My Road. Her Dress. Notes on the cover of GIRLS IN TRUCKS.

I'm not the kind of writer who thinks in pictures. When I started Girls in Trucks, my characters were just grey mental shadows. After five years, each became a three-dimensional, emotional being. Still, it was hard for me to visualize any of them. I could tell you about every aspect of Sarah Walter's motivations and weaknesses, but if you gave me a pen and asked me to draw her, I wouldn't be able to do it.

When Girls in Trucks was accepted for publication, several things happened. First, I went into a two-week long trance, punctuated by fits of giggles, obsessive re-reading of the introductory email from my editor, and bouts of jumping on the sofa. As with many glorious periods of life, the initial glow had to fade. My moment of reality came when my agent called and told me to stop leaving hyena-like messages on his voice mail. I had to get it together, he said. There was much to do.

Being a first-time author, I didn't know that writing a book is only half the work put into getting a novel into the bookstores. The book has to be copy edited. There are complex marketing strategies to plot. My team—the editor, publicist, and some other key players—would often call me on a speakerphone from a conference room. I im-agined this place to look much like the control center of the Starship Enterprise. Invari-ably, I took these calls in sweatpants at the kitchen table surrounded by old coffee cups. They briefed me on plans and put me on various tasks such as proofing flap copy and coming up with an author bio. Oh, and did I have any ideas for the cover?

I was surprised. I'd always assumed from listening to stories from other writers that this would be out of my hands. But, now that they were asking, of course I had ideas! Is there any fiction writer who has not, even at the beginning of writing of a nov-el, fantasized about potential covers, along with a rave from the New York Times and maybe even a movie poster? No, there isn't, because fantasizing is a fiction writer's en-tire job. So sure, I had ideas. Bad, bad ideas.

"A huge shiny truck with a bunch of trashy girls in the back?" I said. "Me, shot by Annie Leibovitz and heavily photoshopped? A Warholian interpretation of a can of Budweiser?"

On the other side of the phone, a restless crackle.

"You know, Katie," my editor said, "the cover is very important."

"Oh, I know. For marketing. Yes."

"Well, not just for marketing. It's the image that represents your book."

"Right."

"Think about it. Imagery. Pictures you were thinking of when you wrote it."

"Pictures?"

"You can get back to us."

I hung up, confused and a bit panicked. But I don't write that way, I wanted to say. And sure, covers are important. But aren't the words inside what matter?

In a quest to understand the full meaning of covers and to get some better ideas, I went to the bookstore. There were so many good covers. There were so many books, period. My anxiety mounted. I bought a new dictionary and left to go write some more.

"A truck," I emailed when I got home. "Something with a truck."

Luckily, my publishing house assigned me to an extremely talented art director by the name of Ploy Siripant. Although I was not involved in the process—I think my "ideas" excused me from that—she and the photographer, Cig Harvey, read and dis-cussed the book. According to Ploy, they brainstormed several different scenarios, in-cluding girls walking on dirt roads, in trucks, and on a porch. Then they did a photo shoot in Maine, using models, hairstyles, and gestures they thought to be true to the novel.

I've seen many of Cig Harvey's pictures taken from the Girls in Trucks shoot. The photos are ethereal and provocative, and any number of them could have been a fantas-tic cover. However, in my eyes, the detail that makes this particular photo perfect for my book is the dress.

This beautiful, dotted tulle gown belongs to a friend of the photographer's. Her mother made it years ago for her actual prom. Before this photo was taken, the woman's mother passed away. Still, when you pick up the book, you can literally see the care that went into the dress's creation. It's quite obvious this mother loved her daughter more than anything. When I first saw the cover on my computer screen (again: the kitchen, the sweatpants, the old coffee cups) my reaction was physical. They had completely visually nailed my ideas of Southern womanhood, tradition, and the moth-er-daughter bond. I couldn't help but tear up.

We have sold many copies of this book—more than I ever imagined remotely possible. Some of the most wonderful aspects of this are the emails I get from readers. At least a third of the people who contact me want to talk about the cover. Many wom-en ask where they can buy the dress. The photograph was mentioned in newspaper re-views and discussed frequently on blogs. One woman stole a poster-sized version of it at one of my readings and pasted it to her wall.

"Is she walking away?" another reader emailed. "Or is she moving towards something?"

"It's good question," I answered. "Actually, you've just summed up my whole book."

So now I understood what my editor meant by covers being important. A good cover does more than just help to sell the work. It's important for the reader, because the image acts as an introduction and an epilogue to the story. It's what you ponder be-fore diving into the first sentence, and what you stare at while the last line reverberates in your head.

I have to say, though, I think the person the cover of Girls in Trucks affected the most was myself. This photograph finished my book for me. Before I saw it, Sarah Wal-ters was just an idea. Now I know what she looks like. She's a girl walking both away and towards something. Scared but brave. Curious but hesitant. She's someone I feel like I can talk to. And she's wearing a truly beautiful dress.

To read more about the cover and see out-takes from the Girls in Trucks cover photo shoot, visit www.katiecrouch.com.