Julie Miller | Covers, Covers, Covers

Thank you to Sara Reyes and the gang at Fresh Fiction for inviting me to blog with them this month! I’m honored. Today, I’m going to be talking Harlequin Intrigue.

Since Intrigue is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, I thought it'd be fun to share some Intrigue covers, and show how the look of our beloved romantic suspense novels have changed over the years.

1. Here's where it all started, with THE KEY by Rebecca Flanders.

2. Then we went through a "white" period--I discovered 43 Light Street series by Rebecca York in this phase--read bunches of the white covers in college.

3. Then the art department began tweaking the white covers. And hey, this is a good time to point out that several NY Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today and Borders/Waldenbooks bestselling authors have written—and are still writing!—for Intrigue.

4. Then we went into a "color" phase. I loved the rich colors and background details of the covers, though the pictures were tiny--and I do love to see a nice shot of a hunky hero. Here's Patricia Rosemoor's TORCH JOB--it has one of my favorite lines ever in an Intrigue. You'll have to read it to see what the hero says to the heroine at the end.

5. We also had a cartoonish phase that featured a lot of drawings--not my personal favorite--but the titles and author names were certainly clear.

6. Then we get into the signature "purple" era, when I started publishing with Intrigue in 2000. Here's an example. The signature "thumb print" has now become the trademark for Intrigue, no matter what the cover looks like. More recently, the art department has started to "bleed" the cover art beyond the square on the lower 2/3 of the picture--that gives me a full shot of those nice heroes I love. See? We can do tender and romantic (one of those brief moments when our characters are catching their breaths between dangerous encounters in our books)

7. Intrigue covers went through an experimental phase--trying a mainstream look that really played up the suspense. Some of their best stories ever, but not great for sales. Maybe because readers couldn't identify them as Intrigues? Or, again, they wanted to see those heroes. But it was an interesting experiment.

8. And did I mention I like a good shot of the hero? How about this sizzler? Hero-alone covers seem to be especially popular among Intrigue readers.

9. Single-author and multi-author continuity or miniseries do particularly well at Intrigue. They’re given a flash, or logo, to tie them together by theme or author.

10. And finally, one of my favorite features of Intrigue covers (and from what I hear it's a favorite with readers, too) is when we have an annual or biannual "Intrigue's Ultimate Heroes" month, featuring nothing but the best in men--cops, military men, sheriffs, cowboys, spies, crime scene investigators, private detectives, you name it--on the covers. You can see all 6 covers for this month's Ultimate Heroes on the www.eHarlequin.com website, and the Intrigue Authors Group Blog there. I have to give kudos to Harlequin's art department. I think my cover this month is one of my best ever--I'd get lost in the mountains with a man like that any day.

So what are some of your favorite Intrigue covers? Which style do you like? What would you like to see more of? Let's dish and reminisce.

Enjoy,
Julie Miller

Julie Miller is an award-winning author of breathtaking romantic suspense--with a National Readers Choice and a Daphne du Maurier among other prizes. This year she earned a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Series Romantic Suspense. Several of her 35+ books have appeared on the USA Today and Borders/Waldenbooks bestseller lists.