I didn't realize how little say an author has ultimately in the cover-design for his or her book. I remember when my editor at Pocket Books asked for my thoughts about covers, and I emailed to her a mock up of a cover I had designed myself. I could tell by her breath and carefully chosen words that she thought my idea was disturbing and thoroughly unappealing. Admittedly, she was correct. I had used a photograph I had found online.
It was a picture of two skeletons that had been discovered sharing the same grave, and I had added a title across the bottom. She said, measuredly, that they'd take my thoughts into consideration. When I received an email from her with the attachment of the first draft of the cover, I was terrified to open it. I procrastinated for hours before clicking 'open' and then peering at it while wincing through a fan of my fingers. Then I took a deep breath. I loved the amber desert colors, the mysteriousness of the woman as she disappeared off the page, the way she seemed to be beckoning a reading to follow her inside, to wherever her story would take us. Only, she had a little tiny earring that seemed a bit modern if she was supposed to be Anatiya.
I began my own search for earrings, finding images and sending them to the design team. 
Most of the earrings I found were hugely expensive, and I wondered, if they liked them, how we would get them. Could we rent them? Could they be photoshopped in from a picture? Most of the earrings I found did not ultimately seem genuine enough for the time period, and didn't evoke the right feeling, although in my daydreams I certainly coveted them for myself!
One day I took a drive to a bellydance bazaar which since has been transformed into a Levantine Cultural Center. My daughter and I had once taken a bellydancing class in this place. She was as graceful, confident and fierce as a cobra rising out of a basket. I moved with the grace of Frankenstein trying to hula. The shop was filled with tapestries embedded with tiny mirrors and rich embroidery, long gowns heavy with silver and gold stitching, and baskets of gossamer sashes laced with coins which would make any evocative hip-twitch sound like winning at slots. There were piles of jewelry, wonderfully tarnished. Bracelets and metal arm bands with chains connecting to thick rings. Anklets bursting with tiny bells. Headbands dripping with coins. And then there were earrings. I bought a selection and taped them onto white paper.
They were jangly and old-looking. I sent them to the design team.
Eventually, the earrings marked "3" made it onto the cover, adding just the right sparkle. I remember packaging them all after rushing around Los Angeles, and as I left the post office, I laughed at myself thinking wow, there is so much more to writing a book than simply writing a book!
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