Over the past several weeks numerous people have complimented me on the cover of my book, “Life sinks or soars – the choice is yours.”

Naturally, as a person riddled with low self-esteem and desperate for recognition, I humbly accepted said credit in a manner that implied that the cover design flowed from my own exquisite creativity and manifested itself into reality through my talented fingertips.

Unfortunately my design creativity is limited to placing a box around text on a Powerpoint slide, and even then I struggle with what a graphics designer once told me was called “proximity placing of text.”

So I turned to two extremely gifted and talented friends for help. Interestingly, these two friends are unknown to each other, have never met or conversed and yet they colluded to produce the book cover that has been the recipient of so much praise.

Debbie Middleton-Hope, who has a gift for crafting magic from nothing, constructed the graphic on the front cover that so perfectly depicts the theme of the book. When I saw it for the first time I knew the she had captured the essence of what I was trying to say in a way that was far superior to my thoughts that I had shared with her as to what I thought the cover should look like.

 I had emailed Debbie a copy of the book to read in order for her to recognize its brilliance and to provide insight into a cover design. I had also included my stick drawings showing my ideas for the cover.

We had met for coffee a few days after Debbie had read the book and I immediately launched into how I thought she should bring my ideas to life and create the cover I felt would catapult the book into superseller status.

Debbie, always a delightfully patient and polite soul, listened to my ramblings all the while trying not to show that pained expression of sadness on her face that we cannot avoid wearing whenever we are talking to the village idiot.

When I was finally finished she told me that she thought my designs were really good but would I mind taking a look at an image she had created that might work for the cover?

I took one look and, as mentioned earlier, she had so elegantly captured the heart of my book that I knew I had to have that graphic yell out my story from the cover of my book.

I immediately emailed Debbie’s masterpiece to another friend, Peter Colnett.

Peter is an interesting guy. Peter is a geologist who has spent many years successfully plying that trade. Geologists, as you know, spend their days looking inside rocks in the same way psychiatrists spend their days looking inside minds. Both groups are trying to figure out what’s going on inside.

Occasionally they manage to get it right.

At some point Peter came to realize that he has talent outside of the geology field. He is a remarkably gifted story teller in that he can take raw data and breathe life into it by the way in which he arranges and places it in the context of the message he is conveying. I have visited a number of the web-sites he has designed and they are extraordinary.

Peter took Debbie’s graphic, waved his magic wand and, voila, a book cover that has received accolades.

So, thank you, thank you, thank you to two really talented friends.

Now, if someone would just say something nice about the book itself.

Please.

Till we read again.