Whether you’re a romance reader or not, you’re likely familiar with the concept of romance novel covers. No matter the subgenre, shirtless men often play a large part, whether they’re wearing period-adjacent pants (historical), baring their vampire fangs (paranormal), or holding a prop related to their athletic career (sports). This latter category arguably takes shirtless-ness the most seriously, for obvious reasons: The most convincing cover athletes are the ones who are totally jacked.
No one knows this better than Jaci Burton, author of the sports-heavy Play by Play series, which features heroes who play baseball, football, hockey, and more. Back in April, she visited the set of the cover shoot for Shot on Gold (out Feb. 13, 2018), the 14th novel in the Play by Play by series and her 78th book overall. Though she’s been writing romance for more than a decade, she had never actually watched a cover get made. As she puts it, covers aren’t her “area of expertise,” so she usually gives the art department whatever relevant appearance details they need and just lets them do their thing. “Here’s a sport, put a hot guy on the cover,” she jokes.
For Shot on Gold, Jaci’s publicist enlisted a personal trainer named Derek to stand in for Will “Mad Dog” Madigan, a hockey player who falls in love with a figure skater while competing in the Olympics. At the time of the shoot, though, Derek didn’t know any of this — Jaci was still writing the book, and no plot details had been released. He’d also never modeled for a romance cover before, and ended up with the gig because the aforementioned publicist encountered him at the gym and thought he might be the right man for the job.
Over the course of several hours, photographer Claudio Marinesco shot Derek holding various combinations of hockey props, including a stick, a helmet, gold medal, and gloves. When I arrived, Derek was wearing hockey pants, but within a few minutes he’d changed into jeans and cycled back through the prop rotation. Pants choice, as it happens, is not as important as the location of the pants on the body. “The pants have to sit low enough on the hips to show the V,” said one onlooker.
As you can see from the finished product below, Derek and Claudio got the fit of the pants just right — the V is definitely visible. Jaci said she planned to incorporate some of Derek’s real tattoos into Shot on Gold, both because they’d “look amazing on the cover” and because they’re “very sexy.” Derek had never read a romance novel but said he planned to read Shot on Gold as soon as it comes out. His mom, a big romance fan, is also pretty excited for her son’s debut and asked him to send her photos from the shoot. He said he hadn’t thought about the fact that women would be fantasizing about his torso while reading this book, but once he did consider it, it didn’t bother him. “There are worse things to have happen to you.”
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