Gotta say, it’s a blast coming up with the ideas for covers for The List. This particular effort for Vol III had to be dredged up from the darkest corners of my mind (there are many light places too - I’m a sucker for a sad song and…I will admit…I cried watching The Notebook. Tell anyone and I’ll kills ya!).

As with Vol II, this cover is being illustrated by Wayne Nichols, so it’s bound to be a cracker. Wayne will also be redoing the cover for Vol 1. I love Tom Bonin’s angel pic, but I want to keep the style of the covers consistent. Vol 4 (the last in the series) is a while away yet, but I have already a few ideas for that one.

So, after sending my design idea to the esteemed Mr. Nichols, he came back with this thumb:

Now, the problem we had was that the Mother figure (on the bed) is naked, but you could hardly have that on a cover without it being stuffed behind the counter (sure, you can have two people about to murder another, but an actual naked human body?! No way!). I suggested that we have the Son (figure on the left) moved toward the foot of the bed, and the Father (on the right) moved toward the bedhead so that their shadows could cover Mum’s rude bits.

Wayne tried that, but the light source didn’t work. I then suggested that, due to this being a ritual of sacrifice (those who have read The List will know that the Mother is known as ‘The Sacrifice’ in the story), we could put some candelabras on either side of the room to both enhance atmosphere and give us our legit light, but it just didn’t quite work (the candelabras were included anyway for effect). It was only when Wayne came back with the idea of having the Angel cast his shadow across the Mother that we had our solution. Hence:

Oh what a joyous family occasion!

The Angel looks like one bad mofo, and Wayne’s inclusion of the family happy snap on the wall (obviously taken prior to The List coming into their lives) is a particularly nice touch:

The cover will be completed - basically just extra detail and colours to go in about a fortnight’s time.

Cheers,

Paul.