I’ve been dying to share my cover with all of you and I’m so happy this day has finally come. But before we all stare at the beautiful image (unless you scroll down like a mad man before reading, which I would do, okay go do it, we shall pause and wait for you to return….)

Back? Ok, then let’s start with some background information.

The cover image was taken by Heather Bowser my awesome sister and photographer extraordinaire. She’s working on her website, but for now you can just comment on how epic this photo is below.

The design/layout was done by Michelle Preast of Indie Book Covers. Obviously I love my sister and enjoyed working with her on this project, but the same goes for Michelle. I had the privilege of meeting her beautiful face at the RT Convention this past May and I was simply smitten. She was extremely easy to communicate with and definitely understood my design hopes for this cover. Overall she blew me away. I would definitely use her again in the future and if you’re looking for a cover designer I highly recommend her.

The model, aka the ankles, well that’s me. It’s sort of cool being on your own cover. I didn’t really intend for it to work out that way, but I was willing to work for free and even though I was eight months pregnant at the time you only see me from the knees down (thank God).

Everything else about the cover is intrinsic to the book and will make a lot more sense after you’ve finished reading it. I’m heavy on symbolism and imagery as a writer so I hope you all can appreciate it more once you’ve come to meet Javier, Nathan, Selah and Izzy.

Which leads me to another aspect of the cover–their names. Why did I put them on the front? Well, for several reasons. The idea came from my cover research. I wanted something different than what is currently saturating the market (another reason why I took my own photo instead of purchasing a stock image) and so I searched Indie movie posters. I spent several hours looking over different designs and realized that I was drawn to their excessive use of negative space and the overall ambiguity that most of them had. That’s when the light bulb to include their names on the cover came on. Movies do this to highlight famous actors and introduce you to the cast. So I decided to do the same. And personally I love how it came out.

I realize it’s a bit odd for a book cover, but that works well in my favor. At least I think it does. The best part is that it releases in three weeks. Squeeee!! So keep checking back as I update things and maybe give a book or two away before everyone else gets their hands on it.

SEEDS OF HATE

They said high school would be fun.
They said we would make forever friends.
They said we would have the time of our lives.

They lied.