Christine DeSmet Says that “Fall Colors Inspire Plots, Characters, and Covers.”
Christine DeSmet is the author of the Fudge Shop Mysteries series of cozies, and the Mischief in Moonstone series. Her latest book is When the Dead People Brought a Dish-to-Pass.
Wisconsin’s autumn displays fiery reds, sunlit golds, and orange licks on trees and bushes.
The publishing business worries about book cover colors because we want to appeal to readers. I have great covers for my autumn traditional mystery, Five-Alarm Fudge, and the romantic-mystery novella, When the Dead People Brought a Dish-to-Pass.
My publisher chose a lot of brown with orange for the Halloween cover. Brown is considered trustworthy, the color of earth. Brown is common on historical novels, often in duet with blue, also a good for biographies and self-help books.
A self-help book by fellow Blackbird writer Laurie Buchanan, with a teal-blue cover, looks at the effect of colors on people. In Note to Self, A Seven-Step Path to Gratitude and Growth, Laurie notes, “Color is energy made visible.”
What color is your novel? Associated with your character? Plot? What energy is visible in your plot or pages?
The Pantone experts chose “Future Dusk” as the 2025 color of the year. It’s a cross between deep blue and purple. Will you be painting your living room walls with it? Designers think so.
Buchanan suggests deep colors like violet seem to increase our “connection with our higher self and help us function from a place of present-moment awareness.”
Deep colors (but not black so much) suggest wisdom. Consider the importance of the blueberry patch in William Kent Krueger’s 2024 mystery, Spirit Crossing. Blue “unleashes our creative flair and helps us to function from a place of endless original thought,” Buchanan notes. The boy Waaboo operated from original thoughts whenever he came across a blueberry patch (for better or worse).
The 2024 Pantone fave was orange, called “Peach Fuzz.” Orange is about pleasure, delight, respect.
On Goodreads, 787 book covers used dominant orange—the most of any color except black that yielded 2,159 covers—probably for serious mysteries and horror.
Linked-In’s marketing people analyzed colors: 1) Yellow is dangerous because it’s so powerful; it commands attention and exudes confidence. 2) Gold adds power and symbolizes wealth and pedigree. 3) Orange means energy, cutting edge, and gets attention. 4) Blue is trustworthy.
On Goodreads, 146 books with yellow covers and 135 gold-cover books were reviewed.
I checked out the Blackbird Writers bookstore online for covers with gold or orange predominating or used in an attention-getting way for “warmth and confidence and cutting edge”: Five-Alarm Fudge by Christine DeSmet; Amanda Marbais’s Claiming A Body; Death of the Zanjero by Anne Louise Bannon; Saving Myles, by Carl Vonderau; Deep Flakes Christmas by Joy Ann Ribar; The Devil and Daniela Webster by Laurie Stevens; Avanti Centrae’s Cleopatra’s Vendetta; and all of Margaret Mizushima’s series that uses consistent orange lettering.
Color inspires my plots. In Five-Alarm Fudge, a contemporary traditional mystery, characters have funny conflicts over roadside markets with orange pumpkins and peach-colored soap products, but characters also search for a million-dollar, handwritten recipe hidden by a young nun during the real Great Fire of October 1871.
Around 2,000 people died in a five-county area including Door County, Wisconsin the same October day as the Great Chicago Fire, where 300 died. A young nun who survived with fire all around her was considered a miracle. I fictionalized that the hidden divinity fudge recipe in her handwriting could be worth millions, motivating murder and a reason for Ava Oosterling to find both the recipe and the killer.
Did a color inspire a character or plot for you? Do you arrange books on shelves by cover color? What do you think of the 2025 color, “Future Dusk”?
Christine DeSmet is the author of the Fudge Shop Mystery Series set in Door County, and the Mischief in Moonstone Series set in northwest Wisconsin. You can find out more about her on her website, christinedesmet.com, or follow her on Facebook.
I'm very sensitive to color, and I love to color-code everything--my grocery lists, clothes in my closet, dates on my calendar. Your fall colors are warm and inviting, and your books are, too!
I love reading about things that preoccupy us synesthetes, and color is one of them! Most of my mystery book covers have tones and shades of cool colors (green, blue, purple). To me, those colors set an intriguing, serious tone for what's to come. My newest book, Upas Street: Shocking Specter, has an apparition that glows green, so that color predominates. Thanks for the fun information about colors, including Future Dusk. Purple is my lifelong favorite color!