How My Book Cover Found Me: Trusting Art, Design, and the Right People

How My Book Cover Found Me: Trusting Art, Design, and the Right People

In London, Les and Emma picked us up in this batmobile type of car. Getting into their space felt like instant shelter and care. That’s the only way I can describe it. They cooked us the most beautiful vegetarian lunch and taught me about Elderflower syrup in soda stream soda. And this poster on the left was hanging in their fancy dining room. The photo on the right is from their 60th birthday party invitation that's happening next month. I think it's a smashing photo and emulates them so beautifully.  

        

They also introduced us to their calico cats Chili and Pepper and all of Les’s bikes. I nicknamed him Uncle Fun after the vintage Chicago toy store. All of the masterful artists keep their childlike nature. Emma taught me that elk shed their horns in the first few minutes I sat with her (In front of elk horns that she had found while shooting in the park. Photos not animals.) 

A year later, on a video screen from 5,400 away “Ah, the cover, I’ll absorb that.” 

Humbly, he’s one of the best designers on the current planet. So as he told me that, I stopped breathing. Afraid that if I inhaled and the moment changed, he might change his mind.  

“Are you- Are you serious?” I stuttered.

“Yep.” 

Emma put so much heart, curves and color into this. There needed to be a woman involved. None of that felt real. But for years their minds and talent have stretched around the planet and made time for me, my husband, and our overall success. So here we were again. The social worker in MOXY is named after Emma, of course. 

I’ve always struggled with design - mostly because it’s mortifying for me to say I want to change work that’s been created specifically for me. I sent a vision board -  all pink, glitter, Chappel Roan, Edie Sedgwick, Stevie Nicks, sequins and starbursts. The brief:

 “Really fucking pink.” 

Also that week I was sending Les a brief for the Volta House Marque. Volta House is my publishing company. In the future, it will be a company that publishes women's extraordinary experiences of survival, success, and community. But one thing at a time, as I’m not sure I’ve sat down for over three minutes at a time in a few months. (Except for my 3-hour flight delay on the tarmac last week.)

I had a specific necklace from Egypt that I wanted the marque to resemble, so I turned my house upside down trying to find it with no success. Instead, I sent a photo of myself from an old branding shoot wearing the necklace. 

Les and Emma walked me through the initial designs for the book cover. They were exactly what I asked for - really fucking pink, and sparkly. I was like, “WOW” these are so beautiful. 

     

Concise in the magic but light and easy to consume. Everything I’ve always wanted to seem to be. I could instantly see them as those big cardboard cutouts at the movie theater. But there’s a difference between “like everything else, catchy and great” and capturing the voice of your life experience in one image and font. Who tf can actually do that? Les and Emma Hughes, that's who. 

If you’ve read or are reading MOXY, you know “like everything else and great” is not this story. It took a lot of horror and pain to become a glittering orb. Or at least give off the aura of one. 

Flipping the page, they had a handful of different covers, using the photo with the necklace I randomly sent. The text was crooked and messy. All sharp edges and dark gray chaos. I couldn’t stop looking at that cover, because I couldn’t figure out what it made me feel. It was my body, my necklace (which has a lore of its own, for another time) the remnants of the art covering my utility work suit. 

“I would never put out a book cover with my cleavage showing. Absolutely not. I don’t even practice or teach yoga in a 110-degree room with those parts of my body showing.” - Me. “Of course,” said everyone else. 

But the more I flipped through the cover files, the more I knew that had to be the cover. So much of this book is about moving through the process of owning my body instead of only hating, using, and hiding it. So much of my life has been about appearances - making everything sparkly, magic, and attractive. I'm too focused on creating authentic work to waste energy on anything that contradicts it. "It's your superhero origin story cover. It's true art." my cousin said.

The book cover perfectly emulates not just my voice but the story my voice tells, and it takes a brilliant talent, career, mind, and heart to understand that, let alone make it come across in a way that appears effortless. Especially when your brief is pop singers and glitter. I’m still moderately dumbfounded that they snuck this cover in - completely different from anything I imagined or asked for - and it's perfect. 

They found the sharp edges. The darkness. The skin that shows through, and the way that today showing my skin is power through wisdom and vulnerability, not power through exploitation. The mess of paint, because ultimately every painting I make is a shadow that I’ve flipped from isolation to communication - to light. And of course, the upside-down pyramid necklace - symbolically flipping the hierarchy, transformation, and opposition to traditional structures. Because according to traditional structures, I should have been dead in a ditch twenty years ago. Or at least shamed into silence and servitude, certainly not saying this story out loud with my whole chest, and heaven forbid, my skin showing. 

I still have no idea what I’m doing, but the best possible people keep appearing to make stuff with me as we figure it out together. Thank you for making Moxy MOXY with immense love, talent, and care.  You have my deepest gratitude. 

                             

 

Back to blog

1 comment

Jump, and the right people appear.
Who knew! But it just keeps happening, often, and timely.

Kevin

Leave a comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.