Now that everybody’s had time to send me icons . . . alessandriana, you’re the winner! Many, many thanks, and as you can see, I’m already using it. If you send your mailing address to me (marie {dot} brennan [at] gmail {dot} com), I’ll get the ARC on its way to you.

Of course, those of you who have gotten ARCs have only gotten the story. (And a not-fully-revised version of the story, at that — though at this point I’ve totally lost track of what I changed after they got printed.) You don’t have the lovely, lovely cover, and you don’t have what showed up in my inbox today:

The interior art.

See, back when I was developing this pitch, my agent suggested that I make Isabella an artist. Life drawing was — and still is — an important skill for natural historians. The idea clicked, and then I had a pie-in-the-sky hope: could I convince my publisher to include sketches in the book? Sketches of Isabella’s own work?

Tor agreed, and so not only is Todd Lockwood doing the cover, he’s producing ten rougher, black-and-white drawings that will be scattered throughout the novel. It is perfect. They aren’t all done yet — a few are still in the “preliminary sketch” stage — but the ones I’ve seen are utterly fabulous. And it will add so much to the book, being able to have the artwork in there, supporting the idea that Isabella is drawing everything she sees in Vystrana.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to sneak any previews of that to you guys before the book comes out. But I wanted to let you know that my beautiful, beautiful cover is not the only Lockwood art this book will have; the purtiness continues inside. I can’t wait to see the finished product.