The world of publishing works in mysterious ways. Books need time to be marketed and sold well and one of the first steps toward this is finding the book’s perfect cover! (Exclamation point accidentally inserted due to excitement. Please excuse me.) Often the cover! is designed before the manuscript is even completed. (I can’t stop with the exclamation point, I’m excited, sorry.) The cover! could be in progress months and months—and months and months and months—before the book comes out. So there you could be, scruffy little writer thumping away at your laptop, working on your revision that is so imminently due you can’t even believe how the deadline crept up on you and then there… suddenly… an email from your editor containing

YOUR COVER!

I’ve talked about this moment of first cover! sight once before.

This time, I was home and had a witness to my reaction. E was here with me.

I opened the image. I stared. Blinked. Stared again. This cover is… the most beautiful, illuminating, stunning thing I could have imagined for my book. I was completely and totally floored by it. My publisher—my brilliant editor, the brilliant designer, anyone who had anything to do with this—went above and beyond what I could have hoped for. I may have maybe cried a little. Dutton: You made this author very, very happy.

I can’t wait until it’s time to show you the Imaginary Girls cover! As soon as I can, I’ll post it here!

Having it now—while writing—has really ramped up my inspiration and motivation with the manuscript. It’s a cover I want to be worthy of having. I’m now working even harder than I was before… if that’s possible!

It’s a very exciting week for Imaginary Girls. The revision is really coming along, the cover is beyond amazing, and the book suddenly popped up on Amazon today.

I even discovered it on Goodreads, so you can add it to your reading list there.

The cover! will stay secret for now, but even so, as I continue working, I have the image open beside my Word doc so I can see it. When I falter, I peek and there it is, my cover!

My cover!

I might start maybe-crying again.