Teens Wanna Know: Extraordinary Stories

Hey, sci-fi/fantasy fans - I have another batch of book recommendations for you! Read my brand-new guest blog at Teens Wanna Know.

Today, I've recommended The Jenna Fox Chronicles by Mary E. Pearson, His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, et al) by Philip Pullman, The Cold Awakening trilogy (aka Skinned trilogy) by Robin Wasserman, The Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty, et al) by Libba Bray, and The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane. These books are packed with magic, mystery, action, and romance.

Which of these series do you like best? Drop by my Extraordinary Stories post at Teens Wanna Know and leave a comment!  

Cover Stories: The Cold Awakening Series

The amazing Robin Wasserman is back to share the story of the cover--and title!--changes for her latest trilogy. Here goes:

"The last time I got to pontificate on this blog, I talked about how much I loved the cover my publisher had come up with (true) and how much we’d struggled to come up with the right title for the book (also true), and then ended with this: 'My editor promised me that after a few weeks of looking at SKINNED on the cover, I wouldn’t be able to imagine the book being titled anything else. She was right.'



"As they say…famous last words.

"Because fast forward three years later, and these books are getting brand new covers. And brand new titles to go with them.

"And I couldn’t be happier.

"Not that I didn’t like the original look for the trilogy, but who doesn’t love a makeover? (You’re talking to a girl who spent all of high school convinced that if she whipped off her glasses and shook out her ponytail in just the right way, she might become homecoming queen.) (Didn’t happen.)

"My editor first contacted me about the repackage about a year and a half ago (which means before the third book in the trilogy even came out!), and as I had the first time around, I jumped at the chance to weigh in:

'I'm so excited about the idea for new covers for these books! I'm the first to admit that I'm visually/artistically challenged, to put it mildly, but since you kindly asked if I had any thoughts on the subject, I took a look around to see what jumped out at me, and actually, I found that everything I gravitated toward had a sort of similar look, so I'm sending them along to you, in case anything sparks your imagination. You'd mentioned you were thinking iconic, which I think is a cool idea -- and I'm wondering what you think about using the *body* as a object, so to speak (ie instead of a chair or an apple or whatever), since that really gets at the heart of the trilogy.

I'm not talking about headless girl parts, so much as something like this - or even this.

In a sort of similar vein.

"We were all agreed that we wanted to move away from the photographic look of the original covers and find some kind of object that would really capture the theme of the trilogy. My editor and designer weren’t sure my idea of using the human body would work, so they suggested we try to find objects the evoked the same feel. I loved the way they were approaching it:

"'We’ve been talking a lot about the ideas of frailty v strength, something beautiful masking something unnatural, rebirth, etc—all with an iconic approach.' ---my awesome editor

"They told me they were going to look around from some stock photos of things that might capture this frailty/strength, natural/artificial divide, like cracked eggshells, frozen flowers, and silhouetted fruit.

"Which I thought was a great idea…but not as great as the idea they sent over a couple weeks later..."

Read the rest of Robin's Cover Story at melissacwalker.com.

Cover Stories: Skinned by Robin Wasserman

Over at my author blog, I interview authors about their book covers on Mondays, and I'll be cross-posting here at readergirlz when I can, so here's this week's story!

I'm so behind on my to-read pile, but I'm aiming to finish at least three books this week, and I have a signed copy of Skinned waiting for me (and then for you, on Win-It Wednesday) soon! I've heard such great things about this book, and I can't wait to dive in. For the meantime, I'll have to be content with the awesome Robin Wasserman's compelling Cover Story. Enjoy!

"I've never pretended to have good taste (or any taste, for that matter) when it comes to the visual arts. Back when I used to work in publishing, the cover designers all loved me, because I was happy for them to do whatever they wanted. (Figuring that it was their job to have better taste than me. They certainly couldn't have had worse.)

"So when it comes time for me to weigh in on covers for my own books, I generally go with a 'silence is golden' policy. But when we were working on SKINNED, I did send along a selection of cool cyborg images that I found online. I thought this might help them find a way to depict the fact that Lia (the main character) is both human and machine. These were my favorites:



"Not that I wanted Lia to look quite this mechanical, but I thought it would be good food for thought! In the end, they decided to go with something a little less...bizarre.

"At their request, I gave them a description of the main character: 'Long blond hair, pale, smooth skin, perfect proportions, a Barbie doll come to life. Preferably blue eyes, though it doesn't matter so much. If possible, the eyes should somehow be (digitally?) made to look a bit off—some kind of machinery whirring at the center of the pupil, or an iris color that's too solid, or slightly too bright. Something to make them look totally inhuman.'

"They found the perfect cover model:



"And once they had their Lia, things moved pretty quickly. Here's what the rough version of the cover looked like:



"And here's the final cover:



"Points if you can figure out the differences. (It took me quite a while. I'm always mystified by the way such tiny changes add up to something big.)

"The major difference, obviously, is the title. We started with Skinjacked, but when it turned out this term was going to play a prominent role in another Simon & Schuster book, we groped around for something else. Anything else. I came up with about a million options (Skinflyer, Skincrash, Skin Deep, etc etc etc -- I have a document on my computer of at least a hundred sub-par options) until finally settling on the simplest one of all. My editor promised me that after a few weeks of looking at SKINNED on the cover, I wouldn't be able to imagine the book being titled anything else.

"She was right."

Wow--I love this story, Robin, and I'm blown away by the process. I also think the title is perfect, and I'm glad the font got bigger so you can see more clearly how it glows on the cover. What do you guys think?