Most novels put the author’s name on the cover and leave it there. That is enough. The title tells you what you are picking up, and the author’s name tells you who wrote it.

I could do the same thing. I could put R. L. Alexander at the bottom of every cover, let it do its job, and move on.

Instead, my covers say: An R. L. Alexander Novel.

It means almost the same thing, but it does not feel the same to me. That difference is the point.

Before the Novel

My mind was trained by film before it was trained by literature. I went to school for film production, and that shaped how I think about stories. I think in scenes, images, pacing, cuts, reveals, and the feeling an audience gets before anybody says a word.

I know scripts. I know story. I know how an image can tell you something before the dialogue starts.

Learning how to write a novel took a different kind of work.

I had ideas I wanted to turn into books, but I had to learn how novels actually worked. I watched classes, studied craft, read about structure, and spent years trying to understand how to make the stories in my head stand on the page the way I could already see them.

Some stories take their time. I started one book when my child was two years old, and I am still working on it. I have rewritten it five or six times because I have never wanted to force it into being finished before it is ready. I know that story needs to exist. I just have to keep finding the right way to tell it.

That background is why I think about my books a little like films. I do not want the cover to be only packaging. I want it to feel like the opening image of the story. I want the title, the design, and the credit at the bottom to work together before a reader has opened the book.

A Credit That Stayed With Me

A major influence on that came from Spike Lee.

Growing up, I loved seeing the words “A Spike Lee Joint” on one of his films. It was not the standard way to present a movie. Usually, audiences get “A Film by” somebody, or another familiar credit. But “A Spike Lee Joint” felt like a stamp. It was personal, direct, and unmistakable.

You knew whose voice you were stepping into.

That stayed with me. It was cool because it was not trying to sound like everybody else. It was a small rejection of the usual way things were done, but it still made complete sense once you saw it. In fact, after seeing it enough, the traditional version could feel strange.

When I began thinking about my own covers, I wanted something with that same feeling. I wanted my name right there at the bottom, connected to the kind of story the reader was holding.

At first, I thought about using “A R. L. Alexander Novel.”

Then I had to stop myself.

It looked right at a glance, but it was not correct. Since R is pronounced “ar,” the phrase needs to be An R. L. Alexander Novel.

That may seem like a small detail, but it mattered to me. If I was going to step outside the usual presentation, I still wanted to do it properly.

Once I found the right wording, it clicked.

“An R. L. Alexander Novel” is my version of a credit card. It is not there because my name alone is not enough. It is there because I want the book to announce itself as mine.

This is a novel. This is the story I chose to tell. This is the world I built. This is the voice behind it.

I want that line to become something readers recognize over time. Not because every book I write will look the same or tell the same kind of story, but because I want there to be a connection between them.

Whether I am writing Southern historical fiction, a hard Western investigation on Yer, or something completely different, I want readers to know there is an authorial point of view behind it.

That point of view comes from the stories I love, the films that shaped me, the games I have spent hours inside, and the things I still want to see more of in fiction.

It is a small line of text, but it reminds me to stand behind the work. It reminds me that every book carries some part of where I came from, what I studied, what I loved growing up, and what I am still trying to create.

Representation is part of that, even though it is not the entire reason for the line on the cover.

Growing up, there were plenty of books with strong protagonists who did not look like me. I could still love those stories. I could still learn from them. But I also knew what it felt like to want more characters at the center of a story who could look like someone like me.

That is one reason I write.

I write about what I dream about, what I want to see, and the kinds of stories I wished I could have found as a child. I want Black protagonists to exist naturally in every kind of story: Westerns, fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, historical fiction, and worlds that have not even been imagined yet.

I do not want readers to see a Black lead and assume the story can only be about one kind of experience. I want them to see that character and understand that anybody can fit that role.

If I have to write a thousand stories with Black faces at the center before that feels ordinary, then I will keep writing them.

“An R. L. Alexander Novel” will not do that work by itself. It is only a line of text.

But it is my line.

I could just put my name at the bottom of the cover. A lot of authors do, and there is nothing wrong with it.

But this feels more like me.