THE WRITERS BEHIND THE BOOK COVER. BY V. JOLENE MILLER
READING ON THE RUN
Binge reading on the run because everything else can wait.
ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
I live in remote Alaska where I work 40+ hours a week at my day job, write novels, and own a pop-up book shop. In my spare time, I chase after grandbabies and go running with my giant puppy, Omar. Always, I carry a book in my purse. I never know when I’ll get a few minutes to indulge in a good read. Fifteen minutes before dawn, at lunch, bundled up in my car by the river, or right before falling into bed. Reading is my resting place.
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FEBRUARY / MARCH 2021
I grew up in the ‘80s. I remember the Atari game, chasing lightning bugs, TV dinners, getting up to change the channel, reading the Trixie Belden series (any other Trixie fans out there?), and the book covers I made out of brown paper sacks for my junior high textbooks. Did you ever make those? Anyone who made their own book covers knew it was imperative to also have a 6-in-1 retractable ballpoint pen for drawing and doodling on the cover. Those were the days. You could literally Algebra or Earth Science behind your decorated brown paper book cover. Whether they’re used to protect the book, disguise the book, are used as a bookmark, or as a way to disguise the content of what you’re reading, book covers are masks. They even act as a mask for the author. Wait. What? Ever stop and think about what lives behind the cover of a book? Beyond the cover image, the title, and the categorization of the book (novel, memoir, travelogue, etc.). What exactly is between the covers? What butts up against the inner side of the spine that faces outward on the bookshelf for all the world to see? And, I don’t just mean the letters that form words and sentences and paragraphs. As a reader who is also a writer, I find myself thinking about the people behind the cover. Not only the characters, who are amazing in their own right, but the authors too. We all have ideas about what the writer’s life looks like. Even I imagine a picturesque scene of an author behind her desk with the perfect beverage in the perfect mug as she types feverishly away at the perfect, bestselling novel before heading down to the bank to cash her perfect (and hefty)
