Let’s say that they’ve turned your story into a book, a lovely biography, the one of the season, the one everyone is reading. How would you like to appear on the cover? You can take great poetic license with it.
Me: it would be a black-and-white photograph of myself, wading through the White River. I’d wear cut-offs and a tank top. My hair would be pulled back into a lazy, messy ponytail. The river would be crystal clear, as usual, and the trees would be in full-throttle bloom.
I guess I could stand to have that kind of photo represent me for all eternity. Either that, or I’d like a serious painting - Rubenesque, if you will. Hey, it’s my cover.
Never mind the details of the book. This is your cover art. Design it as you like.
Sometimes, I’m leaning toward a photo of me behind my big mahogany desk. I’d be tilted back in my swivel chair with my hands clasped back behind my head, a la Lee Iacocca on the cover of his autobiography.
But I also like the idea of a simple photo of me leaning against the front of a '66 Eldorado convertible on the Las Vegas Strip, dressed in a polo shirt, slacks and a windbreaker. The sun will be setting over my shoulder and the photographer will pick up the swirling interplay of purple, orange and red that makes up the early evening sky.
Or maybe just a simple picture of me dressed in a suit at the press conference where I announce my complete innocence shortly before I stealthily fly off to Montevideo in a LearJet stuffed with suitcases full of diamonds and huge piles of cash.
Well, if I get to design it the way I’d like my life to be,
My buff, tan and athletic (and very studly) body would be pictured reclining in a deck chair on the deck (teak of course) of my 65’ sailboat, with a shot of a tropical harbor as a backdrop. (Tahiti would do.)
If this book cover were to accurately reflect my life however,
It’d be a view of a bathroom stall, with the door just thrown open, to reveal Willford Brimley sitting on the commode with a look of wide-eyed terror.
Though that book has already been written and it’s not about me. I’d change it up a little bit and add a map of the world and be riding my motorcycle and not that but you get the idea.
I wrote a series of semi-autobiographical novels covering a semi-autobiographical pseudonymous character from age 16 to 40. Most of the cover candidates were utter pablum, but I fought hard for this one (and lost). I felt it addressed the very root of what it means to be sixteen, but no one seemed to agree.
