Jay Bell Books

Brand Nude Cover Art!

Behold! The cover art for my second novel, Something Like Summer. Imagine, if you will, that you spent hours and hours working on a piece of art. You do this in your free time, since you have a fulltime job and often work ten-hour days. When you are finally done slaving over your art, some skinny bastard walks into the room, says he loves what you’ve done, and then rattles off a list of changes that need to be made. That unfortunate artist is Andreas, so please pause for a moment to appreciate the fruit of his labors, because I honestly can’t afford to pay the poor guy in anything but foot massages and inexpertly cooked meals.

The art you see above is stripped of all the usual clutter of the title, bar codes, story summary, etc. Andreas did a fantastic job of incorporating all of those elements as well, but I like being able to see the raw art. The cover, as you can tell from the wide format, is wrap around, and the feel is much different when holding a physical copy. The two characters on the front (aka the right hand side) seem as though they are just beginning their journey, while the lone figure on the back of the novel is staring off into the sunset, perhaps reflecting on the past or even dreaming of the future.

I could rant about this all day, but the bottom line is that I love it. The colors really pop on the screen, but there’s an added warmth in the printed version too. The gay genre is starting to see more and more illustrated covers, rather than clumsy stock photography mash-ups, and I’m extremely proud to add Andreas’s latest effort to the mix.

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