Dispatch #35: Imaginary Book Cover

Imaginary Book Cover

by Lupe Fernandez

I finished a final draft – and when I mean a final draft, I mean it could always use another look – of a YA contemporary comedy. I see the characters and the locations. I smell car exhaust and recirculated air. I hear class bells and phones ring. I touch a girl’s hand and a computer keyboard. I taste an energy drink and cheesy chips.

But I wonder what the book cover looks like?

Of course, publishers, marketing staff and sales personnel determine the face of the book cover. However that day is years and many edits away. In the meantime, I recalled an exercise I learned in a UCLA Extension writing course.

“Writers! Make Your Own Book Cover.”

Movie Poster

Say what?

The imaginary book cover will not be included in a query or cover letter. It won’t get past this blog post. But this book cover will keep my spirits up during those long months of submission, rejection and submission.

My manuscript I Was a Teenage Lawyer borrows its title from a 1957 teen/horror exploitation movie called I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring a young Michael Landon, aka Pa from the TV show Little House on the Prairie., and distributed by American International Pictures.

Wedding Photo

At a SCBWI event, I told a fellow writer about my funny title.

“You have the last name as one of AIP’s producers,” I told her.

“That was my grandfather,” she said.

In 1957, my mother, recently immigrated to the United States, saw her first American film in a theatre outside Fremont, Ohio. That film was I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

Coincidence?

Naw.

Never.

On second thought, I could use the luck.