I've always loved book covers. The first cover that I remember is from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. As I read the book, I kept flipping back to the cover, to see what Mary and her garden looked like. The Tasha Tudor illustration still pops into my head whenever I think of this book. One reason I started reading romances was because they had "people" covers like my favorite books form childhood, so I could see the hero and heroine. I started voting in the cover contest the first year it started, in 1999, and I still remember one of the winning covers from that year - Bantam's Bride to Be by Jane Ashford, which was illustrated by Franco Accornero. I still love that romantic cover style, although it's not as popular today.

I joined the cover committee a few years later, after I met someone on the committee who encouraged me to become a member. As I've become more involved in the contest, I've become more aware of the design elements in covers, as well as their use in marketing books to readers. But when I see a particularly beautiful cover, I'm still that eight year old girl, standing at a library shelf and trying to decide which book I want to take home with me.