TL Bartusch Indie Author of the Roth series

The base image I used today to create a new cover for Hubris. Wikimedia Commons One of the hardest things I do as an Indie author is to design my own book covers. Not having been trained as a graphic designer I find the process, shall we say, challenging . During the writing of the latest book in my current series I created 71 versions over the cover. Today I created the 73rd. Overkill you say. You bet, but it's not easy to conceptualise a story in a cover design. I've used a number of images to try and give my reader the idea of what's in this book which is a mystery/thriller about the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Of course the painting itself would be the first thing you think of and I did, I used it but I wasn't happy with the result. As the book is set in the curatorial department of the museum I also tried an image of the workshops in the Louvre. I liked that. It was primarily black and white and appealed to my sense of what the story is about. ...

Hubris is a noun, defined as isolence or arrogance such as invites disaster. It's also the title of the third book I've published in the Roth thriller series. Herbert James Draper, Lament for Icarus People generally take hubris to mean 'don't tempt the Gods' by bragging or making them jealous. Greek mythology is riddled with cautionary tales of punishment of pushy individuals who offended the Gods. Icarus is an example. Icarus' father, Daedalus, gave him wings to escape Minos but the silly boy soared too high and, as the wings were made of  wax, they melted when he flew too close to the sun. Icarus learnt about hubris the hard way.   The setting for the new ROTH is the world of fine art curatorship in the Louvre Museum where curators and conservators face conflicting needs and difficult decisions every day - to display the Louvre's ageing and fragile treasures for the public to see while preserving them for future generations. None of the ch...