Cover Reveal: India Edition

Hi everyone!

Excited to share a new cover reveal today--still for CHAINED, but for the Indian edition. I announced a few months ago that Penguin India would be publishing the book in January 2014, and now there's a final cover.

I'd talked a little with the editors about the new cover design, and we wanted the new cover to feature both characters, Hastin and his elephant Nandita, like the original cover does. They mentioned too that they planned to do something with brighter colors for their market. I love the work that illustrator Joy Gosney and the design department at Penguin India did. Here's how the cover turned out:

Isn't it lovely?

And take a look inside--how adorable is that elephant footprint on the page numbers?

Looking forward to seeing the real live book!

Cover Reveal & Giveaway: So Happy I'm Flinging Poo

...And that's even more fun than it sounds.

A couple weeks ago I got to see the cover art for my midgrade novel CHAINED, which comes out next May, and I've been dying to share it with everyone. I mean really, everyone. I had to stop myself from running up to strangers at the gas station to show them the picture on my phone.

I was not-so-patiently waiting for word from the publisher that I could go ahead and show the cover, and then I got home Tuesday afternoon to find these guys on the front porch:

Well, hello there

Aren't they gorgeous? Until those advance copies arrived I didn't know what the tagline on the cover would be; if you can't see it in the picture, it reads "Deep in the jungle, a young elephant keeper plots an escape from a dangerous circus."

Here's a picture of the cover art itself--this is from before the tagline was added, but it shows the colors more clearly:

I might have hugged it a few times. The awesome people at MacMillan asked the super-talented Chris Sheban to do the cover illustration. When I first saw the many rough sketches Chris sent of his ideas for the cover, I knew I'd be thrilled with the result.

And here's the back!

Nice close-up of the elephant's sweet face. And the tagline there looked familiar--back when I was querying agents, the book description in the query letter ended with "...the two friends discover the bond that links them together is stronger than any shackle, lock, or chain."

Now for even more fun stuff. Before I had a cover, I made some business card bookmarks using card stock made from elephant poop.

Who knew elephant poop could be so adorable? And if you get some of these bookmarks and your friends don't believe you when you tell them what they're made of, well there it is, labeled on the back:

And as soon as I got the cover art I ordered some stickers and miniature business cards from Moo:

The Moo cards are about half the size of a business card & make cute little bookmarks

Also I made bookplates on Office Depot's website by uploading the book cover to one side of a blank mailing label:

Here's where I totally steal an idea from Sarah Prineas, because I loved the contest she did for Anne Nesbet's CABINET OF EARTHS cover reveal. So, if you'd like to win some of the stuff I've shown here, plus a a blank journal made of elephant poop paper or an advance copy of CHAINED, leave a comment and mention a page number from 3 to 242; I'll reply with a line from that page of the book. Include your email address too so I can notify you if you win. When the contest ends next Thursday, I'll randomly pick two winners. (U.S. addresses only).

Here's package 1, with two of the handmade elephant poop bookmarks, one elephant poop bookmark from Rainbow Gifts, three signed bookplates, two cover art stickers, two Moo cards, and a blank journal made of elephant poop paper from elephantdungpaper.com:

The paper in the blank journal is a little rough for writing on (must be all that hay), but I think it'd make a great scrapbook. The silver square on the front is a metal elephant medallion. The handmade bookmarks might be different colors than those pictured here, but I have a wide variety of card stock, so I can probably make some using your favorite colors.

And pack 2, with one of the Rainbow Gifts bookmarks, three of the handmade bookmarks, two Moo cards, three signed bookplates, two cover art stickers, and a signed ARC of CHAINED:

Quick rules for entering again: leave a page number from 3-242 in the comments. Contest ends Thursday, November 3rd at 11:59 PM.

Good luck! Hope you all love the cover as much as I do.

That's What (S)he said: Weekly Round-Up

I was planning on doing a post this week about all the awesome book covers that Apocalypsies members have been able to share lately, but Kimberly Sabatini did it so well that I'll just point everyone to her post! It's so exciting to see everyone's covers. (And I just got my first email from my editor last week about what kinds of book covers I like, so hopefully I'll see some cover art soon!)

I've done a couple of posts about Twitter--a tweetorial and one about lists--but I'm always finding things I didn't know. Galleycat had an article this week about the best times to post on Twitter, and I found some of it surprising, like that weekends are a good time to tweet. I don't usually tweet much on the weekends because it seems like Twitter's pretty slow then.

And in "News I find really weird and amusing," Anthony Weiner isn't the only one getting in trouble for sexting lately--even the Amish are getting in on the action. I can't help wondering what would bring about the shunning first--sending the naughty messages or sending them via cell phone. Am I wrong to be sort of impressed that an Amish guy figured out how to obtain and use a camera phone? Now I'm dying to see a bumper sticker that reads, "If this buggy's a-rockin', don't ye come a-knockin'."

Speaking of bumper stickers, I saw this one a few days ago:

Well, good to know they're not eating a cheeseburger inside the giant SUV.

And speaking of cows, here's a really smart one leading a bovine Great Escape:



For my weekly posts I'll start including some book recommendations. It seems like every day lately I've been reading a real book, an e-book, and listening to an audiobook in the car. Earlier this year I wrote about wanting to listen to more audiobooks, and I've found that they're a great way for me to catch up on some books I hadn't read when they were first released. (I'm not cleaning my house more often like I'd predicted, though.) Now I'm listening to Pretties, the second book in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series. Last week I listened to Elizabeth Scott's Something, Maybe, and loved that one too--nicely flawed characters in a story I didn't want to end. Loaded on the Kindle app on the iPhone now is P.J. Hoover's fabulous novel Solstice, (Persephone in a global warming crisis). Favorites I've read in book form lately are Ashes by Ilsa Bick and The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab (who should give workshops on how to pick the best words to create the perfect image.) Those books aren't out just yet, but look for them when they're released later this year.

And how do you like my adorable new blog banner? The custom banner was an item I won in the Help Write Now auction, from Jessica of Urraca Studios. I keep looking at it like it's a new baby.

Have a great week, everyone!