by I know… bit of a weird title but that is pretty much what happened. There’s no doubt that after months of writing and editing, one of the highlights is to see the cover for the first time and for those in the know, I am bat-shit crazy about the first two in the DI Natalie Ward series. Both were accompanied by noisy squeals and yelps of delight as I downloaded them and poor Mr Grumpy found my phone shoved up against his face – even when he was trying to fix the car – with me squeaking, ‘Look, isn’t it fab?’
When the cover for THE DARE arrived, I was balanced on my stability ball on a video call to Kim Nash, our PR extraordinaire, discussing publicity for the book’s release in April. She stopped speaking in mid-sentence then said … ‘Check your email.’
‘What? Now?’
‘Yes… go on… check it?’
I attempted to navigate from the video screen to my email account. I’m not very good with technical stuff and I lost Kim completely when suddenly the screen filled with the new cover.
My jaw dropped and stayed dangling for the longest minute. I think I said something along the lines of, ‘Holy cow… oh my… oh my.. oh… It’s phenomenal! Oh… my lord… it’s gorgeous!’ and then went slightly ballistic, bouncing up and down on my ball and performing a weird victory dance that involved a sort of heavy metal head banging ritual and pogoing.
Kim’s voice penetrated my manic activity .’You like it?’ I’d momentarily completely forgotten she was hanging on to hear my reaction.
I found the appropriate key on my keyboard to make the cover disappear and bring her back into view on my screen. ‘It’s fantastic,’ I replied, flattening my hair that had become dishevelled in the mad outburst.
‘I’m just going to email Lydia (my editor) with your reaction,’ she replied.
‘Yes… tell her I liked it.’
‘I can do better than that. I videoed the whole thing. I’m just going to send it to her…’
‘NO!’
‘…Now… Ha! Done!’
She played back the video so I could see what I looked like – a mixture of Animal from the Muppets and a crazed Tigger from ‘Winnie the Pooh’. Embarrassing. Deeply embarrassing.
It is an incredibly exciting moment when you see your cover for the first time, but next time, I’m going to make sure I’m locked away in my garret and no one can observe my reaction.
Suffice to say, the video has been deleted and Kim has gone on holiday with the payment I made. (LOL)
So… what caused such a lunacy?
This….
It’s pretty stunning, isn’t it?
You can pre-order the book now and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Carol Wyer - Author 
Leave a Reply