Cover versions

Here's the latest on the cover design for Jude: Level 1. I'm copying some of this from my News section, because nobody bothers to look there. And quite rightly, because I never have any news. In fact, if you've missed my news for the past few years, here it is, summarised:

NEWS 2003: Sat in cafe, drinking coffee, writing.

NEWS 2004: Sat in cafe, drinking coffee, writing.

NEWS 2005:  This year was one of almost unimaginable change. Price of coffee in cafe went up. Size and quality went down.
Changed cafe.
Sat in new cafe, writing...

Anyway, back to the cover. The publication date for Jude: Level 1 is going to be July 2nd (2007). The cover is coming along delightfully. It's being illustrated by Dan Mogford, the guy who designed the On-U Sound website, Morcheeba's The Antidote album, and the covers of lots of books for Granta and Verso and Profile.

(Er, and none of the above look anything like the cover we're coming up with for Jude: Level 1, so none of those links will help you visualise it. I just thought you might like to see some of his other work...)

Emails full of suggestions have been whizzing around between me, Dan, and Ben, my publisher at Old Street Publishing. The last one, in Ben's characteristically polite and apologetic tones, asked if Dan could possibly add a human skeleton and a naked Charles Haughey (former Taoiseach of Ireland) to the iceberg floating in the foreground of the picture. Dan replied that this was perhaps the weirdest emailed request he had ever received.

 At which point we realised we were perhaps losing it, and backed off and let Dan get on with it.