I was so sure I'd done a newsletter with the progression photos of the cover for Believe in Me, but if I did, I sure can't find it now.

So, dear readers, please enjoy, and keep reading to the end for the SURPRISE THING.

***

We've all seen the paper moon photographs of auld lang syne (and perhaps also the great 1973 film Paper Moon):

I haven't found any definitive origin of Paper Moon As Photo Prop, but I have found an example as far back as the 1890s:

And in 1909 Nelson Eddy posed by one:

If this one looks familiar to any of my readers, there's a reason for that:

Because it became the base for this interior illustration from the paperback of Believe in Me (and possibly also the ebook? I can't remember):

The practise of using a paper moon prop in photography was widespread enough for long enough that Cliff Edwards' song It's Only a Paper Moon, the recording of which released in October of 1933, would have been using metaphors that everyone could relate to, if they'd been to their local photography studio or were sent photos by others who had.

​

(You'll recognise Edwards' voice as that of a certain animated cricket who recommended wishing on stars not many years later.)

Believe in Me is the only book I've written whose title existed before I began writing, and it's absolutely because of the song. "It wouldn't be make-believe, if you believed in me." In the book, George buys the record, and the thread of belief or disbelief when a victim has something to say runs through the whole book.

So, because of the song and because the era in which Believe in Me is set, I needed to incorporate the paper moon into the cover art, and - believe it or not - I designed the original mockup of the cover BEFORE I adopted the silhouette designs for books 1 and 2!

Here's my initial sketch:

Here's a separate sketch trying to determine how George and Louise would be sitting on the moon:

And then I went into Procreate and painted this:

Now, time went by, and I set this project aside to get books 1 and 2 out, and sort of forgot about it. When I designed The Summer I Found Home's cover, I drew inspiration from a paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, since that book had a strong influence on the structure and some themes in my work. It's a composite of several silhouettes that I drew (plus the hand-lettered title), scanned, and arranged until I was happy with them.

When it came time to make the cover for Shadows From the Sky, I took a slightly different approach and printed out one of the interior illustrations and filled it in as a silhouette:

I made a few alterations for silhouette clarity (and added Lindbergh the dog, since Peach the dog was on book 1).

So when it came time to finalise a cover for book 3, I pulled out that dusty old Procreate file and looked at it and thought several things.

First, George's book was blue and Louise's was yellow. I wanted to combine the blue and yellow in book 3. (And yes, I colour-sampled to make sure they were the identical shades.)

Second, on both books 1 and 2, Louise and George are looking in the same direction - at the road ahead on TSIFH, and up at the Spirit of St Louis on SFTS. So for book three, I decided they'd done enough looking outward together in the same direction already and needed a healthy dose of gazing at each other, and changed their pose on the moon accordingly.

I also changed their clothes. You can't really tell in a silhouette, of course, but instead of either the outfits they wear in my original sketch or the ones they wear in the interior illustration, Louise has on her wedding dress, and instead of the plane from the Procreate mockup (which I think may have been a Lockheed Vega, but perhaps someone with Plane Autism can correct me on that, as my aircraft identification skills are rubbish), I changed it to be Asterope, Louise's Taylor J-2 Cub.

And, finally, I opted not to include any extra pets or people on book 3, although it wasn't completely off the table as a consideration.

I hope that was a fun little excursion into my process!

Now, for the SURPRISE THING.

I have ordered a giant stack of 4x6" postcards of our favourite aviatrix in The Blue Dress, and they are GORGEOUS.

And you can have one! Just tell me where to send it, and I'll write something absolutely random on the back and mail it to you. I just am so thankful you're all here reading this and want to share something with you in appreciation!

(Note: If you're reading this via the public newsletter page where there's not a comment option, just email your mailing address to eva@evaseyler.com and put "Louise postcard" somewhere in there so I know what it's regarding!)

Until next time (and go preorder the audiobook if you haven't yet! ONE WEEK YAY!) -

Eva