Drum Roll, Please

  And there you have it, the book cover for the Kindle Edition of "Screaming in Paris".

  Hopefully, the layout accomplishes its goal of overcoming the somewhat horror-story hint of the  title (People are screaming in Paris, something must be on the loose!) and conveys the message that this is actually a humor book where you are supposed to chuckle, not die. We'll see.

  Yes, that's me front and center. It's a snap my sister, Dawn, took in one of the elevators at the Eiffel Tower. (We were bored at the moment, and I believe she said something like "what do you think of all these people packed in here with us?" I responded physically, she clicked.) Of course, I jacked around with the thing in Corel PaintShop, and a cover was born.

  It took me a while to make a final selection. I went through over a thousand pics from that 2009 week in France and, initially, there were other options that were front runners. But I kept coming back to this one. There's just something about the expression on my face, the fact that I'm actually in a Paris landmark, and my sister's composition that allowed me to squeeze in the necessary text. (Not that I'm happy about the double-chin action going on, but I couldn't find an option in PaintShop that said "click here to eliminate unruly body parts".)

  Anyway, the details are somewhat unimportant, the real focus is whether or not the layout invites you or repels you. The book is about to be released any day now on Kindle, so it will probably go out with this cover version. But I'll be tracking responses and commentary, and if the cover is affecting sales, I can always drop this one and go with the next runner-up, just like they did when Vanessa Williams turned out to have too artsy of a past to be Miss America...