Q&A Forum - June/July 2015

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Q. Elise, I know this was asked of your other two books, but can you explain what the Sardax cover represents to you in Wanda. Is the man meant to be Leopold and is the woman Wanda? Or is there a deeper meaning to the picture? And when Sardax does the covers for your books, do you tell him what you want and he creates it from your description or do you allow him to come up with the idea?

A. With all of my books, I explain to Sardax my thoughts and my idea for the cover but then I allow him to use his creativity to fill in the details. My idea for the “Searching for Wanda” cover was along the lines of a man interacting with a sophisticated woman in a social setting, yet he is picturing her in his imagination as a cruel, sadistic woman. I once saw a picture that Sardax did that showed a woman looking in a mirror and the woman was a sophisticated woman yet her image in the mirror was of a dominant woman wearing leather and holding a whip. That is what I was looking for here. I wanted some way to portray how the man fantasizes about the woman. She is a confident and refined woman, dressed eloquently. Yet the man imagines her in a leather outfit, wielding a whip. The image is of a man looking at her with admiration but the reflection in the mirror shows his desire/fantasy (and/or her dominant persona).