Cover Art for Invisible: À Perte de Vue
by Claire Hand
In 2013, I created the cover art for and edited my husband’s contemporary spy novel, Invisible: À Perte de Vue. The book is available in the UNLV Wiener-Rogers Law Library’s popular collection, and an excerpt can be viewed at Harvard.com.
My inspiration for the cover art was to depict a scene in the novel where the hero reflects on a major event in the story. Because I knew the story, I wanted to bring it to life visually through photography. After thinking about possible images, this one with Libertaire gazing out the window not only mirrored the scene well but also captures a quality of the character. (Of course, you will have to read the book to understand my meaning.) The author, P. W. Hand, is portraying Libertaire in the front cover and is shown on the back cover.
I must say that working on this project with my husband was a labor of love. I found it easy to put my all into the project because I wanted it to be a success; I also learned that brainstorming, feedback, patience, and compromise are just as important when working with family as when working for an employer. In a nutshell, understanding the author’s vision and planning realistic project goals are keys to successful collaborative work.
Claire L. Hand is an MLIS student at San Jose State University and plans to graduate in December 2014. Her career interests are academic and instructional librarianship and cataloging. She is originally from Pennsylvania, but she lived in Honolulu, Hawaii for some years, and now lives in Henderson, Nevada. She has been managing the interlibrary loan service at the Wiener-Rogers Law Library since 2005. When she is not working or studying, she plays golf, plays the piano, crochets, watches old movies and baseball games, bakes artisan bread, researches her family genealogy with her sister, and hangs out with her husband and two French mastiffs. In 2012, she received the AALL George A. Strait Minority Scholarship and the LexisNexis /John R. Johnson Memorial Scholarship. Check out the following links to Claire’s work:
Booktalks
Malawi Series
Online Course Curriculum Webquests
Booktalking for Librarians Webquest
Shared Leadership for College Student Webquest
Technology and Leadership Podcast
Managing Technology through Eleadership for Library Management
WorldCat Instructional Screencast
Searching for Online Articles with WorldCat