Cover Stories: Huntress by Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo stopped by to talk about her debut cover for the lovely Ash a while back, and she's here once again because her latest book, Huntress, just hit the shelves in April.

Once again, Malinda has a stirring cover with a great back story. Here she is:

"While I was writing Huntress I truly didn't have any idea what the cover might look like, and I didn't even spend much time thinking about it. I absolutely adore the cover that my publisher created for Ash, and I would never have come up with that as a cover concept — I'm definitely a writer, not a designer! So I was excited to see what they came up with for Huntress.

"The first cover concept I saw was this one (right). I was immediately struck by the meditative quality of the image, which I thought reflected the book pretty well — and the snow! I loved the snow! A little known fact about me is that I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of ice. Most people want to vacation in Hawaii; I desperately want to take a trip to Antarctica. (Yes, I'm strange.)

"Anyway, a good part of Huntress involves the main characters crossing a giant glacier, and I was thrilled that this aspect of the book was reflected on the cover.

"I did have a few suggestions, though, because I felt that the girl on the cover didn't entirely reflect my vision of Kaede, the main character. Of course, I know that book covers are designed to sell books, not to look exactly the way an author sees her characters (and, you know, the girl on the cover of Ash doesn't really look like her, but I think it very nicely fits the mood and feel of the book).

"One of my main concerns in this case was that the girl looked a little too young, because Kaede is 18 in the book, and I wanted to make sure this looked like a YA title..."

Read the rest of Malinda's Cover Story on melissacwalker.com.

PS-If you're lucky you can catch Malinda on the Diversity in YA Tour this month (amazing lineups)!