Cover Stories: Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten

Lynn Weingarten shared her Cover Story on my blog when Wherever Nina Lies came out earlier this year, and now she shares it with readergirlz. Yay!

"One day I needed a writing break but wanted to feel like I was being productive, so I decided to browse through some stock photo websites to look for some cover ideas, just for fun. I found a few photos I thought were cool and I sent them along to my editor. This was the one my editor liked the best:



"I love the pose and the girl's crazy-looking eyeballs. She reminds me a little bit of the princess in The Neverending Story.

"My editor passed it on to her art department, and they liked it too. At that point my book didn't yet have a title, so for about ten minutes I was thinking we could call the book Hush to match the picture. (A quick search on Amazon, however, revealed that Hush is already of a whole bunch of other stuff including another book, a Gwyneth Paltrow movie and a series of Batman comics).

"Eventually we settled on the title Wherever Nina Lies and the Scholastic art department made this cover mock-up:



"I loved it! But in the end we all agreed that the girl looked sort of like a very pretty alien and that her alien-esque-ness made it seem like the book is sci-fi (which it isn't). Scholastic hired a model and did a photo shoot. And then made a few tweaks here and there. They were very open to hearing my thoughts about stuff, but really, I didn't have a ton to say. I loved the cover. And here is the final:



"I love it. I love the colorful letters in the title and the map at the bottom. I think the model looks great. It's funny to me that even though she is right there on the cover, I have no idea what her name is, or how old she is or anything. I mean, I guess that's not really unusual at all, but still... it strikes me as odd. I wonder if any of her friends or relatives called her up after the book came out and were like, 'I saw you on a book cover today, YOU HAVE WORDS ALL OVER YOUR FACE!'"

Hear that, cover model? Get in touch with Lynn here. I loved this book, and I think the cover is really compelling too. You guys?