret Society of Warrior Dancers” and each book a different term in the heroine’s rise through the ranks, so to speak. First she would be “the Initiate” then “the Serving Maiden” then “the Traveller” and so on. I think I had seven, though I’m not sure what I did with the list.

Anyhoo.

I told this title to a couple of agents, one of whom specialized in fantasy and the other who handled only literary fiction and memoirs. The fantasy agent wrinkled her nose. 

“Secret societies? Warriors? Dancers?” She shook her head. “It’s all pretty trite.”

The literary agent, however, said, “Oh really? I thought it sounded unusual and intriguing!”

Clearly, the thing to do is market my book as a memoir. *grin*

So, here you go. This is a cover which would make the book look like a respectable addition to the literary section of the bookstore.

In that spirit, I’ve mocked up a few different possible covers for Dindi — the titles, incidentally, differ as well, but it’s the same book.

Yes, this is what I’ve spent my weekend doing instead of working on Book 2. It’s okay. I’ll get back to real work tomorrow.

“What’s your idea?” I ask with great interest.

“Me idea — drive cars!”

“Wow! That’s your idea — you want to to drive cars?”

“Yes!”

My toddler, in addition to his clever ideas, also has psychic powers. In one of my writing groups, it was suggested that if we had a character with a paranormal ability, we give her some physical sensation to go along with it. Maybe every time she is about to have a vision of the future, she has a headache, for instance.

My son apparently has such an ability, 

“My tummy hurts,” he announced.  “My owwie putted me to drive cars.”

Yes, that’s right. He has a paranormal “tummy ache” which tells him when it’s time for him to play with his little Matchbox and Cars cars.