Mary had written a well-researched family history, following 3 generations of her family from England to South Africa and then to New Zealand in 1920. But she had lost the photos she had wanted to use on the front cover and had an ingrained reaction against AI. I showed her a few covers generated by BriarsBooks using AI and she was favourably surprised and prepared to give AI a "go".

Mary said she remembered a garden in Christchurch with a woman and a child standing in it. The child was peeping out from behind the woman's skirts. She had a very straight fringe. There was a fence and a trellis and a bit of lawn. The  house was "behind". The woman was wearing a long dress of grays and greens but I had no more information about her.

That was enough for a start. I emailed several cover jpgs to Mary who was reassured to see there was nothing "artificial" about what I was doing.  That's when I learned that the woman was meant to be the child's mother and she was in her thirties. She held her head high and had a very direct gaze. Mary thought there were hydrangeas in the garden. The era needed to be 1920s New Zealand.

I began to produce a "mother" in her thirties looking directly at the camera and in the process learned more about the little girl, her hair was was not black, she was brunette. The hair on the doll was not real hair, it was painted curls. There seemed to be a corner of the garden involved. AI made all the small changes that were necessary.

We finally dispensed with the house and put the mother child and doll in a corner of the garden near a fence and a trellis.

This final iteration was what did it for Mary! She was moved to tears at the likeness AI (not to mention the designer) had managed to capture. The child was the author's mother in 1921.

All that remained was to make tonal and colour adjustments, add a back cover and lay it out for the printer. Mary remembered a vegetable garden at the back of the house, so we made it the back cover.

The final cover laid out printer-ready. Mary was delighted.