1. Who designed the cover?
It was a team effort, the best kind. First I had a little conference with my editor, Greg Herren, and then he conveyed what we came up with to the publisher, who goes by the single name Radlyffe. (Like Cher; we publishing folk are colorful.) Radclyffe then Passed the idea on to an amazing artist named Gun Brooke, who lives in Sweden and works from there. (Did I mention, we pub folk have fun names?) She came up with the central computer image, then a designer named Shari Halal turned it into an actual cover and added the awesome pink fonts. What a production! But worth it!
2. Did you have any say in the look of the cover?
Tons of say! Radclyffe asked for my thoughts right out front, then Greg and I conferred and had exactly the same idea—that the inspiration should be the covers of the Rick Riordan Percy Jackson books. In other words, not a photo, but an illustration showing kids in the alternate universe of the book, a place really different from where we actually live. In CURSEBUSTERS!, that’s an ancient Mayan city. And we both also had the same thought about what our image should be: Reeno, the heroine, riding a jaguar up a Mayan pyramid. (An actual scene in the book.)
Gun’s first sketch—sent to me by Rad--didn’t really look like Reeno. It was a girl who might have been Latina (good guess--after all, she was time-traveling in a Mayan country) , and wore a dress. I just couldn’t imagine Reeno in a dress! So I asked for jeans or khakis. Sure, said Radclyffe. She has pink hair, I said, you okay with that? Sure she was. Oh, and the roots were grown out from months in Bad Girl School, but surely that was too small detailed a detail to bother with. Not a bit, said Rad, she can have roots. How about her snake tattoos? Green and red ones? On her upper arms? Done, said Rad.
What we all liked about that first sketch was the jaguar and the sense of action Reeno’s pose conveyed. So Gun kept those and came up with an image that blew me away. But it was more pyramid than girl. Bring Reeno up a bit, said Rad. Et voila! The amazing image you see now. After that, it was tweaking.
Oh, and I got to meet Gun by email! We had a bunch of conferences too. Great, great experience—the best I’ve ever had on a cover.
3. Would you change anything about the cover if you could?
Not a thing. It’s my favorite of the dozens (counting foreign editions) I’ve had!
4. Do you feel that the cover properly depicts the storyline?
I sure do. For one thing, it shows a real scene in the book. But it also has a
haunting quality, a feeling of strangeness and intrigue, like the feeling I imagine
you’d get if you were in a Mayan city in the Ninth Century.
5. Will there be additional stories in the series and if so, will the covers be close to this current one?
Maybe. And if so, definitely! Everyone loves that cover!
