This’ll date me, but the other night I found myself singing an old Melanie Safka song — Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma.” If you don’t know it, there’s a recording here of her singing it . It goes:
Look what they’ve done to my song, Ma.
Look what they’ve done to my song,
It was the only thing I could do half right
And it’s turning out all wrong, Ma.
Look what they’ve done to my song.

And not that I’ve written any songs to be ruined, but I’ve just seen the new cover HarperCollins have given to the republication of my very first book — Gallant Waif. Here it is.

The thing is, that book is about a young woman who has returned from following the army with her father and brothers—all now dead—and she’s got no money and no home, and is in a desperate way. 

She’s given a position in a rundown old house where a wounded former soldier has holed up to hide from the world. 

This is a ‘sweet” book with only a few kisses. It was a RITA finalist for “Best First Book” too.

So they’ve made her look like a courtesan.

This was the original cover. So much more fitting to the story, don’t you think? 

I would write to the publisher and ask them to change it, only this whole thing was done without any attempt to inform me, and I have no idea who to contact. My original editor left the publisher long ago.

So now, all I can do is feel sad about the inappropriate cover.