Cover Evolution

A Visual Representation Of The Covers of Whiskey Witches

This was actually a lot of fun this morning. Wow! Just looking back at all of these covers! Today, I’m sharing with you the visual representation of each of these covers so you can see the evolution! And… wow!

The one thing I will say for myself is that I’m unafraid to fail.

Original

To this day, there are things I love about the original cover. I don’t have a high-res copy of it, so it’s a little fuzzy, but the artist did such an amazing job with it.

Whiskey Witches was originally written in 2005, but wasn’t published until 2012 by a small publisher that since folded.

It was originally called Demons Are Jackasses.

After the publisher went under, it took me years before I could get it back, and in order to do so, I had to change it significantly, change the name, and make it, generally, a new story. Episodic fiction was just trying to take off at the time, and I had a great idea to make this series like a TV show.

I broke Demons Are Jackasses into four episodes and extended them so each one was a complete story. The episodic style didn’t work for this story. A lot of readers were confused because this genre didn’t fit well with the approach, the covers weren’t great, and the storytelling… well, I was still young in my authoring career, so while the story was solid, the storytelling wasn’t.

Urban Evolution

The next era in Whiskey Witches was my attempt to find the urban fantasy market and hit it. I fell in with the ranks of several other authors who were making it big in paranormal romance and I tried to run with them. The covers were good, though, not great, and I was doing newsletter swaps with the types of readers who weren’t a great fit. They wanted to easy reads and Whiskey Witches was never intended to be an easy read. Not because there’s something wrong with that. There isn’t. I just can’t write it to save my freakin’ life.

DAZ Entrances

The next era involved very little story evolution, but a lot of cover evolution. I was close on the cover. I was getting the trope glow, the body positions, the typography was closer to being on par.

I was struggling with models, though. The models with a lot of shots were already on a lot of covers and I had a lot of books at this point. Shane, Alivia, and I were already wrapping up Ancients as these cover versions were rolling out, and we had a lot more books planned. I needed something I could manipulate easily.

DAZ came out about that time, and gave me access to models I could create, modify, pose, and so much more! I fell in love with the versatility.

However, I got a lot of pushback because of the “plastic” faces.

You know what? I don’t care! The faces aren’t selling these books. The concept of these covers were quite enjoyable and I really loved them. They, however, still weren’t quite getting me the attention I wanted until that third cover with Paige and Dexx.

The Era Of Frankie Jo

When I legally changed my name from Stephanie Marie to Frankie Jo, I had intended to keep my pen name the same. After all, that was my brand, and changing a brand name is harder than updating your banking information. Seriously. It is. I was locked out of my bank account for a week. I still don’t have access to some of my author site information.

The blue cover was getting me a lot of downloads, but I still wasn’t getting the read through. That’s when I knew that while the cover was finally good, the writing needed to be updated. I could cut my losses and run. My new books don’t require readers to experience the original books, but there’s a lot of story here, and I do continually point people to Whiskey Witches as the starting point.

So, with that in mind, I dug around to find some deleted scenes and crafted the idea of a Collector’s Edition.

The design of this logo was so easy. It just fell into place in a way I’ve never experienced before. Everything in the Collector’s Edition cover represents how resilient this series is, how hard working the characters are, and how soul-affirming the characters are. I had thought that would be the last and final version until I got half-way through the Kickstarter that launched it and someone asked if this was going to be available afterwards. I realized that what they were investing in needed to be one of a kind.

So, with that, I created the Author’s Edition cover. I went with something completely different. I wanted a close up of Paige. I wanted you to look her in the eye and connect with her. I love the starkness of the white cover and the contrast of the black wing. I love the duality of this cover, how the white and the black are competing with one another and being forced to share the same space.

Whiskey Witches Evolved

This has to be one of the final evolutions of this series. I’m moving on. My writing has grown so much over the past couple of decades and I absolutely love where I’m heading.

I also love the final versions of this cover and I think this is an absolutely brilliant way to bring the Origin era to an outstanding close.

Next, I’m going to share the writing evolution!