COVER INTERVIEW & GIVEAWAY with Elyssa Patrick

I’m so excited to be back at the blog today for a special interview between Elyssa Patrick and myself. You must be wondering why is Lou involved in this interview? Good friend and super-talented author, Elyssa Patrick, gave me the honours to design the cover for her first NA debut, Stay With Me.

New Adult/Contemporary Romance – recommended for ages 17 and up.
With one look, I’m his . . .

With one touch, he’s mine . . .

With one kiss, it changes everything between us . . .

I’ve been famous since I can remember. Singing, acting, dancing—I’ve done it all. The tabloids cover my every move, but I don’t want that anymore. I want to be normal, whatever that is.

When I leave Hollywood for college in Vermont, I’m on my own for the first time in my life. This is my chance to figure out who I am and what I want in life.

But it’s a lot harder than I expected. I can’t escape my image. Classes are difficult, and I’m struggling. And then there’s Caleb Fox.

Sexy, intriguing Caleb Fox.

Caleb is the one man who doesn’t want to use me. He breaks down my walls. He challenges me. He wants me. And I just don’t know if I can give him the same—or if he’ll stick around when he finds out my shameful secret that the tabloids haven’t managed to uncover.

Dating him is risky enough, but loving him could break me.

Lou: The New Adult genre has kicked off a publishing storm with NA books releasing frequently each week and month. With so many covers out there, we both know it’s really important to have a cover that stands out amongst the rest. What were you initial ideas for a cover for Stay With Me?

Elyssa: Covers are definitely important. I wanted a cover that was eye-catching and something very evocative–where if you saw it, you’d want to click and (hopefully) buy it on cover alone. I wanted it to stand out and pop in varying sizes. At first, I was aiming for a clinch cover, as most NAs tend to have a girl with guy pose and I also wanted to convey that STAY WITH ME is sexy. And the original cover was a clinch cover, but a few things happened that made me switch covers. So when I looked for a new image I wanted something that would fit with the other images I’d found for the rest of the series and would also show Hailey was a musician. Luckily, I found the perfect image.

Lou: The original cover was most definitely a sexy cover, and I really liked it. I suggested to Elyssa to change the original cover because it had been used by someone else, and Elyssa then decided she wanted to brand the series with the other covers featuring a girl. And you found the perfect image!

Elyssa: I LOVE the image so much. It’s totally Hailey. And I was so happy and thrilled with Lou’s design. The fonts were difficult! My instructions were that I wanted something simple and classic, and easily readable for font. Lou showed me some fonts, and I would say, no, that looks too curly to me or no, I don’t like that. Lou eventually found this other amazing font for title and author name that we ended up using.

Lou: Finding a great font is not exactly hard but it’s time consuming. There are so many available and whilst some fonts look very similar, if you take a closer look, they are quite different. We decided on sans-serif because Elyssa wanted a clean font that could be read in thumbnail size. And getting a font that can be easily read is most definitely important, especially as your author name is your brand.

Elyssa: Yes, I kept thinking what Bella Andre, Courtney Milan, and others have suggested in various articles–that the author name should stand out. I think the first few times with the cover, my suggestions were always, let’s just make my name a little bit bigger.  And then we debated whether or not to bold the A With Me novel line, but decided against the bold. Lou even lightened the area around the title so that the title would pop more.

Lou: Sometimes big fonts do work, like Collen’s Hoover’s covers which feature a large condensed font that’s super tall. There was a lot of tweaking with this cover and whilst what Elyssa described above are small details, they do make such a difference.

This was such a learning experience for me, and Elyssa was great to work for. She knew what she wanted which made everything so much more productive and easier.

Elyssa: Aw, you made it lots of fun and super easy. Lou would ask me what i wanted and I would be so helpful and just say, I want it to look pretty. lol I can’t even begin to express how awesome I think Lou is–and it all started because I’d shown a cover to Lou I had mocked up and Lou offered to make it better. I jumped all over that offer and totally owe Lou many, many, many drinks and cupcakes. She totally blew me away!

Lou: *TAKES ALL TEH CUPCAKES* Elyssa knew what she wanted and she wasn’t afraid in saying what she liked and didn’t like, and that was incredibly important. It was a fantastic experience for the both of us, and Elyssa is already planning on ideas for the rest of the covers for the WITH ME series.

I’ve seen some images and they’ll rock all your socks off.

Elyssa: I can’t wait for the other covers to be designed!

Thanks so much, Lou and the rest of the Bookpushers, for having me on! I’m going to give away 5 digital copies of STAY WITH ME.

***All you have to do to enter the giveaway is just comment below.