Finding Lost S6: The New Cover!

As I mentioned on my Facebook page a few days ago, the cover of my S6 book has been undergoing a revamp. The long-suffering Barry Johnson, who came up with the cover concept of my S5 book and then was the designer for S6, has been dealing with much back and forth with me over the past month or so as I began to rethink the chess cover that I had. And no, despite my jokes, it had nothing to do with the few people who said it looked too Breaking Dawn.

No, my thinking was that despite all of the chess references in the series, and the prominence of the black and white theme in season 6, and the fact that I've always argued the island was a giant chessboard upon which the game of the survivors' lives have been played, I think the concept is simply too subtle -- chess was alluded to constantly in every episode of season 6 (Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass is the mirror theme that runs through the entire season, and the book is based on one big game of chess) -- but you never see characters playing the game, and so it's just not overt enough. And when it comes to a successful cover, you need a concept that's not so subtle.

And so Barry has probably gone through about 15 different versions of new covers (Hurley number!), featuring jungle backgrounds, beach backgrounds, island backgrounds, and finally after much discussion about what should be front and centre, I told him I'd give him complete freedom to figure it out. And the moment the restrictions were taken away, he nailed it on the first go. I won't tell you what my thinking was behind this one, I'll just let you look at it, the same way you would in a store. And I really hope you guys like it as much as I do. Thank you, Barry, once again, for being so immensely patient and for coming up with a cover that made me gasp the moment I opened the attachment (click on the picture to see it bigger).