Coincidence
Coincidence. Synchronicity. Strange intersections from which we sometimes draw meaning. They happen in writing.
To begin with, if you haven’t read American Ghosts, you need to know there is a scene which takes place in an actually existing place: the Middlesex Fells, a wooded preserve of about 2200 acres in the towns of Malden, Medford, Melrose, Stoneham and Winchester, Massachusetts. On the highest hill in the Fells there is a stone tower which overlooks Malden and U.S. Rt. 93.
When I had finished writing American Ghosts I reluctantly turned my mind to producing a book. I asked my editor, Phoenix Bunke, if she knew anyone who designed books or book covers. Though she didn’t know anyone, she had been impressed by an artist’s work she had seen on the internet.
I emailed the artist, he read AG and agreed to design the book and cover. His name is David Espinosa and he is based in Bogota, Colombia.
David forwarded three cover proposals. The first one stopped me. You can see the cover photo on this site. A vast storm cloud hovers over a city skyline, an urban landscape and a highway. I scratched my head. The scene looked familiar. After a few minutes of staring I recognized the Boston skyline, then the highway, then the church spire almost in the center of the photo.
The photo had been taken from the tower in the Fells.
I emailed David and asked if he had flown from Bogota to Boston, taken the photo and returned without stopping by for a cup of coffee.
David explained that he had been describing the project to some friends. A woman offered that she had recently been to Medford and taken a number of photos.
That is how the cover was born.
Of course, I might have walked up to the tower and taken a similar photo, but the storm clouds casting a shadow over the city would not have been there. And it’s the clouds that make the photo meaningful for the book.
Coincidence.