Cover Art

I checked about 180 cover illustrations and found that every one involved a girl, mostly an underdressed girl, a few males as props only, and wondered why. The answer was obvious really. These were designed to attract men and I seem to remember it worked. Personally, I always enjoyed a good Carter Brown, whose early covers were photographs of women who lacked the sophistication of the later drawn models. Come-hither looks were the standard the artists worked to but there are a lot of girls fainting an caught by a strong silent type. I liked the covers where the girl was clearly the protagonist in the story, holding a gun and often smoking at the same time, clearly multitasking. Here are some more.

Re the girl sitting on the piano - a girl sat on my drums one time. She fell off them, and that's how it should be. Don't touch a person's musical instrument, ever.

Cover art

I like those old book covers, whether pulp, cheap romance, thriller or detective novels. The skill of the artist's was terrific and they certainly did their job of attracting attention. Here are a couple of covers I've enjoyed.

A Small Piece of Flesh and The Charm of the Unicorn are ready to buy ar www.smashwords.com

Shortly you can buy Siren, another story featuring the detectives from A Small Piece of Flesh, Leroy Henderson and Mike Chambers. Forming a new unit put together to identify and catch serial killers, their first case isn't as straightforward as they wouild have preferred.
Brooke Maguire is eliminating the people who wouldn't take her seriously when she went into business. Killing people and not leaving any trace evidence makes the Serial Killer Squad unhappy, but here's the kicker - she kills disguised as famous women so the witnesses only remember the character she plays.

A Small Piece of Flesh is now published online at www.smashwords.com.

URL is http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/169251 and at a mere US$2.99 this is real value for money. Flesh has romance, murder and mystery.