[This is a moan, so feel free to jump to pictures at the end]

One of the privileges of being your own publisher is being able to choose your own book cover. Over the last month I have really concentrated on this (actually since April, if I’m honest). Ignoring the Really Good Advice to pay for professional work, I have become intimate with the foibles of InDesign; my numerous attempts to create a cover now run to over 50 files.

I am exhausted and depressed, I have used up all my credit with my nearest and dearest, the garden is untended, the vegetable plot a riot of weeds and my in-tray is overflowing. Each night I have new ideas and each morning I start again expecting the perfect cover to appear under my hands. But it hasn’t, and I am now finally ready to compromise. My daughter, Amy, has produced something better than any of the ones I attempted and while I still feel, churlishly, that it is not what I had in mind, it is simple and beautiful and I need to stop NOW.

So here are a few more rejected designs (and they are not the weirdest):

That’s enough amateur graphics. Here are some lilies (smelling heavenly) and hydrangeas to finish with. Tomorrow, I will pick beans and weed the veg bed.

I’ve been Lindy Hopping this evening, so I feel more human.