Tag Archives: Cover reveal

Joy In A Time Of Darkness

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When I drafted this blog, it was in celebration of the cover reveal of my second book, The Way The Light Bends, and aggravation at yet another sodding storm. But now as I revise it, there are much bigger things happening in the world than British weather or book covers. Hard, heart-breaking, scary, overwhelming things. I don’t know what to say about Ukraine, or the tory government, or the new IPCC report other than that I wish I could do more than I am. I wish the world was doing more. What I am going to talk about instead is something that’s been on my mind –

Should we celebrate things when doing so feels like a travesty?

I think I am not alone in struggling with this. People are dying because of evil men. We are worn thin by heartbreak and fear that are both so large they are almost incomprehensible. It feels wrong, narcissistic, or simply too much of an emotional effort to be joyous as well.

Going back to storms, did you know we find wind stressful because it makes it harder to detect predators approaching (all that noise & moving vegetation)? It’s a fear response stemming directly from our inner rabbits.

The pandemic, the increasingly inhumane government, Putin, climate breakdown, they are all like the wind – a background (if we’re lucky) presence that creates stress, raised vigilance (hello, doomscrolling), a sense of vulnerability and powerlessness. And even when there is very little we can actually do to control those things, the stress lingers. It embeds itself in our minds and muscles, and wears us down.

So should we celebrate things like book cover reveals, nice reviews, publications? How about birthdays, World Book Day, seeing your friend for the first time in two years? Those things all deserve celebration, but doing so feels so bloody wrong doesn’t it?

Dealing with these crises with strength and empathy, though, requires endurance. And that comes from resilience. If we who are on the sidelines are too drained, too paralysed by powerlessness, we will inure ourselves to the bad news because that’s the only way to cope. Sound familiar? So how do we build resilience in ourselves that allows us to fight for change, to do what is within our power, to care about people beyond our own small circles?

I think we build resilience through joy and hope, just as much as through grit and determination. I think we stave off apathy through reminders that there’s an alternative to despair. There’s endocrinological evidence to back that up, but I’m too low on spoons to be specific. Basically, good things give us bursts of ‘feel good’ hormones, which energise and stabilise us.

So here’s my thinking:

  • First we do what we can to help create change – we donate, we vote & petition, we lift up voices.
  • Second we find a reason to smile, because if nothing else, nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
  • And third we create art because we need beauty, and we need stories that speak to a better world.

It doesn’t feel like much, does it? And in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t. Plus it definitely doesn’t remove the taint of heartlessness to the idea of celebrating something lovely. But we are not built for despair so maybe sharing joy means helping each other stay the course.

Black and white photo of a figure in a black cloak looking out to sea.

We revealed the cover of my next novel, The Way The Light Bends on Tuesday. I am so damn proud of where I am and so honoured at the support I’ve been shown by readers and publishing folk. I love this cover enormously and am so excited about All The Good Things I have happening.

I am also in quite a lot of pain, and deeply heartsore, worried and exhausted. I know I’m not alone. I also know I’d love to see your good news, I’d love to be happy for you.

Is that okay, if we do it on top of direct action? Or does it detract from the seriousness of everything else? Maybe, but do we need a little bit of … not distraction but brightness? I think so. It gives me the energy for hope, which is no small achievement.

I don’t really have an answer to the question I started with. It feels wrong to celebrate things right now. But it feels bleak to refuse to do so in the belief that somehow silence is preferable to a little shared beauty. What do you think?

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a photograph of a sunflower.

Cover Reveal for This Is Our Undoing

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Did you see it on the homepage? Isn’t it pretty? Just in case, and because I want to, here it is as a spread so you can see the way the curlicues in the physical book will extend over to the back – a facet I am particularly fond of!

Cover spread of This Is Our Undoing. Art by Daniele Serra

I wanted to talk a little bit about the process of developing a cover, as it was something Francesca at Luna was lovely enough to involve me in and it was a genuinely fascinating process.

The first stage for me was when Francesca told me they had approached an artist about the cover art (see Luna’s blog about it here). This happened way earlier than I expected and so I hadn’t had a chance to mention some of my thoughts on a cover, or to ask what my level of involvement would be. I was, if I’m completely honest, a little nervous at this point, worried that the artwork would really, really not be what I wanted. There was one thing in particular I was not wanting, and one thing I was…

The Not Wanting was human figures or faces. I love these on other covers, I have nothing against people’s faces in general, and I cannot even articulate why this felt so fundamental to me. I think part of it is not wanting to see how someone else visualises ‘my’ characters, and also not wanting readers to go into the book with someone else’s versions in their minds. The funny thing about publishing a book is that it ceases to be yours. But I do believe it ceases to be any one person’s, so I guess I was just leery of having one person define the characters for others. Does that make sense? Possibly not.

The Wanting on the other hand was (ironically) a different figure … a fox. I know. Isn’t that awesome? Why I wanted a fox is tricky to explain without spoilers so I’ll just say this: That to me foxes came to symbolise that dichotomy of fierceness and fragility which I think lies at the heart of a lot of my characters. They also capture a sense of the wild – the intangibility of the forest and the night. Plus they are cool. There is no carnivore more adaptable or resilient, few as floofy, and none that can pounce into snow banks with such perfection.

So, as should now be clear, when my publisher sent me through the artwork … I was stunned. Because without knowing, she had given me exactly what I had been hoping for. She said she had mentioned poetry and darkness, the fox and the forest to Daniele Serra (find him here), and I realised two things – that she saw the very same heart in the book as I did, and that seeing beautiful art that is going to be ON MY ACTUAL BOOK makes me cry.

So we have a beautiful piece of art that it would be sacrilegious to stick words all over … and then we started sticking words all over it. This was the part of the process that I was deeply involved with, and I can only be grateful that Francesca was so patient with my (many) suggested tweaks, minor worries and last-minute second-guessing. We settled on a font pretty quickly because squiggles. Then it was all about placement, and man, are there a lot of possible ways to position words on a page. A. Lot. And then, just when you think you’ve nailed it, you have to do the hardback version (I am still very excited to have a hardback version), and then an ebook version (as you can see above, the physical version has curlicues passing over the spine, which in an ebook 2D version looks a little odd. So back to the shuffling words and squiggles (and more last-minute second-guessing), until we had the version you can see on the homepage.

THEN I got a little carried away putting together pretty graphics like the one on the homepage, and the ones I’ll be sharing on Twitter and Instagram. But the story of that particular procrastination device/learning curve is for another post. Let me just finish by saying that it is an honour to have such beautiful art on my book, and seeing it makes the whole seem so much more real and precious. Yes, there may have been tears at seeing the final versions too, and also some slight dancing.

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