Final cover for Alien Contact. At first I thought the cover model seemed too tough for a book about a nice girl on an intersteller trip who ends up saving everyone.

But when I ran the cover by other people (family) they thought she looked like someone who started out sweet and ended up as competent as she needed to be. And they didn’t know what the book was about when they made that comment.

So I’ll go with the cover because I’ve learned that readers see my books — and the covers — differently than I did when I wrote them and readers are the only people who matter.