Picking the cover for Finding Love’s Way was the hardest decision I’ve had to make yet. I was stuck between two options: a brown one with beige lettering and a beige one with brown lettering. They both fit different aspects of the book and I loved them both for different reasons. Hoping for clarification, I asked my editors and several friends. They were pretty evenly divided themselves though they said either one would be great. How on earth was I supposed to choose between the two?
The answer came from an unexpected quarter. I was at our local Saturday market talking with a vendor I know when the man from the next booth commented that the brown cover represented the earth and the beige cover represented the divine. As the point of my book is the underlying connection of divine love we all share, I thought the beige cover would better represent this message than the brown one. What tipped the scales, though, is a fact I had not even thought to share with my editors: Finding Love’s Way has a twin, a poetry book exploring the idea of wisdom. I started writing it near the tail end of writing Finding Love’s Way and they go together as a pair. While the book on love brings our earthly experience to a divine plane, the wisdom book brings the divine ideal into the here and now. Thus, the brown cover is for the wisdom book and the beige cover is for the love book. This feels right to me.
Though it’s a wrench giving up my idea of a soft brown cover for this one, an image I’ve carried for nearly a year and one many people loved, I know it’s the right decision, especially as it concerns the wisdom book I’m now working on and, after all, I’ll have that soft brown cover eventually and get to use the beige one now. Sometimes we have to let ourselves give up an idea to hold a better truth.
Even though the decision is made and I’ve designed new business cards and bookmarks to go with the new beige cover, I’ve still sent them both to the printer for proofs just to be sure the colors look right and to confirm my choice. It will be a beautiful book—I love the contrast of the dark brown on the beige, how filled with light the image is, and it will be soft and velvety to the touch. I’m also more excited to write the one on wisdom, now that I have a sense of what the book will look like.
When adding the new cover to a picture of all the books I’ve written thus far (this is number five), I felt like I was introducing a new sibling to my growing family. I’m looking forward to introducing Finding Love’s Way to you as well.
