Kelley McMorris illustration: Book Cover: Simple Lies

This is book #3 in the "Amish Inn Mysteries" series by Annie's Publishing. If you haven't seen my previous cozy mystery blog posts, cozy mystery covers tend to have a quaint, small-town setting, a hobby theme, and a "sinister element" that suggests danger.

Of all the daunting art orders Annie's Publishing tends to send me, this one was relatively tame. The art director asked for:

Interior scene setting. Inside the front sitting room at the inn. Cozy, Victorian furniture, Christmas tree, roaring fire, etc.
One big present under the tree stands out. It has a gift tag on it with a skull and cross bones drawn on it. English bulldog looks worriedly at the present.
There is a broken glass ornament nearby on the floor.
Through the window there is a horse and buggy on the snowy street.

Not too bad! I was looking forward to drawing a cozy Christmas scene - even though it was July at the time! Here are the roughs I sent:

The AD liked the second rough the best. (Looking back, the Christmas tree in #1 is way too close to the fireplace! It looks like it's on fire! Or is that the MYSTERY??)

Here were the AD's revisions:

Move the broken ornament to the other side of the creepy present/closer to the tree. Otherwise it could look like the dog chewed it and broke it.
Make the present a little smaller.
Make the tree slightly larger, but don’t cover up that wintry scene out the window.
Flip the horse and buggy around so we can see the reflective triangle on the back.

Here's the color rough I sent. I focused on contrasting the warm glow of the fireplace with the cool light of the snowy scene outside. Making the walls a red was an easy way to play up the Christmas color scheme. In order to avoid a yellow-blue-red-green color scheme, I made the walls more of a wine color than traditional Christmas red. I also used the light of the fireplace to cast long shadows on the black gift, because long shadows are OMINOUS.