The creation of the book cover for Sister Jane by Irmgarde Brown was done in March 2021. All her life, the main character, Jane, believes she is small-town ordinary… until she isn’t. Some people brand her a witch because of the cat while others believe she has a demon. Her family thinks she’s ready for the nursing home, and the down-and-out reporter assumes she’s a fake. But nobody, including Jane, can figure out how she does it: heal the sick. All the sick. All the time. Is it a gift of God? The Church is divided. Then, everything erupts when the foreigners arrive along with the government people and the scientists. Will Jane become a pawn or save herself?
I thought about the impressions that I wanted to convey in the cover design. I assembled in my mind the location, mood, and perhaps some physical elements that are part of the story. The story takes place in a small town in the east. So, I chose the state the author is from, Maryland. Secondly. The period of the story is contemporary, but the mood and culture is that of a small town with a history and homes that are a hundred or more years old. The story had numerous visual elements to choose from.
I wanted to feature the cat and the home which conveyed the demographic and culture to be the focus on the cover. So, rather than imagine a home on a street in a small eastern town, I used the real world scrolled Google streets to go up and down residential streets of Havre de Grace Maryland until I found a house that was perfect. Below is the screen shot of the house.
I created a full color graphic of the house in digital editing software, adding and removing elements. I found a real photo of a cat and integrated it into the title to become an identifing logo for the book. The final cover seemed to work.
screen shot of Google Streets
Several of the other book covers we have designed…
