The Dead House Book Cover

This is the second book cover I created for the series of middle-grade books called Blackwater Novels. (You can read about my first cover for the series here.) The series is set in the south during the 1930's. In The Dead House, Rad lives a mostly carefree life of fishing, camping, and comic books - but the abandoned house downriver has been giving him strange nightmares.

When I asked author Allen Johnson Jr. what he wanted for the cover, he suggested the main character with his dog in the boat, and the Dead House in the background. So here were my three roughs:

(I'm still partial to rough #2.)

Allen then clarified that he wanted to depict a specific scene from The Dead House, where Rad is rowing down the river, with his frightened dog, during a thunderstorm, looking back over his shoulder, and by lightning-light just catching a glimpse of a ghost who is standing on the dock, partially obscured by shrubbery.

Did you get all that? Rowing. Looking over shoulder. Frightened dog. Haunted house. Thunderstorm. Swamp. Lightning striking into swamp. Ghost. Dock. Shrubbery. For a while I rocked myself back and forth in a corner of my room while I wondered how I was going to come up with a composition that could fit in all these elements.

An additional challenge was keeping the black labrador from disappearing in a scene that was necessarily very dark. I also struggled with establishing the boy as the focal point of the scene, when Allen emphasized that he wanted a very strong single lightning bolt in the sky - and huge lightning bolts tend to kind of steal the show, you know?

In order to enhance the creepy mood, I went with a green-and-purple color scheme. Check out that shameless use of rim lighting!

Another challenge - haunted houses, swamps and boats all tend to have muted, grey colors. However, middle-grade book covers need to be colorful. So I relied a lot on an unnaturally saturated sky and lots of pink tones in the boy's skin to bring some color into the piece.

As difficult as this was, it turned out to be one of my favorite illustrations that I've ever done. I suppose there's something to be said for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, even if it does mean a little time spent in a corner rocking yourself back and forth.

There are also 28 black-and-white chapter illustrations inside the book.

If you're interested in purchasing a copy of The Dead House, visit the Blackwater Novels website. (I do not receive any royalties from sales of the book.) You can also purchase a print at my Inprnt shop.