I remember in my younger days how, when reading fantasy novels, I would often turn a critical eye to the cover. Inevitably there would be a couple details that didn’t perfectly match the author’s description. Often it was an incorrect hair style, the wrong weapon, or a falsely colored dragon. I often wondered how this could happen. Didn’t the artist read the book? Didn’t the author have a say? Wouldn’t they demand a correction before publication or did they not care?

In addition to the cover art, my husband Andreas has kindly volunteered to draw 25 illustrations for The Cat in the Cradle, one for each chapter. He’s already familiar with my book so we sat down to work out some rough sketches together. I even took a red pen to these early drafts, keen to prevent the errors I was used to spotting.

The results were unexpected. Andreas keeps coming up with images much more creative than my imagination. He brings vivid life and detail to my fictional locations, much more than I originally visualized. I didn’t get exactly what I was imagining. I got something much better. It’s great! I’ve even done rewrites to incorporate some of his ideas. Below you can see a time-lapse video of Andreas drawing one of the chapter illustrations, sandwiched in between me acting all dorky over how much I love him.

Interestingly enough, there is one drawing that conflicts with what my book describes. I like what he did too much to ask him to change it and I can’t find a way to write around it. In the end I decided to keep it in there as a loving tribute to a long standing tradition.

You can see more of Andreas’ work at his web site:
http://www.andreasbell.com/