The Lip Reader: Cover Story of a Novel
In 2005 I wrote an award-winning inspirational essay, “The Lip Reader,” that won first place and $1000.00 in the 73rdAnnual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. The essay discussed the life of my wife, Jila, and the trials and tribulations she overcame growing up deaf and Jewish in Iran.
A decade later, after Jila had died from cancer did I read the essay again. I knew enough about her life story to expand the essay into a biography, but when I discussed it with her family, they insisted I withhold actual names and change events to meet their privacy concerns. To meet their needs, I fictionalized many events in the book, but kept close to showing my protagonist’s positive attitude, love of life and family, and her resilient nature.
Thusly, Zhila Sherazi was born. I interviewed family members, reread emails, and researched life in Iran circa 1950-1985. It was a grueling task, but a huge help during the mourning process. After four years of writing and researching I sent a manuscript to a few beta readers whose honest comments motivated me to hire an editor to polish the book before I sent it off to a publisher. Like a baby, nine months later, Paper Angel Press, a San Jose, California publisher offered me a contract to publish The Lip Reader.
While waiting to hear from a publisher or agent, I worked on self-publishing my award winning Koolura series. I thought the covers were ugly and needed replacement. On Facebook I found April Klein, an illustrator, to design and illustrate the front covers of my books. Since she did an amazing job, I suggested to the managing editor of Paper Angel Press to hire her for the cover art for The Lip Reader.
April recently completed her task designing covers for a hard back edition, soft cover, audio, and digital covers for The Lip Reader, as seen on this page. What do you think? Please leave your opinion in the comments section below, and if you haven’t done so already, sign up for my blog posts that will be sent to your in box free.
Stunning cover.
Having met the love of your life, I would say that the dress is not who she was. Mind you, I met her at night ..outside … sitting at a table while she was with you visiting in south Florida. Once. Perhaps my perception was wrong…I saw her as a down to earth and very natural woman. More earthy than the cover suggests! It IS a lovely cover… Do you think it captures Zhila?
You met Jila when she was well into her 60s. The picture shows a woman in her late 20s, plus the novel is a fictionalized account of Jila’s life. The picture does a good job of showing the world who Zhila was.
I think the cover is perfect
I believe that the picture shows very obvious facts about Jila’s life. She was the dearest grandbaby of our family to that extend that my mom bought all her clothing ready made from the best stores in town. That was the time nobody would do that for their children. The custom was to buy the fabric and somebody would tailor it.
I remember my mom saying when the second child of the family was born (my brother), my paternal grandparents were concerned about Jila’s emotions and that she would be insulted, so they acted as if they were not happy to see a baby boy in the family.
My mom said Jila grew up in the hands of all family members. As soon as she cried somebody would pick her up and pay complete attention to her.
Later in her teens, she chose clothes for herself that were top of the line clothing, shoes and purses. She was an expert tailor, too. Michael has seen all her childhood pictures and they are available for whoever wants to see.