What Shelf Monkey might have looked like.

When Shelf Monkey was first being prepped for publication, I and my editor worked with a graphic design artist named David Gee on the sterling cover you see to the right. David had prepared a number of choices based on his reading of the text, but due to his wanting to keep the discarded notions for other possible projects, the alternative covers to Shelf Monkey have never been revealed to the general public.

Until now.

David has placed a number of his designs up on his blog David Gee Works on Paper, so I assume that the public can now get a ganderful of what Shelf Monkey might have been. And so I present, Shelf Monkey Alternative Cover #1:

This was David's idea of using the novels obsession with the blurbing of other novels to its advantage, littering the cover (front and back, although only front picture here) with imagined plaudits. It looked terrific, especially when all glossed up, but we felt the presentation on the whole was a tad overwhelming. Sure was nice to see my name on the front cover though. As well as the word 'probing', which for some reason made me giggle.

See David's other choices here, as well as designs for other books he currently has contracts for.

Thanks, David, for all your hard work. I know from talking to other authors how rare it is to have a designer actually read the work beforehand. You went above and beyond.