The “Blue Hour” (from the French l’heure bleue) refers to the period of twilight, shortly before sunrise or after sunset, when the sun is below the horizon but its light still scatters through the upper atmosphere, giving the sky a deep, cool blue cast rather than the orange and red of golden hour.
In literary and artistic contexts, “the blue hour” becomes less a precise atmospheric phenomenon and more a symbolic threshold: a liminal space between day and night, presence and absence, clarity and mystery. That’s where I’ve been for the past ten years. That’s where I’m taking you until November 7th and possibly beyond.
There are three covers for It Could All Be So Simple, three times I tried to get it just right, and the first looks nothing like the other two. It was the beginning, and I didn’t know what I was doing, so I left it in the hands of a publisher. Kreyol Craft out of New York provided such beautiful hand-drawn artwork, and while I would probably use it differently today, that process taught me so much in terms of publishing and collaboration. I don’t think my creative voice in the sense of design was loud enough yet. I didn’t push back enough or ask what was possible. That became my lesson going forward.
The second edition cover was made during COVID with a self-shot photo, a $10 paper background from Office Depot, a willing model, and Canva. I was excited to do something new and give the book fresh life. The cover is pink and bright, and Rae Rush is standing. Everything about it says forward motion: brightness and light in a time when things may have been difficult and uncertain. The glitch effect looks like an image you’d need 3D glasses to see clearly. It reminds us that sometimes we should lean more on how God sees us through His lenses and not on the fragmented pieces of ourselves that we can see, and that those pieces all tell a story of our wholeness. That’s what makes us real. This cover taught me what perseverance, limited resources, and willingness could accomplish when you have a vision in mind.
Ten years later, the cover is blue and moody, and Rae Rush is sitting, reminding us that sometimes, oftentimes, life requires rest. Life will throw curveballs that require regrouping.
This time around I asked for help with shooting the cover, and it truly became a labor of love and collaboration. We even dropped Easter eggs on and in the cover to honor Nikki, my sister who passed away. You may hear me refer to her frequently in these Blue Hour recollections.
What stayed with me from the anniversary shoot was how far we’ve both come and how much growing we still have to do. Growth changes your perception. Loss changes your perception. The camera caught it.
The glitch effect appears on both covers. It’s the constant. Everything else changed: the color, the expression, the posture. The pink cover marks the space I was in then, and the blue one marks the space I’m in now.
A cover is a snapshot of a season. This one is the one I’m in.
As always, I’ll leave you with this:
Ecclesiastes 3:1 KJV
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”
I encourage you to read verses 1–8.
Love,
Komplex Simplicity
To the reader, I love you.
To the creative, I am inspired by you.
To the thinker, I am learning from you.
To the doer, I am encouraged by your fearlessness.
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