It Never Gets Old by Annette Dashofy

While I have sixteen published novels under my belt, I know we have other Writers Who Kill here who have me beat. But I think this topic rings true for all of us. Seeing our covers for the first time—whether we’ve been working with a cover artist on our own or are at the mercy of a traditional publisher’s whims—is magical, no matter how many times we’ve gone through it.

 As many of you know, I’ve been waiting for over a year to see the cover art for the third Detective Honeywell Mystery. Originally, the book was supposed to come out last December. When no cover was forthcoming even as late as November, I got a little anxious and may have been a bit demanding in an email to my publisher. Only then did I learn they’d decided to push back the release until “later in 2025.” Eventually, I was given a new date. The third book was now coming in November with the fourth one following in December. In dribs and drabs, I was informed of the titles and the back cover copy. 

And finally, I got a glimpse of the covers.

These are my seventeenth and eighteenth novels, so you’d think seeing new cover art would be old hat by now. It’s not. 

Early in my publishing career, I was always worried about what they’d look like. The email would hit my inbox, and I’d cringe. Would I love the new cover or hate it? Or maybe even worse, feel meh? Without naming names, my reactions to a lot of those early covers fit into those last two categories. 

Lately, though, I’ve been thrilled with the artwork. All four of the Detective Honeywell Mysteries are with a UK imprint of HarperCollins, and while the delays may have made me crazy, they do know how to produce gorgeous covers. All is forgiven!

 

When I first spotted The Devil Comes Calling and No Stone Left Unturned on the booksellers’ websites, I was as giddy as a kid at Christmas. Yes, there was some squealing, jumping up and down, and hand clapping. Suddenly, it felt real. 

Sidenote: This is good, considering I’m 50K words into the fifth Honeywell Mystery! Having numbers 3 and 4 solidly in the pipeline gives me motivation to finish number 5. 

Fellow Writers Who Kill, what have your cover art experiences been like? Do you still get excited when you see the next one? 

And readers, do these covers entice you to want to know more? (You can find the back cover copy on my website). It’s okay if they don’t. My skin is thick, and I know not everyone likes the same thing.