Jim Burns' concept for the cover of The Chosen
This concept was the first glimpse that I had of my first ever book cover. You can imagine my excitement. Unfortunately, I fell into 'first cover syndrome'... a condition that many new authors suffer from, apparently. This was my baby and I wanted the cover to be perfect. So I interfered... and how! Jim, to his credit, put up with endless nonsense about the exact specifications of the baran, the costumes of the Masters and a hundred and one examples of my nit-picking. Of course, if anyone had dared that kind of thing with my own work I would have gone ballistic. (In fact, I did have difficulty allowing my editor Broo Doherty to do her job, but that's another story).
I now feel that Jim's first concept was better than what we ended up with. He saw my book through his own mind's eye and I should have trusted to his vision. I hope that this is a lesson I have learned well enough never to repeat the same mistake again...