Debbie Bennett's Cover Story

2011 version

I first wrote Edge of Dreams way, way back. It was probably my third completed novel and the first that was realistically worth carrying on with! I think I posted a couple of months ago about my first novel I hand-wrote as a teenager? After that I wrote an otherworld fantasy that was also pretty dire (but again, I got to the end) and I can’t even find the dot-matrix print out or the old computer files, which were pre-Word and would probably be unreadable anyway. 

So Edge wasn’t too bad. And I know i posted about the motivational aspect of this book a coupe of months ago too, but stick with me - this isn't a complete regurgitation. I sat on it for a long time while life happened, then dusted it off and rewrote it a few times. This was the first novel I submitted to traditional publishers (indie publishing wasn’t a thing back then), and it did almost get picked up by Chicken House, failing at the last hurdle of the Acquisitions meeting. Still, it gave me a little confidence as I stuffed it back in its subdirectory and moved on to other things, as we did back then. 

2026 version

Roll on 2011. My dad bought me a kindle and I was one of the early adopters of KDP and indie publishing. First was a collection of shorts Maniac and Other Stories, the contents of which had mostly all already earned their keep in magazines and anthologies. Then I self-published Edge of Dreams as an ebook. I’d been introduced to my awesome cover designer JT by then and he did a cover for me and that was that. I started writing a sequel Flashpoint, but as time passed, I got more into crime writing. 

Fifteen years (and 6 crime novels) later … 

I finally got the kick up the backside I needed to put out a paperback of Edge of Dreams and finish Flashpoint. But it’s been so long that JT couldn’t find the original ebook cover file, so he kindly sorted me a new updated version, plus the paperback wrap. I wrote another 15k words to finish Flashpoint, then did a major edit/rewrite and got JT to do the cover for that too. 

The sequel

But I’m aware I’m breaking the rules a little. I always tell people to check out the top 10 or 20 books on Amazon for current genre trends and I’m not sure either Edge or Flashpoint fit the niche exactly – YA contemporary fantasy with no werewolves, zombies, vampires or faeries. There is absolute minimal romance. Closest would be urban fantasy, but it’s not that either. It doesn't really have its own niche that I'm aware of? Maybe I’m creating my own micro-niche with some spot-on branding on covers that are just a little bit … different! But I love them. I lover the way the typography works with the title. I wanted Flash to be a little darker in nature than Edge, because it's a darker story, or at least a story which covers darker issues, although it's still just about young adult in tone, but you can tell I wrote crime in between!

And while we’re talking about covers, let me talk about the dreaded AI. Generative AI that is. Now, it’s been done to death on social media and blogs and so many authors are getting roasted for AI-generated covers – and no, it’s not difficult to tell. But I want to just mention the authors that put up their AI covers for 'critique' and claim they want to get it right, so they can pass it to a ‘real’ designer to show what they want. 

Really? I’m a writer – I write. My designer designs – he doesn’t copy my design. It’s his job to understand how to interpret my brief (usually the blurb, a few ideas, maybe some links to images or covers that inspire me) and turn it into something where the typography works with the images into a cohesive design. That’s his skillset, not mine. And he’s way better at it than me!

www.debbiebennett.co.uk