Brave New Love: Cover Reveal

Behold the drop-dead gorgeous cover of my March release: Brave New Love: 15 Dystopian Tales of Desire.

When Carrie sent this to me over Thanksgiving, I almost fell over. This is the third (of four, thus far) anthologies that Carrie and I have done together, and we used to joke about our names being on a cover together.

Ta-Da!

This is the first anthology I’ve ever done where my name has been on the cover. And I’m in such fabulous company! Carrie! And Jeanne Du Prau (City of Ember) and William Sleator! William Sleator, guys. I read him when I was a teenager. I was so sorry to hear of his recent passing. In fact, the last time I was home in Florida, I dug out some of my old William Sleator titles. I know most people love The House of Stairs for its creepy dystopian goodness, but I love The Spirit House, which is…. hmmm. It’s a paranormal romance, but not the way they do them these days. And it has a Thai twist.

The collection is edited by the excellent (and phenomenally enterprising) Paula Guran. Here is the list of authors: Jeanne Du Prau, William Sleator, Neal Shusterman, Carrie Ryan, Diana Peterfreund, Carrie Vaughn, Maria V. Snyder, Nisi Shawl, Kiera Cass, Jesse Karp, Seth Cadin, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Steve Berman, Amanda Downum, John Shirley, and Elizabeth Bear.

You heard it here first, people. Actually, this is the ONLY place you’ve heard it, as the listing for this book is pretty much wrong EVERYWHERE, from its title (most places say it’s “thirteen” tales, when clearly, it’s fifteen) to its release date (March, not December), to the list of authors included in the collection. This is the right list. I know, because I’ve read the book.

And it’s AWESOME.

(Actually, since I just spent ten minutes learning how to edit Goodreads entries, it’s right at Goodreads, too.)

I play this game whenever I get my anthology covers, trying to imagine if they could secretly be illustrating the story I wrote for the antho. Not so much for Zombies vs Unicorns and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, vol. 5, because there are neither zombies nor spaceports in “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn”, which is about a suburban girl and her pet monster. However, I liked to claim that this cover from Kiss Me Deadly was appropriately veil-y and could, theoretically, be illustrating either my unicorn-hunting nun or her fine lady costar:

Don’t tell me those are wings. They’re veils. VEILS, I tell you!

But there is no imagining that the image on the cover of Brave New Love illustrates what’s happening in my story, “Foundlings.” First of all, that girl looks nothing like any of the characters in my story. And a distant city never gets hit my a magenta lightning storm.

I cannot, however, speak for the things that happen in other people’s stories.

For the record, “Foundlings” is a stand-alone story. It does not connect to the unicorn books, nor to For Darkness Shows the Stars. (Since the anthology was originally scheduled for release last summer, I thought that was too soon to introduce anything about my new world.) However, and this is some fun trivia, it is one of the oldest ideas I’ve ever sold, since I originally got the idea for the world that informed the events of “Foundlings” back in 2002.

Also, “Foundlings” is the first thing I wrote when I came back from maternity leave. This will be amusing to you later.