While book lovers tend to frown on books being defaced in any way,mystery author Krista Davis doesn’t just want you to read her Pen & Ink series—she wants you to draw on the covers. The series features two titles so far, Color Me Murder and The Coloring Crook (out November 27), each with elaborately drawn front and back covers by artist Monika Roe, which can be colored in. The covers of the Pen & Ink paperbacks are made of similar material as the publisher’s other titles, but with a design specifically geared toward coloring.
Why invite readers to interact with her books by taking pen(cil) to paper? The idea originated with Kensington Publishing Creative Director Janice Rossi, after initially considering a line of coloring books, which morphed into the Pen & Ink series. “The idea came to me about doing a cover that would be open for the reader to partially design by use of color,” Rossi told Forbes.com. “The mystery genre seemed to fit. Most mysteries have a theme, [such as] recipes, knitting, gardening. It seemed to me that mystery readers are crafty and like to keep busy when not reading. So the idea just evolved.”
The artwork isn’t just a marketing gimmick; the cover art relates directly to the plots of the novels, which center around a Georgetown, Washington, DC bookstore owner, Florrie Fox, who also creates her own elaborately drawn coloring books—and, of course, gets mixed up in murders. The back covers show the exterior of the fictional bookstore.
“You’ll notice certain items in an oval around the title [of Color Me Murder]. There’s a cupcake, a footprint, a spear, martini glasses, a fancy necklace, a broken strand of pearls, and more. All of those items are clues that appear in the story,” Davis told Forbes.com. “They’re beautiful to look at, but as the eye moves around the image, one realizes how many interesting details she fits into the cover. And when you color the covers, you find even more details that you never noticed.” For each title, Davis passes along a list of such clues, which wind up being incorporated into the covers.
For The Coloring Crook, Davis turned to history for inspiration. While the adult coloring market has been labeled a “fad” and a “trend,” which exploded in recent years, and even has its own holiday, National Coloring Book Day (August 2), coloring books aren’t actually new. Davis’s second book in the series revolves around a rare adult coloring book from the 1700’s called The Florist. “These books actually existed but only 10 or so remain today, most of them in museums,” Davis revealed. Its cover features a Van Gogh sunflower, a melting ice cream cone, a lantern, a hummingbird, a baseball cap, and other clues.
Incorporating those details was part of cover designer Monika Roe’s task for each cover, in addition to creating an authentic Georgetown storefront feel. “Creating the artwork was like a puzzle. I frequently changed the drawing while I added clues and moved things around to fit everything in,” explained Roe.
Showing off filled-in covers, which have a strikingly different look than the black-and-white versions, is another way for Davis to interact with her readers. She’s shared her own handiwork, as exhibited above, along with drawn covers by readers on her Facebook page.
As for the act of drawing, Davis recommends colored pencils, since “they can be sharpened to a fine point to get into all those tiny details. Original crayons are too waxy, and gel pens are too wet.” Davis’s publicist suggests fine tip markers made with non-water-based ink or that contain alcohol, which helps the ink dry faster.
Kensington offers downloadable versions of each cover on its website for those who are reading on e-readers, or simply want another platform to try their hand at coloring. Readers have even gotten creative, with one commenting on Davis’s Facebook page that she planned to copy the cover and draw it, then place it over the actual cover.
In addition to engaging readers’ creative sides, having them draw their way through the various objects and details keeps them involved with the plot. According to Davis, “Not only is it fun and relaxing to color the covers, but while they’re coloring the clues, they’ll be thinking about how they fit into the mystery.”
