Anonymous asked: What exactly was the process of choosing the book-cover for Mara Dyer? Because it's phenomenal.

I got a few questions about the cover at once, so I figured it would be a good time to answer them all here. Hope you don’t mind, and also? Thank you! I love it too :D

Authors, especially debut authors, get very little say in their covers. Sometimes, our publishers ask us for our ideas. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they ask us for feedback. Sometimes they don’t.

In MARA DYER’s case, I was asked for my ideas and I count myself VERY lucky. I tend to like typography, so I asked for a cool font. And I also thought the cover should be “dark and sexy.” So I told my editor those things, and also we went to a book store to look at covers together, where I pointed out my favorites.

Sometime later, I got an email with the jpeg of the MARA DYER cover:

And I think S&S nailed it.

Lucy Ruth Cummins, my cover designer, had seen the work of the photographer, Heather Landis, and thought it would be just right for the cover. The effects that are used for the hardcover (pearlized soft-touch and silver debossing for the text) enhance the image and give it such depth. The online picture doesn’t do it justice. 

Also, it’s soft, and thus good for petting. As one does.

I don’t know how Lucy decided on the title/chapter font (Tourette Normal and Tourette Extreme) but I’m going to chalk it up to talent. She has an incredible eye.