The Clearwater Crossing Cover Story

Back when the series was coming out, remarking on the cover photos became a favorite pastime of readers. I don't remember much being said about the covers for books one through six, but when book seven hit the shelves, a common question emerged: Who are these people?

If you don't find the topic of book covers particularly fascinating, you might want to stop reading now—this isn't likely to get more interesting for you. However, if you would like to know a little about how a series is produced, and especially if you have ever looked at the cover of One Real Thing and wondered how anyone could expect you to believe that was the same Melanie who appeared on Heart & Soul, this is your chance to get the inside scoop.

Whenever you are working with photographic covers, you are dealing with models, and models have busy, unpredictable lives. They get other jobs. They change their hair. They grow up. The act of choosing models involves a certain amount of settling in the first place, since the characters you envision in your head don't actually exist and have to be represented by the most closely matching people who 1) are actually real, and 2) are available to model on the date of the photo shoot, which 3) has to coincide with the availability of the photographer, all of the other models, the editor, props, locations, and probably a few other things I don't even know about.

Logistics like these are the reason I had to change Peter's hair color after the first book was pretty much written and the redheaded model we'd selected decided he'd rather take a week-long runway gig for a major designer than show up for a one-day photo shoot. (Go figure.) There aren't a lot of redheaded models, so the next thing I knew, Peter had gone blond. Availability is also the reason our model for Ben, a hopeless nerd inside the books, is quite an attractive guy on their covers. As my editor put it, there aren't a lot of ugly models, either. (Hmm—that one seems obvious when you think about it.) I don't actually remember why the model for Miguel del Rios is Russian, but I seem to recall that availability factored in again, and who's really going to complain about a guy that cute? The main thing was that after a lot of scrambling—and a few adjustments to the manuscript—we had eight models we really liked to represent the members of Eight Prime.

All dealt with, right? Smooth sailing from here on out? Well, that's not exactly how a series works.

Clearwater Crossing started out as a four-book project, with the understanding that more books would be added if the series caught on. This type of arrangement is pretty typical for a paperback series. Four books is enough for a publisher to see if there's reader interest while limiting the amount of money they stand to lose if the books bomb. We all hoped the series would continue, but none of us had any idea that Clearwater Crossing would eventually reach twenty books, which is why only four covers were shot with those initial eight models. My editor, a very smart woman who's done this before, used the last minutes of that first photo shoot to grab some extra, all-purpose pictures—just in case—which is how, when the series received an early extension from four books to six, she was able to produce two more covers.

Of course, getting models is only half the job; someone has to figure out how the models should be posed, who they should pose with, what everyone will wear, which props are needed, and where each picture will be taken. The majority of Clearwater Crossing covers were shot many months before I started writing their corresponding books, and if you think I had four (let alone twenty) books plotted out in advance, you're giving me way too much credit. My editor and I put our heads together and she ultimately created cover scenarios that were certain to fit with the way events were headed (the car being washed on Reality Check), or that could be worked in easily (the girls on the bed on Heart & Soul), or that were more dependent on characters than events (couples photos such as those on Promises, Promises, and Just Friends.) For outdoor photos, a woodsy-looking background was needed to represent Clearwater Crossing's Missouri setting, but all of the cover pictures were taken in New York City. The solution? Every outdoor scene in the series was shot in Central Park.

So that's how the first six covers were created, and for a long time we didn't know if we would ever need more. Books are written and produced so far in advance that we had to wait for the first books to appear in stores and see if they found readers before any decision was made about continuing the series. If you read Keep the Faith knowing this, you'll see that it ties up a lot of loose ends. I didn't want to leave readers hanging if it turned out to be the series finale.

Happily, Clearwater Crossing caught on, and the series was given another extension, for a total of ten books. What did this mean in terms of covers? Another photo shoot!

My editor called the modeling agency to get our original models back, but they weren't all available. In fact, hardly any of them were available. Supposedly our Nicole was coming, but at the last second the agency substituted another model they said looked just like her. You be the judge. We did get our old Ben and Jenna back, but that was it. Everyone else was new and there wasn't a thing we could do about it—except introduce even more new models and try to create a distraction.

On the cover of New Beginnings, we tried this new-character tactic with Tanya, Melanie's cheerleading friend, who finds herself between new Nicole and new Jesse. New Jesse is being leaned on by new Melanie. Old Ben and Jenna are there on the end, doing their best to look like nothing weird is going on. Sharp readers may have noticed that Jesse gets a haircut in the text of this book. (I did what I could on my end.)

On the cover of One Real Thing, we brought in new Amy, Melanie's friend from the Junior Explorers. That's one cute little girl, don't you think? Cookies are very distracting too—at least, they always get my attention.

Skin Deep pairs new Nicole with new Leah. This Leah is obviously wearing her heavy, modeling-contest makeup, plus she's an amazingly close match to the first Leah, so I actually thought we'd get away with this switch. We didn't. People noticed.

The cover for No Doubt was my favorite from this group. It has a dog—I love dogs—it has new Caitlin, played by a model who really looks like she could be Jenna's older sister, and it has old Jenna. Can I digress for a moment to say how much I loved the model for Jenna? Not only was she the closest real-life match to the character I originally saw in my head, but she was also the only model to be with us for the whole series. As long as she remained available and didn't cut her hair, I could brace myself to cope with pretty much anything else. Pretty much.

The next extension was for books eleven through fourteen, but my editor had worked her magic again and squeezed two extra covers out of the second shoot; that's where the photos for More Than This and Hope Happens came from, featuring new Melanie and new Nicole. I had worked for so many hours with the first models' faces burned into my brain—and the new girls were so clearly not them—that those two switches were the hardest for me to accept. The new models did great work and I was lucky to get them; I just never got used to that change.

Dream On, book thirteen, represents the beginning of the third photo shoot, for which we were able to get (drumroll, please) old Melanie and old Nicole! I was seriously thrilled about that, except . . . is that really old Nicole? That's what happens with teen models when a couple of years pass between shoots. Nicole started out shorter than Melanie and ended up taller. And blonder. And I seem to recall something about airbrushing out a belly ring. But she is Nicole—the original Nicole—and I am ecstatic. By this point the series must have already been renewed again, up through eighteen books, because my editor got seven covers out of this third shoot—six different scenes, plus a new group shot for the eventual series finale—as well as a new back cover photo for books thirteen on, all taken while we had five of the original models together again.

That's right—five original models. Once again, we had to scramble.

Love Hurts brings back old Jenna, with new Peter. We all know the real Jenna would never be so disloyal as to switch Peters, but that's modeling for you. Those high school lockers they're standing in front of were actually part of a locker room inside my publisher's old building.

More new-character-smoke-and-mirrors pairs old Nicole with new Courtney Bell on What Goes Around, which goes to show that redheaded models are out there—just not necessarily when you need them. The girls are supposed to be in the CCHS cafeteria, but this was actually the employee cafeteria at my publisher's old building. (Yes, they had a big building; they've since moved to a bigger one.)

Tried & True features old Miguel (a model we never replaced but also couldn't get for covers seven through fourteen) with new new Leah. That's right—Leah number three. Is it me, or does this one have a Jennifer Garner thing going on? I think it's her smile.

Just Say Yes is one of my favorite covers. Old Melanie is finally in the arms of old Jesse and it just looks right. Plus her eyes match his shirt. I have no idea how they did that. Prime Time features the original Jesse and Miguel, and is the only Clearwater Crossing cover depicting two guys. I originally wanted its tagline to say something like Summer is heating up, but people feared that could be misconstrued.

This might be a good place to mention The Diaries, the only Clearwater Crossing special edition. Its collage-style cover incorporates a lot of photos from this third shoot, but only one is an exact duplicate of a shot used somewhere else. Can you find it? (Hint: It's actually only part of a photo used elsewhere.

When the series was extended one last time, for books nineteen and twenty, we all knew this would be the end, and we already had a group photo for book twenty. What we didn't have was a cover for our nineteenth book, Now & Always. Enter good old Jenna, for a final shoot involving only her. That veil she's wearing came from a friend's communion. Unfortunately, the printing process turned her face red. These things happen.

There is something surreal about coming to the end of a twenty-book series, especially when you wrote most of those books not knowing where the end would be. Part of me (the exhausted part) was ready to wrap things up, but a bigger part hated to say good-bye. Those characters had become such a part of my life that it was almost like saying good-bye to real people. Hence the final book's title, Don't Look Back, and my strong desire to see every member of Eight Prime depicted one last time on the spread inside the front cover.

At this point you won't be surprised to learn there was a logistical problem with that too. Yes, we had five original models at our last group shoot, but even with new Peter and new new Leah, we still had only seven main characters; we didn't have a Ben. Hello, PhotoShop! Astute cover scrutinizers will have noticed that Ben is extremely fond of his blue plaid shirt, and that he's not afraid to stand in nearly the exact same position for three different shots. I didn't care; he's there.

So there you have it—the story of twenty-one covers, four photo shoots, seventeen models, and some teens in a Central Park tree. If you stayed with me all the way to here, you must be a loyal Clearwater Crossing reader. Thank you for making that series (and this cover story) possible.