Cover Stories: Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

This week, Antony John (whose first novel, Busted: Confessions of an Accidental Player shares a cover model with Siobhan Vivian's second book) is here to talk about his new release, Five Flavors of Dumb. It has an epic cover, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm also reading it and loooving the book.

Here's Antony!

"Believe it or not, as I was writing DUMB I didn't have a clue what the cover would look like. I'm sure that's quite unusual, but I simply couldn't imagine a design that would capture the essence and attitude of the novel without looking seriously weird. I mean, the book touches on everything from deafness to rock 'n' roll to family relationships to coll

ege funds to secret crushes to self-identity and, uh... chess. What cover could possibly hope to encompass all of that, right? So I just gave up thinking about it altogether. Looking back, it was kind of nice not to have to worry about the cover as well as every other aspect of the novel.

"Of course, the flip side of having ZERO input is that I had no clue what the finished cover would look like. My editor, Liz Waniewski, emailed it to me last November, just as friends were arriving, so I got to open it in front of them. Trust me: I wasn't the only one who used a really good expletive to describe it. Then I forwarded it to my wife (even though I wasn't supposed to; I just couldn't resist, you know?) and she wrote back within about seven seconds with a similarly giddy response. Seriously, it was just one of those 'THEY NAILED IT!' moments that you dream about as an author...."

Read the rest of Antony's Cover Story, and see earlier versions, at melissacwalker.com.