Judging A Book By Its Cover

My original plan was to post my book cover on this blog but I ran into a snag—mainly that I’m technologically challenged. So for the purpose of this post you can either check out my homepage or you can take my word for it when I tell you that my cover sums up the tone of the book perfectly.

I can’t tell you how happy I am about that. So many books have covers that are misleading. Take Kayla Perrin’s Delta Sisters. It's an interesting mystery and defiantly one I would recommend. My publicist is the one who recommended it to me which is a good thing because let me tell you something, there’s nothing about the cover that would have made me want to pick it up. First of all I would never have known it was a murder mystery. Instead I would have assumed it was a social commentary about three angry, depressed Black women—and I would have been completely wrong.

Which is why someone came up with the expression, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” But that’s a stupid saying. We all judge books by their covers. Can you imagine flipping through every title at Borders no matter how unappealing the cover just on the off chance that the art department might have misrepresented the novel inside? You’d be there all day.

Of course the saying isn’t supposed to be taken literally and I would love to tell you that I apply the concept behind it when meeting individuals for the first time but that would be a big ol’ lie. I make split second judgments all the time.

Here’s a for instance:

I met a guy at a Halloween party a few years back. He was dressed up as the Biker from the Village People. He seemed nice enough so when he asked for my number I happily gave it. Granted I had consumed quite a few cocktails by that point so I probably would have happily given my number to a duck but that's another story. A few days later I met him at a neighborhood pub in the late afternoon for a let’s-make-sure-you’re-not-a-serial-killer-date. I was horrified to see that he was wearing close to the same outfit he was wearing the last time I had seen him. No, he wasn’t going to another costume party, he was a bona fide biker dude. I silently considered what kind of (straight) guy would wear chaps. What kind of job did ‘those people’ have? Were they mechanics? Bartenders? Criminals? What?

Well apparently they work for Intel. Yes, my chaps wearing biker man was a well paid engineer with an Ivy League education and a Silicon Valley two story house located in a suburban development.

So after that experience have I changed my view of the world? When I see a man sporting a three thousand dollar suit and a manicure do I think, “Gee, I wonder if he works for Greenpeace.” Umm, not likely. On the other hand if he does end up being an environmental activist with a weakness for Armani I don’t hold it against him.

We usually like our first impressions to be correct and when they’re not we resent the ones who we misjudged. As natural as that reaction is it’s not very helpful. So I try to let all that go and view those surprises as being positive at best and interesting at worst. Lots of people have been out with bikers and lots of gals have dated engineers. But how many of you can say you’ve been out with an engineer who looks like one of the Village People?

See that’s why I’m a writer. This kind of weird stuff happens to me all the time.

Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte--May 2005