Why my cover made me cry--the GOOD kind of tears!

Seeing your cover for the first time--especially when it's for your first book--is a very emotional experience for an author.

There's a whole lot of hands shaking, butterflies flapping around in your stomach excitement--but also a whole lot of OMG-What-if-I-hate-it?????? panic. (In case you don't know, authors don't get to design their own covers. We get a *little* input--but on the whole, the publisher is the one with all the say).

And sometimes, there's even the happy tears that come when you open the file from your editor and see something as gorgeous as THIS:

There were many reasons why I cried. Like how the characters look so uncannily like how I imagine them that I wondered if the artist somehow crawled inside my head. Or how there's my name--MY NAME--on the cover of MY BOOK. Or the fact that S&S somehow managed to give me something that is so much better (SO much better) than anything I'd ever envisioned on my own (hm... that's probably why authors aren't the ones to design their covers...)

But there was actually a much bigger reason it had such a strong affect.

Not sure how many of you follow my facebook updates, but a few months ago you might have seen when I posted this:

But what you don't know is that a few hours after I posted that my phone beeped with a text message. I'd assumed it was my husband texting me from work. But instead it was Liesa (my editor), and the message said this:

Just saw your FB post about Jason Chan. 
Um... guess who I booked for your cover months ago?? :)

Yeah--after I read it a few dozen times and texted her back asking if she was serious (she assured me she was) and called my husband to tell him the news--I totally sank to the floor of my bedroom and cried like a baby.

Not only am I a huge, HUGE Jason Chan fangirl and never, EVER thought I'd be lucky enough to have him as my cover artist. But... Liesa and I hadn't ever talked covers. We weren't really to that point yet (shoot--we still hadn't even announced my book deal). So to have her pick my favorite artist--and not because I'd requested him (or begged and pleaded and offered my firstborn child in exchange)--but because he was the person she'd thought of too was just... it was so... 

See ... selling you book is actually a pretty terrifying thing when you think about it, because you are taking something that's deeply personal to you to--that you've poured years of your life into--and handing it over to someone else, HOPING they treat it with the same love and care that you do. 

And of course I knew I wanted to work with Liesa from the very first phone call, but still ... I didn't really realize what I'd found until the moment I got that text. 

I'd found the perfect home for my series. 

To have my editor's vision and S&S's vision and my vision so precisely on the same page is truly an amazing thing.

And months later, to see those visions overlap in a cover that is not only perfect for the book but perfect for ME--and 10,000 times better than I ever could have imagined--is just the most incredible gift. 

So when I look at my cover I see more than just amazing composition and gorgeous colors and OMG-OMG-OMG-Jason-Chan-drew-a-scene-from-my-book-OMG!!!! I see proof that my book is in very good hands. And that is a truly remarkable--happy tears inducing--thing. :)