Cover Talk with Vivi Barnes

Today's guest for the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) is Vivi Barnes, author of OLIVIA TWISTED (Entangled Teen), a contemporary re-imagining of Oliver Twist, debuting November 5.

Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted your cover to look like?

Yes. I’m not exactly a graphic designer, though, so what I had in my head would probably make designers roll their eyes. My friend Jen suggested the binary code in the background, since the Monroe Street kids are hackers, and that kind of stuck with me (and ended up on the cover). I originally thought I wanted just to have the image of the girl on the front, maybe with the house on Monroe Street in the background or something. Maybe with a backpack next to her. And a set of school lockers. And a laptop. And a locket. And…

Okay, see? I don’t have the eye for this. At least I didn’t wish for Comic Sans font, so maybe there’s some hope for me.

How far in advance from your pub date did you start talking covers with your house?

As soon as I signed, I received a lovely welcome packet from the publisher, and part of that was a form for cover art. It was rather lengthy, asking not only what I envisioned, but other covers I admired, books I’d compare my book to, things I definitely didn’t want (I think I pretty much asked for no naked people). I was surprised at how lengthy the form was.

Did you have any input on your cover?

Definitely! One of the wonderful things about Entangled is that they ask for author input on the cover design. Besides the extensive cover art form I filled out, they sent me the draft of the cover from the designer. That was my opportunity to request changes or approve. And I loved it! It had the look and feel of Olivia Twisted. There was a change to the guy model on the cover (and believe me, the guy we landed on is totally Z), but Kelley York (multi-talented designer) completely exceeded my expectations.

How was your cover revealed to you?

Via e-mail. I was so nervous, and I had just finished lunch with a friend when I got the cover. I spent the next minutes on the phone with my agent discussing it. Then my agent gave mine and her feedback to the publisher. It was a pretty amazing, surreal experience.

Was there an official "cover reveal" date for your art?

Oh, yes! We had so many wonderful bloggers sign up to do the big reveal in March, and we did iTunes gift card giveaways, too.

How far in advance of the reveal date were you aware of what your cover would look like?

I received my cover “draft” about a month before my reveal date. They went through tweaks and such, then set up the cover reveal with bloggers, so it took about a month. But they had it to me about nine months before the book debut, so I thought that was really fast.

Was it hard to keep it to yourself before the official release?

Um…yes. A printout of my cover might’ve accidentally landed on my desk at work. You know, so I could stare at it all the time (which is kind of what I did). And my husband and closest friends had to endure me showing them over and over and over.

I hate keeping my own secrets!

What surprised you most about the process?

That they actually listened to what I wanted. I had heard horror stories about authors and their covers, but Entangled really works with their authors to give them covers that make them proud.

Any advice to other debut authors about how to handle cover art anxiety?

Sometimes you have in your head exactly what your cover is going to look like (whether you realize it or not), and when you first see the cover, your first thought might be to criticize (“This isn’t the guy in my book!” “The colors are too bright!” “I wanted red font instead of gray!”).

The best way to handle it is to look at it, then step back, wait a little while, open it up and look again, rinse and repeat. Let it soak in. Give yourself a day or two, then gather your thoughts and provide them to your agent/editor/cover designer. And trust that the publisher knows what kinds of covers sell.

A PSA on Water-Witching -- Witch Not Included

Very soon Not A Drop to Drink will be finding its way to bookstores and libraries, but before that happens I wanted to talk a little bit about a quality that one of my characters possess - the ability to find water underground by using a forked stick that reacts to the presence of the water.

It's been called dousing, and also water-witching. In the world of Not A Drop to Drink, where clean water is rare and fiercely protected, those with the ability to find water are valuable people. I chose to use the term water-witching for the skill, in an attempt to draw a parallel between the well-known witch hunts of early America and it's European predecessors. 

Well... that might have been a mistake.

Some of my early reviewers seemed a little baffled that I threw a paranormal angle into a very stark and realistic survival tale. The honest truth is that I didn't intend it that way, as I personally don't view dousing as a paranormal activity. 

I live in a very rural part of Ohio. The vast majority of us have our own wells, and most of us had a douser find it for us. I've always viewed dousing as an ability that some people have, no different than a double-jointed elbow or being ambidextrous. To me, being able to douse water was part of being closely tied to the earth and nature. Water witching is about being connected to this world, not a different one.

I'm also aware that the efficacy of dousing is something that's debatable, which doesn't surprise me. However, for what it's worth, I do think it's an effective way of finding water, and recent events in Africa back me up on that. Even more interesting, the article I link to here from Popular Mechanics includes a scientific theory that successful dousers are perhaps reacting to subtle electromagnetic gradients that result when natural fissures and water flows create changes in the electrical properties of rock and soil.

And while I'm as big of a fan as the paranormal as the next X-Files fan, it's that kind of science-based thinking that makes me buy into dousing as a skill, and consequently that's the angle I approached it from when writing Not A Drop to Drink.

Wednesday WOLF - Everything But The Kitchen Sink

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

You've probably heard the phrase everything but the kitchen sink, but did you ever wonder where it came from? Even though the phrase gained a lot of popularity post WWII, it was in use before that as a common enough idiom to be referenced in newspapers. That particular phrase originally referred to when people moved to a different household, often stripping down their current residence, taking any and everything with them they could carry. Doors and carpets often walked out the door, but kitchen sinks were made of porcelain then - heavy, awkward, and not to mention hooked up to the pipes. Therefore, the phrase came to be used as a reference to a very thorough, wall-to-wall, all-encompassing, no holds barred brand of everything.

So... because I'm a bit of a geek (OK, a huge bit of a geek), my geek-brain worked away at this and came out of it thinking thus -- plumbing is often called waterworks, so what if "the works" came about in connection with the kitchen sink reference to mean everything?

Eh? What say you?