Thursday, June 9, 2011

He's not dead, but...


Artist/writer Tracy Hayes and I have been tossing around ideas for a cover for An Error in Judgment. She decided she wanted to do more of a scene from the book this time.

"Fine," I said. "Go for it."

She emailed me links to a bunch of cover styles and we narrowed it down to one we both liked. Then she asked me to help her look for some images. 

"We'd make a good cover!"

You may find this hard to believe, but artists don't work from memory.

Cats do the best job at keeping paper under control
Yeah, I know, surprised me too. (All of the above)

Anyway, she told me she was having trouble finding an image of a middle-aged dead guy, so I went to work and Googled images of sleeping men. Hey, sleeping men often look dead. Tell me I'm wrong.

[there's no picture here because, well, come on -- not cute!]

However, it soon became apparent that photographers don't go for realism. Most of the pictures I found were somewhat evenly divided between men who were horizontal and had their eyes closed, but were smiling, and nearly naked men curled up in bed with nearly naked women.

None of them looked very dead.

In fact, quite a number of them looked pretty lively. I sincerely doubt any of them were sleeping.

Then I hit the jackpot. Students asleep in a lecture hall.

Those guys looked dead.

I owe a debt of gratitude to boring professors. I think Tracy's going to use a couple of those snoring students to help concoct the cover. If not, I know how to look for images of dead guys now: Google "bored men."


8 comments:

  1. Excellent insight! It's always funny when someone snores in class. :)

    Jacquie

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  2. True, Jacquie....unless it's oneself!

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  3. Genius! I just googled "picture of student sleeping in class" (changed to that by google, which understood what I meant I guess). I found a couple of a whole class asleep! They do look like they're dead. In the case of the whole classes, like victims of a deadly gas or something.

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  4. I've done the same, and sure enough... they look like they've assumed room temperature.

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  5. It's hilarious, isn't it, Kaye? Did you Google "men sleeping" too? Ha! Not sleeping -- pretending!

    So true, William! Love that description "assumed room temperature." Excellent!!

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  6. Love it! Sleeping beauties, but are they alive? Must mention, I love the photo of you and your gorgeous horse! Arabian? Alice Lynn

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  7. I'm not sure whether to laugh or to worry about what that says about college students. I'm going with laughter...lol

    <3 Gina Blechman

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  8. Ah, yes, Alice Lynn -- "Sleeping Beauties" particularly for my purposes! Thanks for the compliment on "Eddie" -- Believe it or not, he's a Hanoverian. They don't all tend to have such handsome faces, and Eddie is very aware of his good-looks. He's an incorrigible flirt -- and he knows no one can resist him :)

    Know what you mean, Gina! I'll laugh right along with you, since I believe college students have been dozing in class for as long as there have been classes!

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