Every time I see the cover for my debut novel, The Fraud Squad, a thrill runs through my heart. I don’t think I can ever get over how beautiful it is and what a brilliant job my publisher and artist did. And now I’m sharing the entire process of how this cover came to be–from the inspirations to the first draft and all the changes in between until we got to what you see above.
I went trawling through my inbox and was surprised that the cover conversation began as early as last October. My editor asked for a list of ideas or just things I wanted to see in the cover. And if you know me well, you would know that I am a highly un-visual author. Unlike some friends who have a super clear image of what their characters look like and their fashion aesthetic, my characters exist as hazy blobs in my mind until I’m revising my book and am forced to come up with some physical descriptor for what they look like. When people ask me who I envision playing my characters in a film, I panic because I genuinely don’t know what to say beyond… “Asian”. All that which is to say, I had zero ideas. But somehow, I cobbled together a list:
- Something gold and/or shimmery (jewels? 🙂 )
- If we are featuring people on the cover, I would prefer art depictions (as opposed to real people)
- Would prefer if it’s not just Sam and Tim on the cover since ‘Squad’ implies >2 people –> maybe have Sam, Tim, and Anya on the cover, with the latter two in the background?
- Convey sense of mystery (‘Fraud’) –> woman wearing sunglasses; backshot of woman wearing low-back gown; woman with upper part of face hidden; silhouette of woman with glam scene within silhouette
- For people, would prefer if they are not drawn in anime style
- Magazine cover on the cover? I
- f we aren’t featuring people on the cover, I would prefer if we have an eye-catching icon on the cover (e.g the red heel on the cover of The Devil Wears Prada).
- Here are some of the places featured in the book in case the artist wants to depict a location: Ce La Vi bar, Atlas Bar, St Regis Hotel’s John Jacobs Ballroom, Marina Bay Sands
I know some of the above sound pretty confusing, but I did attach reference images. 😀 In hindsight, it’s pretty funny to see which of those ideas made it into the final cover!
Over the next few weeks, my editor and I went back-and-forth about the typography, color palette, art style, and character descriptions. I also revealed to her the real people whom I based my characters on… (which I shall never reveal publicly because I don’t want to be sued :)) Based on our discussion, she then suggested a few illustrators whose styles fit the vibe of my book, and one of them was Natalie Shaw, whose art style I gravitated towards immediately. I was so thrilled when we managed to get her as my cover artist!
And in mid-November, something super exciting landed in my inbox: the cover sketch for THE FRAUD SQUAD! That was a major moment for me. Even though it was just a loose black-and-white rendering, it was still my first time seeing my characters fleshed out. At that time, I was still doing developmental edits and very far away from having my book out in print (or even having the content finalized), but suddenly, with this sketch, everything seemed so much more real.
Honestly, I felt like even this first draft was better than anything I could have imagined for my own book. My editor was amazing at creating a safe space where I felt comfortable voicing out any concerns, no matter how small. Now that Natalie had provided a visual base, I was able to pinpoint specific areas I’d like to tweak, and we played around with a few different renditions over the next couple of weeks. It was really important to hammer out the details at that stage before the cover was colored, because making any changes after that would be much more of a hassle.
On Jan 4, the first work day of the year, my editor sent over the full-color cover options. Friends, I almost combusted with excitement. The colors elevated everything to a whole new level that just blew my mind. Here are the two options I was presented with:
The colors are STUNNING. And that twinkly Singapore skyline in the background—I’m so in love with it. I just couldn’t decide between the two, so I turned to my fellow Berkley authors and my friends for help. Pretty much everyone agreed the gold font was the way to go—and I’m so happy I went with that because the gold is something many people have told me they loved. 🙂 But it was much harder to choose between the cool tones of Option 1 (left image) and the warm tones of Option 2.
However, my editor managed to get a third option whipped up, one with a color tone that fell somewhere between the two—and that was the one we ended up going with!
We made a few more tweaks: reducing Sam’s cleavage (lol), changing Tim’s jacket color so that the trio’s outfit palette was more cohesive, and so on. But those changes were really minor and two weeks later, we finalized the cover!!!
(Yes, I had to wait five whole months before I could reveal it… I was bursting with impatience haha.)
All in all, my cover creation process was really so smooth and straightforward because I had a wonderful team, who had incredible ideas but were also very receptive to mine. I’m so grateful to the artist Natalie Shaw and my amazing publisher for making this all possible, especially my editor Angela Kim and art director Vi-An Nguyen. My agent was also great at letting me bounce ideas off her and giving a calm secondary opinion whenever I’d been staring at the cover so much that I was beginning to go cross-eyed. I got very lucky. 😊
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