SALVAGE Cover Reveal + ARC Giveaway

Three exciting things are happening in this post today!

1) We're revealing the final cover and release date of Alexandra Duncan's Salvage (which, by the way, has just been selected as part of the American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Spring promotion. Woo hoo!) This past June, the preliminary cover design came out on EpicReads, but Greenwillow Books has made some tweaks that make it even better.

TA-DA!

And it's coming April 1, 2014! A little more about the book,

Ava, a teenage girl living aboard the male-dominated deep space merchant ship Parastrata, faces betrayal, banishment, and death. Taking her fate into her own hands, she flees to the Gyre, a floating continent of garbage and scrap in the Pacific Ocean, in this thrilling, surprising, and thought-provoking debut novel that will appeal to fans of Across the Universe, by Beth Revis, and The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

2) Alexandra's new web site, www.alexandra-duncan.com, is going live! You can check there for updates about Salvage, events, and other news.

3) To celebrate both of these things, we're giving away an ARC of Salvage. Use the widget below to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Megan Shepherd Takes the Dare

I wanted to do something extra special for this dare, since it's been so long since I've done one, and I've so missed the public humiliation. So I decided to revisit one of my most popular previous dares, that went as follows:

Design an original cover for your book.

For the record, here are the real covers of The Madman's Daughter, and the sequel, Her Dark Curiosity, which comes out in January 2014 and is available for preorder. I just adore these covers. They're so atmospheric and classy and elegant and just beautifully photographed and designed.

I tackled this dare for the first time back in February 2012, for The Madman's Daughter, before that book even had a real cover. I came up with this gem. Lovely, no? Can't you just feel the tropical heat and tension in the air? It might not have quite the professionalism of the original, but you have to admit, it's just as classy.

For this dare, I wanted to continue with a similar graphic design, and show you my interpretation of the core story found in Her Dark Curiosity, which is inspired by The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and picks up a few months after The Madman's Daughter ends.

Ta da!

Like my first cover design, I think this one really showcases the book's strengths. There's obviously a much darker tone. There's mystery (that cloaked shadowy character in the bottom left), an atmospheric setting (Victorian London at Christmas...note the mistletoe), a hint of danger (lightning crash!), a deep and meaningful theme (the comedy and tragedy masks in the banner symbolize the duality of human nature, and also there's a really cool masquerade scene in the book), and a healthy dose of romance! My husband asked why the image was so grainy and I said that was clearly meant to be snow, but in case it was confusing, I decided to enhance the cover with lots of more obvious snow.


What do you think, does my cover design make you want to read it even more??

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Megan Shepherd is a young adult writer living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her debut novel The Madman's Daughter (Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins) is the first in a Gothic thriller trilogy. The second book in the trilogy, Her Dark Curiosity, will be released January 2014. She’d love to hear from you at her blog, Twitter, Facebook, or on Goodreads.

Today Is The Day To Get TAKEN!

by Mindy McGinnis

To misquote Norman Bates, "We all get a little jealous sometimes."

Yeah, we totally do. And before I had my cover for NOT A DROP TO DRINK, I had a serious jealous-freak going on with Erin's cover for TAKEN. You can see why.

It's beautiful, colorful, and foreboding as hell. As a librarian I took one look at it and said, "OK, my kids are going to gravitate right towards this one." And as a reader I knew that pretty packages don't always live up to the promise of the wrapping paper. But this time, there was nothing misleading.

Check out my librarian pitch of TAKEN below, then look back at the cover and tell me you don't want this in a somewhat inappropriate way.

Claysoot is not a place anyone would stay- unless they had to. The Wall keeps them in, the women, the children... but not the men. Because there aren't any.
One their eighteenth birthday the boys disappear in a flash of light. It comes with wind, and the shaking of the ground, and then they are gone. Any boys who try to escape this fate by climbing the Wall are tossed back within hours, curled into an eternal fetal position, burnt to death.

Gray Weathersby watches his older brother disappear, well aware that his time is coming soon. Even though Claysoot has little to offer beyond emotionless Pairings meant to boost birthrates, Gray isn't eager to be taken by a Heist. No one knows what comes after the Heist for the boys that disappear, but he knows if he's taken that he will never see Emma again, the only girl he's ever hoped to be Paired with.

Climbing the wall could be suicide, but the discovery of a strange note from his dead mother leads Gray to believe that there's more at work in Claysoot than he could have guessed. The Council leaders have their secrets, and now Gray has his. Armed with the letter and the breath of a chance of survival, Gray has to decide whether he'll risk climbing the Wall into the unknown, or let the certainty of the Heist take him away from Emma.

Oh, and my little jealousy problem? Yeah, that's all cleared up now. When I got my cover I went ahead and fell in love with it. Part of the reason why is because Erin and I have the same designer. Yep. We both love Erin Fitzsimmons, and you should too - because she's making bookshelves everywhere a little more beautiful, one book at a time.

So go find one of those shelves today in a bookstore, and grab up a little bit of pretty - what's underneath that gorgeous cover won't let you down!
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Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, is a post-apocalyptic survival tale set in a world where freshwater is almost non-existent, available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins September 24, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners, From the Write Angle, The Class of 2k13, The Lucky 13s & The League of Extraordinary Writers. You can also find her on Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook.

Elsie Chapman Commissions Some Cover Art

Even though I'm up for a Truth or Dare this week, I decided to do something a little bit different. Because it's my last post before 2013 and our debut year (!!!), I thought it would be interesting to do a year-end wrap up post of some sort. Cue a preteen desperate to work for extra clothes money my daughter who's always loved drawing and the idea of having her artwork officially commissioned and then put on display.

I think Gillian did a fantastic job! Each cover is clickable for a closer look. Comments are awesome and will be passed on to her. And while it would have been fantastic if she could have drawn all thirteen Thirteener covers, we'll just have to suffer along with the rest of you and wait for them to be revealed!

Up next week is Erin, so please feel free to send her some truths or dares!

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Elsie grew up in Prince George, BC, before graduating from the University of British Columbia with a BA in English Literature. She currently lives in Vancouver with her husband and two kids, where she writes to either movies on a loop or music turned up way too loud (and sometimes both at the same time). She's repped by The Chudney Agency, and her debut novel, DUALED, will be published by Random House in February, 2013. A sequel, DIVIDED, will be published February, 2014. Find her online at at her Website elsiechapman.com, her author Tumblr at elsiechapmanauthor.tumblr.com, or on Twitter!