Working on a book is long stretches of being a lonely loner followed by a sudden realisation that, oh crap, now you have to work with actual, living people!

For the independent author there are a few choices when it comes to getting a book cover, including making something yourself in something like Canva. But if you can afford to save up the cash you can work with an illustrator or graphic designer. I won't go into the details of finding someone, partly because I already knew who I wanted and partly because that feels like a topic all of its own.

​The relationship between a writer and artist is always going to be different. But I can talk through how it worked for us and what I did to try and make things easier for Rachel my cover artist. The first step was to just establish the kind of things I was a fan of. I sent Rachel a few of my favourite book covers, with the reasons why I liked them.

It felt like an old promise was finally fulfilled when Rachel George started working on the cover for The Darwin Solution for me. I've had the joy of seeing her work just get better and better (and she was pretty damn good to start with) and I am so happy that her artwork is the first thing you see when you pick up my book.

But enough gooey sentiments! Rachel George has written about the experience of designing the cover. In fact she wrote it a month ago and I'm a terrible person for taking so long to sharing it here. If you want to read that then click the image below or this link right here.