Tea at Trianon: Cover Redesign: 'The Five Year Marriage'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, October 8, 2023

Cover Redesign: 'The Five Year Marriage'

Interesting. All my books need new covers. From Booklife:

This month, Michelle Argyle at Melissa Williams Design reimagines the cover of The Five Year Marriage by indie author Annmarie Kelly. To submit a book for a free cover redesign, email us at booklifeeditor@booklife.com.

Design Note #1: The author felt the original cover was outdated. To create a more contemporary-looking cover, I decided to use an illustration, which is popular right now in publishing.

Design Note #2: Showing the characters’ faces helps make this cover feel more personal and relatable.

Design Note #3: It was fun to pull the purples into this new cover so it still feels cohesive with the old cover—often a good idea when a book has already been published for a long time, as this one has.

Design Note #4: Using a script font for the title eliminates the stiffness of the old cover, as does using a new subtitle to give a better idea of what the book contains. (Read more.)