Cover Talk with Cristin Terrill

Today's guest for the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) is Cristin Terrill, fellow Class of 2k13 member and author of ALL OUR YESTERDAYS.

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

None! I did for novels I wrote before All Our Yesterdays, but for some reason I would always draw a blank with this story whenever anyone asked me. Ultimately I think that was for the best, though. 

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

My editor told me about some ideas she had for the cover very early on, just a month or two after the book was acquired. But the serious discussions and comp process didn’t start for another six months or so. 

Did you have any input on your cover?

We went through lots and lots of concepts and cover comps. We probably went through a dozen ideas before we landed on the cover that appears on the ARC of the book, and then that cover was rejected by Barnes and Noble, so we went back to the drawing board. 

All in all, I probably saw at least thirty different concepts over a span of seven or eight months, and Hyperion was great about asking for my opinion along the way and incorporating lots of the changes I asked for at different points in the process. I still really love some of those covers we ultimately didn’t go with.

How was your cover revealed to you?

After many, many months and a zillion different comps, I got an email from my editor saying that they had a completely new cover based on a totally different concept than anything they’d tried before and that the team at Disney was convinced this was finally the one. I thought they were working on something totally different, but the clock cover had snuck in and surprised everyone. Supposedly when they revealed it at the sales meeting, everyone gasped.

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

It had been decided that Hyperion would reveal my cover during a panel at BEA, and we were scrambling right up until the last minute to get it finished in time. 

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

Not very! I saw the final cover for the first time about fourteen hours before it was revealed at BEA.

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

Haha, no. Especially because I was asleep for most of those fourteen hours. 

What surprised you most about the process?

How difficult it was. I obviously had a particularly troubled cover journey, and I never could have imagined it would take so long or be so stressful and emotionally draining. But I’m so grateful that Hyperion continued to push for a something they thought would be really great instead of giving up and settling for something just okay when the process got tough.

You’ve got international editions coming out. Tell us about your foreign covers.

Seeing the foreign covers starting to come in has been so much fun for me, because they’re all wildly different and seem to want to emphasize different aspects of the story. Here are the have covers for the UK, Dutch (I Am Not Me), and Bulgarian editions. And the German cover, which I adore and can’t wait to see in person, was just released last week. This is Time Splitter:

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

Just try to let go! It really is completely out of your control, so do your best not to stress over it. Indulge freely in your vice of choice if necessary.

Blogging Is Dead

That's the word on the street, anyway.

It used to be the first question that came up when social media was mentioned - do you have a blog? Now I'm asked more often if I have a Twitter or Facebook... although I'll add that the latter is quickly falling off the inquiry list.

The answer is yes, I do. I have all of them. I also have a YouTube channel, Pinterest, Instagram and even a LinkedIn. Sure, a couple of those are virtual cemeteries when it comes to traffic, but because they exist, I have one. Some are more work than others, some are easily fed by content from each other, and some I can get lost in for hours looking at videos of cats.

But the blog? This blog - the one you're reading right now.

This is work. Real work. This is me talking to you about writing life on Mondays, sharing how other authors achieved their success on Tuesdays, diving into etymology on Wednesdays, taking a little tour of my head on Thursdays, doing a virtual librarian book talk on Fridays, and offering up query critiques on Saturdays.

And everyone says it's dead. They say no one reads blogs anymore because it's easier to look at gifs and easily digestible 140 characters of wisdom than read a whole paragraph. For the most part, I am seeing this pan out in the numbers. The group blogs that I contribute to are seeing less traffic and comments have nose-dived everywhere. Interaction is a thing of the past and even giveaways aren't pulling in the clicks like they used to.

So this makes me sad, because I like blogging. I'm one of those people that does it because I enjoy it, not because I have massive amounts of followers or because my traffic consistently has four digit hits daily. It doesn't. In fact,  if I told you what my average traffic is like you would advise me to stop wasting my time.

And maybe I should. But I'm not going to, and I'll tell you why. Underneath my snail-house exterior I'm a complete softie for those people who come up to me at book fairs and signings to tell me how much they like my blog. If you ever see me and you feel the same way, say so, and you'll get to see a real smile - one that doesn't flash out that often. The one that pushes my cheeks up so far that my eyes practically close.

That's because this blog is work, like I said, but it's a work of the heart. My novels are too, and I'll gladly accept compliments on those as well. But if I'm being totally honest I write my novels for me, and I blog for you.

So tell me that it means something to you, and you'll make my day.

Thursday Thoughts

Thoughts lately...

1) I tweeted about this yesterday, but it's still on my mind. Kissing is weird. It goes, "I like you. I'm going to put my mouth on your mouth. Hold still." Seriously - who had this idea in the first place??! It's unnatural. This is why I don't write romance.

2) All the tension and connection and intentions are in our eyes anyway. Honestly it would make more sense to rub eyeballs.

3) So if you follow my Twitter you know I've had a really serious middle ear infection lately, that has had me looking at ear diagrams. The human ear is one effed up thing. Seriously. If you took it out of the body you wouldn't know what it was. Like if you were walking the woods and there was an eyeball on the ground, stalk and all, you'd still be like, "Oh look, an eyeball." If you were walking in the woods and came across an ear you'd be like, "What is this alien snail baby??!?!"