cover!

Final version, or at least final enough that I’m allowed to post it.

A few notes. First of all, this is the kind of cover that will look much better in print than on the screen, because as I found out the hard way, the details depend heavily on your monitor settings. If you can’t see the building in the background, you aren’t really getting it all. (Yes, there’s a building in the background. I promise. I didn’t see it until I tried a different computer.)

Second, there are two details that can’t be conveyed in an image. The title will be printed in silver foil, and the floral pattern winding through will be done in a spot gloss on an otherwise matte cover. Or at least that’s the current plan.

I’m quite pleased with it. Authorial nitpickiness aside (there’s always authorial nitpickiness), it’s a nice, elegant cover, and I like their choice of a pull-quote for the top; that’s a line from a John Dowland song I found just as I was doing revisions back in August. I’ll leave it as a closing note:

“Time stands still with gazing on her face,
stand still and gaze for minutes, houres and yeares, to her giue place:
All other things shall change, but shee remains the same,
till heauens changed haue their course & time hath lost his name.”

0 Responses to “cover!”

  1. moonandserpent

    Holy shit, that’s awesome!

  2. jimhines

    Very nice! I love that partial-gloss effect. And I suspect the final product, with embossing and visible building, will be even more striking. Go you!

  3. ninja_turbo

    It is a rocking cover, and will draw many eyes. I hope the spine design/layout is as compelling. πŸ™‚

  4. mdhenry

    Jeez. Beautiful cover, Marie.

    *turns green*

  5. mdhenry

    Make sure to cross post to fangs, fur and fey. It’s too awesome not to.

  6. d_c_m

    Beautiful!!!!

  7. breathingbooks

    The cover is thoroughly gorgeous. I’d definitely pick it up off the shelf. The blues… and the layering… and the words…

    • Marie Brennan

      Since a cover’s entire purpose in existing is to get you to pick the book up off the shelf, that’s good to hear. πŸ™‚

  8. danielmc

    yow!

    when is it due out again?

    (antici…

    …pation).

  9. sora_blue

    Love it!

    This was at the top of my friends page and all I could think was “wow, that is gorgeous.”

    I’m really excited to see it on the shelvesβ€”face out, of course.

    (You can see it all on a Mac monitor.)

    • Marie Brennan

      Re: Love it!

      It’s nicely eye-catching, without falling too far prey to the “we’re only going to show you part of the person” trend that’s currently so popular in cover art.

  10. mastergode

    Wow, that’s a really nice cover. I love the choice of colors… They seem so rich.

    Now, I’m curious… On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate this cover as far as meeting your expectations?

    • Marie Brennan

      Mmmm . . . I’m not sure I can produce a number like that, since what I had in mind originally was fairly different. Ergo, it didn’t meet my expectations — but I’m still about a 9’s worth of happy with it, I think.

  11. squishymeister

    very very purdy!

    Also, wouldn’t it be fair to say that doing spiffy cover stuff like silver foil means that the powers that be love and have much faith in the book?

    Blue is a great cover color too. I don’t see very much of it out there, but when I do, I really like it.

    Yay book! (now if only I can be the first to find it in a store…)

    • Marie Brennan

      Oh, absolutely. Foil, spot gloss, embossing, cut-outs, step-backs, and other such cover tricks all cost more money to produce, so they’re a sign (albeit a very small one) that the publisher cares enough to invest that extra eight cents a copy or whatever in the book.

      With such little things do authors pet their egos. <g>

  12. wadam

    Gorgeous. Very classy. I can totally see how it will look even better in print; but very nice as it is.

  13. Marie Brennan

    It will be another eight or nine months, alas.

  14. snickelish

    Ooh, ooh! Very pretty. A book I’ll be proud to carry on the bus. πŸ˜‰

  15. gollumgollum

    Oh squee. (:

    And (at least on my monitor) those invisible details pop when i tilt my monitor or look at it from a different angle.

  16. unforth

    That’s AWESOME. I can make out the building faintly, so I guess I’m getting most of the details. πŸ™‚

    And Dowland = coolness, a nice choice for a cover quote. πŸ™‚

    • Marie Brennan

      Hey, you actually know who Dowland is?

      • unforth

        Yeah, we sang a couple of his songs in ‘s madrigal group. We did one at the Renn Faire too. His stuff is awesome, it’s like the original emo, I love it.

        “I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die,
        I die in deadly pain and endless misery.”

        I’m such a sucker for emo music, it doesn’t matter if it’s hundreds of years old. πŸ˜‰

  17. moonartemis76

    I teared up.

    Now how am I supposed to read the book if that keeps happening?

    we are all very excited…

  18. kateelliott

    I think that is a fabulous cover, gorgeous, striking, and elegant.

  19. princess706

    I can see the building and the floral pattern way better ay home than I could on my work laptop earlier yesterday.

    I am so excited for you, for this book, and to read the story I’ve been hearing about for SO long!! πŸ™‚

    Absoultely Fabulous.

  20. calico_reaction

    I can’t see the building on this monitor, so I’ll have to take another look when I get home. But it looks great so far, and I can’t wait!

    Go you!

    • Marie Brennan

      I mention the building mostly because when I got sent a prototype of the cover, my complaint to my editor was that the woman was very shadowy and hard to see. Then I showed the cover to someone else on a different computer, and went oh! There she is! And hey, there’s that floral pattern she was talking about! And a building, too!

      Which is how I remembered I have the brightness on my monitor dialed way down.

      • calico_reaction

        Hey, that’s an idea. I just assumed I couldn’t see it because my monitor at work is crap. πŸ™‚

        *turns up brightness*

        Oooh, shiny! πŸ™‚

  21. kitsunealyc

    Said before, but must say again, this is a gorgeous cover. I’ll ditto what the bus-reader said. I’ll be excited to read the back-cover blurb and interior quotes when you start getting those. Watching the marketing process over your past few books has been so much fun. You’ll have to keep us posted on what they do with the first two.

    • Marie Brennan

      Yeah, I’m looking forward to working on the cover copy and the like.

      I’ll be sure to keep people posted, too, about the reissues of my earlier books.

  22. ombriel

    Wow, that’s really beautiful. Squeee!

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