I‘ve actually done a cover for this story before. It was for the original, novella-length version of Playing Autumn, which was included in a limited-run romance anthology, and published as a limited-run print edition.

The new version is a novel — it’s longer and the romance is a bit steamier. So Mina asked me to do another cover that was — in her words — “spicier”.

What do you think?

Photo

We chose a photo that had the couple in a more intimate pose. Because, steamier yo. It’s like no one’s naked, but you know they’re thinking about it. Getting naked, I mean. (Either that or cake. Because that’s totally my expression when I’m thinking of cake.)

Colors

I changed the color palette, but as with the old one, the new palette features warm colors. While the old cover has a lot of orange, the new cover has orange and yellow. The story takes place in the fall, after all. I wanted to play up the story’s fangirl-fantasy-come-true aspect, so I made the title text with color gradients, and made it slightly transparent.

I didn’t want Haley’s hair to clash with the orange in the title text and the orange in her dress, so I colored it a darker red — like a sort of muted wine color. In the original stock photo, the female model is a blonde.

Finally, Mina thought the models looked too sun-kissed for our purposes, so I cooled down the color tones.

Final touches

Oliver was a pop-rock star. But it was difficult to find a photo of a rock star-looking dude who was the right age and didn’t sport facial hair. So I had to give the male model in the stock photo a shave. Sorry, dude!

(Fortunately,he had nice hair and the perfect plain white rock star shirt.)

Check out Playing Autumn on Amazon.