Passion Post: Cover Art, Part III

Well, we were supposed to be spending today at Disney world, but apparently the combination of some NBA All-Star game and the Daytona 500 has turned central Florida into a logistical nightmare and has filled it with hundreds of thousands of visitors. In other words: Disney is going to be mobbed. So, we stay home. Which means, I have time to blog...

Let's wrap this whole monster up. Books I love with art I love just as much:

Incarceron and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher.

Oh, holy cow, these covers made me drool. The simple key and lock, the depth of the background with the cool collage of images, the font of the titles, the shiny...

There is nothing I don't love about these covers. And just about nothing I don't love about the stories inside! Steampunk meets sci-fi, with a dystopian feel. The characterization is awesome, the story world rich and imaginative, the plot very well-done, the writing clean. Love, love, love!

Dani Noir by Nova Ren Suma.

This is a MG novel, with voice, baby. The plot is nothing super-duper special, but it is SUCH a fun read. The main character is into classic, noir movies, and sees her life through that lens. Written in first person present, which is starting to feel overdone because so many writers think writing in that pov gives automatic voice...but it does not. First person present takes skill, and Nova Ren Suma's got it.

What I love about this cover--the black and white with that tiny splash of color. The animation style that is done perfectly for the feel of the book. The image is relevant to the story. And I love how the scene wraps around the book.

Winter by Keven Newsome.

Some of you may call "foul" on this one. It's a book published by my publisher. I edited it (well, I was one of the two main editors). Keven is the creator of New Authors' Fellowship where I was a featured author and am now an alumni.

But hear me out.

I read this manuscript long before it got published. NO, I did not actually know Keven at that point. I'd somehow friended him on FB via another friend, and he'd put it up for free on Lulu. I was simply curious. I found out while I was reading it that he'd submitted to Splashdown, but Grace had not started reading it. I knew--knew--she'd offer him a contract though. The story simply rocked. A Goth Christian who becomes a prophetess and battles a demon. I jumped at the chance to edit it.

And then when I saw what was happening with the cover art. OMG. I think I may have actually "squee"d. The girl is a friend of Keven's and his wife did the photography. An amazing artist named Holly Heisey did the  digital painting and such. The font is SO cool. The blue, the feel. And by "feel" I don't just mean atmosphere--Winter was the first Splashdown book to have a matte cover. It feels like a cross between satin and suede. (And yes, I so got matte for my cover because of that!)

A few other books/series I loved:

Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle. Love the series (although I still need to read the last one!) and the dragons are just awesomely done. I love how each is a different color scheme. I love the simplicity. And those eyes...

The Mistmantle Chronicles by M.I. McAllister. These covers took me back to my childhood. They reminded me of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, even though the style is very different. (Somehow, I remember the cover of the copy of Mrs. Frisby I had as a kid being very similar, but the copy I have now is way different and a Google image search is not giving me what I remember anywhere...sorry, mini-vent there.) These are juvenile level, btw, and unfortunately not easy to find :(.

Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull.

That's just the first three pictured there. The series has five books. All so, so fun and imaginative! I found some of the writing a little, well, annoying. The ridiculous array of dialog tags, the overuse of adverbs, and it was a bit wordy in places. BUT, read it anyway. You won't regret it.

The covers match the feel and stories, and they're just so eye-catching and flat-out well done artistically.

Alrighty then...this is getting pretty long. But I am pleased to realize I found a lot of books for which cover art and interior prose are well suited and awesome.

In the Mean Time

So, if you aren't following me on Facebook, and haven't peeked over at my other site www.findingangel.com, you may not know that the Kindle version of Finding Angel came out a couple of days ago. The print version was scheduled to release today, but the dates are not guaranteed. Sigh....

I will, of course, post on here when the print version is appears--probably in really, BIG, happy letters!

In the mean time, I wanted to share some Middle Grade / Young Adult books I've read and loved, just to get ya in the mood.

The most recent, while not fantasy, is a book called Dani Noir, by Nova Ren Suma. The author's name was enough to intrigue me, the title is just cool, and the cover cinched it. But what totally sold me on this book is the author's voice. It's first person present, which some people claim is overdone. But the truth is, what is overdone is authors using first person present poorly. Nova Ren Suma knows how to do it right, though.

The plot is straightforward--13 yr old Dani's parents have just divorced because her dad left her mom for another woman. Dani escapes her reality by watching old movies--Rita Hayworth movies, femme fatale movies--in the one, tiny theater in her tiny town.

But she soon begins to suspect something is wrong--her dad doesn't seem to be the only one betraying loved ones. There is definitely some seriousness in this book, but the humorous voice of the character Dani keeps it in balance--a balance that I think works really well. I truly enjoyed this book.

Another I really loved is The Goblin Wood by Hilari Bell. I've reviewed this book before, I believe, but it is one of my favorites. Makenna is a hedgewitch who flees her village when her mother is murdered for practicing magic. She soon finds herself in an alliance with the goblins of the woods she hides in.


The Goblin Wood is simply a well-written and interesting story with believable characters that kept me captive the entire time and made me wish there was more when I got to the end. Oh, and guess what! There is. The series continues with The Goblin Gate.

And a third, also not fantasy, is The Secret of the Rose by Sarah L. Thomson. (No, that is not misspelled--there is no "p" in her last name.) This book is set in London in the 1590s, which makes it a very odd choice for me. I'm not into historical novels at all, but I picked this book up on a whim at the library one day. The main character, Rosalind, is forced to disguise herself as a boy and take a job as a scribe for a playwright to protect herself and her younger brother while they try to get their father out of jail. Their crime--being Catholic. I really felt the time period while reading this book, without being overwhelmed by too much detail.

That's enough, I suppose. Don't want to get you too busy reading before *my* book comes out!