{"id":1200,"date":"2021-01-07T23:31:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T04:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2021-01-15T23:19:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T04:19:43","slug":"tidepool-cover-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/tidepool-cover-reveal\/","title":{"rendered":"TIDEPOOL Cover Reveal!"},"content":{"rendered":"

So part of the fun of having your first novel published is seeing how it\u2019s going to look when it\u2019s an actual finished book. Nothing will prepare you for what an amazing, surreal thing this is.<\/p>\n

The galleys look\u00a0like every other book you’ve ever seen on bookstore and library shelves, but this is\u00a0your<\/i> story from your head, and people who don\u2019t know you are going to hold it in their hands and read it just like you\u2019ve read books by new authors your whole life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whew. It\u2019s wild.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the cover. A\u00a0cover is wildly<\/em> important. A bad or amateurish-looking one can turn prospective readers off and hurt your book\u2019s prospects. Long\u00a0before I signed with Parliament House, I had nightmares about getting terrible covers from other publishers. Seriously. There was one bad dream with some girl in a Half-Pint Ingalls dress standing next to a well and holding a bucket, none of which bore the slightest relevance to anything that happens in Tidepool.\u00a0<\/em>It was just awful.<\/p>\n

I know Parliament House does some stunning covers, so I wasn\u2019t too worried. But I was so curious.\u00a0<\/span>What image would they design to sum my\u00a0entire novel up and make someone put down the cash to read the whole thing?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I first signed with Parliament House, Shayne Leighton, who owns PH\u00a0and designs\u00a0their covers, solicited ideas from me. I sent her an image I\u2019d seen on DeviantArt<\/a> of a feminine sea serpent rising through ocean water, about to accost two unsuspecting fishermen. Something along those lines might\u00a0work, I told her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shayne did not use my idea. And I\u2019m glad<\/i>, because what she did was so much cooler.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Cover by Shayne Leighton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This cover has a very old-timey elegance, and the tentacles should give you some idea of what you\u2019re going to read about. And right smack in the middle of everything, as she should be, is my woman in black, Mrs. Ada Oliver.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And there are skulls! I adore\u00a0skulls. Even though Ada doesn\u2019t wear a skull ring in the novel, I love it that she\u2019s wearing one on the cover, because I have one just like it and it feels like there\u2019s a little bit of me in that woman. (Shayne didn\u2019t know about my ring; it\u2019s just a happy coincidence.)<\/p>\n

Response to the cover on social media\u00a0has been wonderful and I noticed that my Amazon sales rank jumped up, which means it’s doing its job.<\/p>\n

And the next stop? The book’s release on August 3rd. If you haven’t already grabbed your copy, you can get one here<\/a>. (A print version will be available eventually.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So part of the fun of having your first novel published is seeing how it\u2019s going to look when it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,4],"tags":[12,38,40,39,5,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1213,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions\/1213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}