I have been a book lover for as long as I can remember! I know my father read various Winnie the Pooh books, and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe to me more times than I can count. I was also lucky enough to have a primary school teacher who loved fantasy and read us the Hobbit when I was 8 as well.
I started out in the publishing industry as an author and thought I'd found what I was going to do forever. I loved disappearing in the world I was creating, and seeing where my characters took me - and boy did they surprise me a time or two! But unfortunately I never enjoyed coming up with the ideas and the plotting - it just wasn't something that went with the way my mind worked.
I was asked to join a short story anthology that some authors were doing for charity and ended up volunteering to do all the formatting, getting the contracts signed and basically getting the whole thing created, while someone else got the authors and found the cover. Two days before we needed the cover to launch, the cover designer backed out and we couldn't find anyone to take us on at such short notice - as you can imagine, mass panic ensued and I found myself saying, "well I know Photoshop I'll create it."
The rest, as they say, is history. I fell head over heels in love with cover design! It was everything I loved about stories and publishing, with none of the things I didn't. I immediately emailed my publisher and told them I would wrap up the series I had and that was it, I wasn't writing anymore. Thankfully they were very understanding and a few days later I wrote my last paragraph.
I've been a full time cover designer ever since, with hundreds of covers designed.
