By the year 2031, global warming cooks the planet, endless wars sweep the globe and pollution tries to finish everybody off. Science has declared re-incarnation a fact and legally sanctioned death houses have sprouted up like mushrooms in overcrowded cities. Those so-called ‘Last Resorts’ provide the paying guest with the tools and the know-how for a successful exit from life—with one simple rule: once checked in, the check-out is feet-first only. Nobody leaves a ‘Last Resort’ alive.

Before starting the collaboration, Peter Besson introduced himself as “[part] of the great unwashed army of unrepresented, unpublished authors who know in their heart they have written a book that’s begging to be discovered.” After its publication, The Last Check Out won 2nd Prize in the Del Sol Press First Novel Competition and, more importantly, also won the Grand Prize at the 6th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards.

For the cover design, our cover cooks' initial concepts combined elements of both love and death, but, while visually striking, they lacked a key ingredient: the resort itself. In the final cover design, the hotel room tag hanging from the doorknob alludes to the hotel, love and death in an iconic and clear cut fashion. The rose ornament garnishes the cover design with a sprinkle of romance, while the grunge texture of the wall next to the door suggests intrigue within a rundown hotel.