dgp cover love

As I've often said, one of my favorite aspects of bringing dancing girl press titles into the world is the physical design aspects.  I love taking someone else's words and making this beautiful little object, interesting both inside and out.  Sometimes I start from scratch, other times, the authors have definite ideas (or artists or designers they already know and want to involve) but some of my fave collaborations involve some back and forth, the volleying of ideas and sparks, and then eventually whittling away to something that is absolutely perfect.

One of the best recent examples was the design for Kelsea Habecker's amazing THE WALRUS WIVES that went live on the website yesterday.  I collages up the original based on the author suggestions, but we agreed it was running too pretty and romantic for the quirky strangeness of the poems inside, whereupon we solved it by add the strangeness of the satellite birds and I was so happy it turned out so awesome.

Similarly, Catherine Kyle's SAINT:  A POST-DYSTOPIAN HAGIOGRAPHY started with some discussion of her vision, but the first mockup featured a less warrior-like  character on the cover--more childlike, which we swapped out.  Terry Ann Wright's ideas for MAD HONEY noted something angry or aggressive but not romantic or pretty, but actually somehow this cover manages to be both somehow weirdly..