Okay, a little bit of ado. You see, I’ve been sitting on this cover for a while now. I got the very first proofs from the photo shoot back in July.
Before I had a house.
Before I had a puppy.
Before quite a lot of things, like going on my honeymoon or finishing Tap & Gown.
A photo shoot is only one step on the path to a cover. Though it was a big path (I’ll talk more about that later, possibly on Melissa Walker’s blog). They had to find the right shot, and then they had to do the design, which incorporated not only the picture, but also the magic of Photoshoppery, a scene from the book, and some really cool calligraphy.
And this is the result:
(The title and surrounding calligraphy will be in ice-blue metallic ink.) And here is the flap copy:
Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns…
The sparkly, innocent creatures of lore are a myth. Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. And they can only be killed by virgin descendants of Alexander the Great.
Fortunately, unicorns have been extinct for a hundred and fifty years.
Or not.
Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed at her eccentric mother’s stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend in the woods – thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to prom – Astrid learns that unicorns are real and dangerous, and she has a family legacy to uphold. Her mother packs her off to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries.
However, at the cloisters, all is not what is seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to – perhaps most dangerously of all – her growing attraction to a handsome art student… an attraction that could jeopardize everything.
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I’m so in love!
(Coming soon: the back cover. And the Saga of the Keys)
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