Artist Lindsay Beach created the cover for The Forbidden Bean, the first book in the Grinding Reality series.
Tell us a little about your background and education.
I started drawing at a young age and haven’t stopped since. In high school I took all the art classes I could, including additional classes outside of the school at Repenning Fine Arts in Audubon. After encouragement from several teachers, I decided to go to art school. I studied illustration from the University of the Arts, and received my BFA in illustration.
How did you get started in book cover design?
While I was in school I started designing book covers. I had a target market project my junior year, and I chose to base mine on young adult book covers, and then for my senior thesis I also chose that young adult book cover market. Then after I graduated, Barbara Meyers granted me the opportunity to do her book cover, which was a great experience.
How many covers have you done? (Approximate if you don’t know exact number.)
Currently, I have done two commissioned book covers. While I was in school, I did about six or seven book cover projects.
What do you enjoy about doing cover design?It gives me a chance to tell the reader about the overall tone of the book in one visual cue. In a way it can be a challenge, but I like a challenge.
To read the full interview, please visit her Barbara Meyers' Blog
When lifelong misfit and coffee store manager Tee Rutledge investigates a hidden bag of coffee beans, she disregards the warning label and accidentally swallows one. Consumption of the bean temporarily transports most of her thinking, rational self into the body of an insect, but just enough of her is left behind to allow operation of her human body on auto-pilot. Her existence becomes wildly complicated because once she is whole again she has no memory of her behavior as a human during that time.
While Tee temporarily inhabits the body of a fly, a cockroach or a spider, she inadvertently flies under the radar of her fellow humans and unwittingly becomes privy to dangerous knowledge she otherwise would not have but which compels her unwillingly into heroic action.
Soon she is on the trail of a ragtag group of Eastern Europeans involved in gun-running and human trafficking; her long absent father walks back into her life to warn her away from pursuing them; and a serial killer feels the sting of her unique brand of justice.
Addicted to the magic beans but also teetering on the edge of sanity, Tee begins to embrace the power she discovers within herself as well as the undaunted courage of her superhero alter ego.
Now Available at Amazon.com, Itunes, and Barnes & Noble
The author's website
