I love cover art. I love design. Even bad cover art fascinates me. I sometimes browse bookstores just looking at the covers, considering what works for me and what doesn’t.

To turn my obsession into something useful, I’m going to do a series of posts on cover art. Some other day, I’ll get serious and talk in some detail about the process my books go through to get their covers. But for today, I have a funny story.

Harlequin mailed out to all us authors a Harlequin 60th Anniversary commemorative calendar at the start of this year. Each month features a vintage cover from Harlequin Books. Most of them are hilarious. (I’ll see if I can find some images from the calendar online later.) So I hung my calendar on the wall, with the month featuring a sultry, half-dressed minx from an old pulp fiction novel. My daughter looks up at the calendar and says, “Mommy, why is that girl’s dress falling off?”

Ahem. I took down the calendar. Told the five-year-old that’s what happens when you buy the wrong size dress.

Are you ever aware what draws you to a book visually? And how many of you will admit to buying a book based on the cover alone? I’ve done it, though not recently.