This May I am releasing a new novel entitled Love vs Honour.

For the cover, my regular designer Charles Bown had a serious challenge. How to convey the mood of events in the book without giving away too much?

I had a number of discussions with Charles, and various options were considered, but many of the stronger ideas could not be used, again for fear of spoilers.

Ultimately, Charles proposed a monochrome, defocussed image with silhouettes on a beach. I am very pleased with the finished image.

The brighter area at the centre of the image with the silhouettes obviously speaks of the central romance, but the brooding sky at the top and the darker imagery beneath suggest the challenge to their relationship posed by their respective religious backgrounds. The monochrome also hints at the direction the story will ultimately take.

Charles was also the one to suggest a tagline – something I have never done before – to help sell the story alongside the image. The “Two Religions Two Deceptions One Love” tagline on the cover hopefully hints at the more dramatic elements that gradually build over the course of the novel. Although the story is a romance, it is far from straightforward, as indicated by the synopsis below.

Love vs Honour is available to pre-order from Amazon (see link below).

Here is the blurb from the back of the book:

Two Religions. Two Deceptions. One Love.

When Johnny meets and falls in love with Sabina, their bond proves stronger than a teenage holiday fling.

Fearing the disapproval of their strict Christian and Islamic families, they undertake an elaborate deception to continue seeing one another. Johnny pretends to convert to Islam whilst Sabina pretends to covert to Christianity to appease their parents. 

But how long can this deception last before it unravels?

Love vs Honour is released on the 31^st May on Kindle.

Print copies will be available from the 7^th of June.

For a fuller interview with Charles Bown from last year, check out this link:

https://simondillonbooks.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/charles-bown-interview/

You can follow Charles on Twitter here:

https://twitter.com/federalcreative