James Blunt thinks your book is beautiful, Susan Krinard.

Since the June of Doom is upon us, I thought I would take the time to inform everyone that I am not dead. In fact, I am not famous enough to fulfill any occult significance of the number 3, and therefore I might live forever.

In other news, you can now officially pre-order all of the Lightworld/Darkworld books (Queene of Light, Child of Darkness, Veil of Shadows) from Amazon.com and also something called “chapters,” which I do not actually know what that is, but whatever.

So, if you have ever written a book, or worked in the art department of a major publishing house, you might know that authors are usually asked to fill out something called an “art fact sheet” for the books they have written. The art fact sheet tells the people who design the covers exactly what they need to know about the characters and settings for the book without actually having to read the books.

In theory, the art fact sheet will help the cover artists get the right images of the characters, and the right mood for the story, on the cover. I say in theory because there’s a old Temptation or Blaze from a few years ago, I think it was by Stephanie Bond, but don’t quote me on that, where the hero is in the Marines and the guy on the cover has this big, unruly mop of dark curls. Also, have you ever seen one of those Harlequin Presents books with the so-called “sheiks” on them? Either the person filling out the art fact sheet is saying, “PLZ NO SCARY BROWN PPL, KTHNXBYE,” or the cover artists just aren’t aware that there are probably not that many white guys walking around in Dubai wearing caftans. Seriously, just painting a tan on a white guy doesn’t work, y’all. Same with Native Americans.

Anyway, I digress. There’s a section on the art fact sheet, at least, on the one from Harlequin, where they ask you to include any pictures of people who resemble your characters. Like, okay, when I was filling the art fact sheet out for The Turning, I said Nathan looks like Gerard Butler. Because he so does, I’m not even kidding. But I’ve been noticing lately that either cover artists are looking more and more to celebrities for their inspiration, or there are just a lot of people walking around out there looking like fictional characters by accident.

Here’s the one that got this whole thing spinning around in my mind:

This is the latest (I think) from Susan Krinard. Lord of Legends. Apparently, the hero of this book is the King of the Unicorns. Stop right there, Susan, you had me at Unicorn. I did buy this book, you best believe I did. But you know what initially stopped me? Check out Lord o’ Legend up there in the picture. Where have I seen him before?

Holy crap, it’s famed castrato James Blunt! He’s the Lord of the Unicorns? Of course, it all makes perfect sense now! Underneath that uber-manly, troubadour exterior beats the tender heart of a mythical beast!

So, then I started thinking about other books that had really bizarre resemblances to celebrities. There were two that really stuck out to me. One, being:

David Boreanaz stalking the streets of Crimson City and…

feeding grapes to…

in The Care And Feeding Of A Brad Pitt Pirate. This one makes me wonder if it was supposed to be a Brangelina cover, and the artist just made Angie too chubby round the cheekbones.

So, has anyone else been driven to distraction by this kind of thing lately? What are your favorites?