cover girl, take two

Photo by Terry Byrnes

 

I'm really thrilled to be featured on the cover on the latest issue of the Montreal Review of Books! You can read the full profile and review here. I'm so grateful for the prominent coverage of the book, as well as for the thoughtful review and interesting chat with fellow writer Ami Sands Brodoff. Not all interviews are created equal, and it is always a pleasure to speak with someone who is a careful reader...and who isn't afraid to ask real questions.

My novel has a face! Well, two, actually...

Since it’s now up on both the Anansi website as well as on Amazon,  I think I’m allowed to share it:

The cover for my novel!

I can’t tell you who designed it (because I don’t know), but I think they’ve done a lovely job.  I worried, at first, that it doesn’t look very literary as a title, but it’s what’s inside that will have to carry that weight, anyway. 

I’ve always claimed to prefer covers without faces on them because I feel that they overdetermine things somehow, but these faces – well, these faces are pretty amazing.  They don’t look exactly how I imagined the sisters Beena and Sadhana Singh in the novel, but it’s pretty close, especially their expressions and the complex way they’re looking at each other.  If readers end up picturing them this way, that’s just fine.  And don’t you find that even when there’s a close-up photo or a drawing on the front of the book, characters always take on a life of their own inside your head, anyway?   I know exactly what Sara Crewe, Harry Potter, Esther Summerson, Fanny Price, and Emily Starr really look like…outside of illustrations, film or television adaptations….or I feel like I do!

It’s pretty surreal to see something you’ve invented start to take a physical shape in the world.  And eerie, too, to think of all the hours and hours (and years and years) I’ve spent working on it distilled into a single image that people will see (if I’m lucky) in the 11 seconds it apparently takes to make them decide whether or not to pick it up in the bookstore. 

procrastination, book covers and yellow boots

The draft still looms. Instead of editing, I've been buying shoes. I've been working on freelance stuff. I've cleaned out and washed the inside of my refrigerator. (My main thought after finishing this last task was not the expected satisfaction of gleaming rails and orderly foodstuffs, but rather, what a waste of time.) I've toyed with (and discarded) the idea of entering Canada Writes for creative non-fiction ($6000 prize! A Leighton studio! Deadline: Feb. 1) and, relatedly, have been sidetracked at length into tracing genealogy via the Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics.

Tomorrow is February, which leaves me less than six weeks for an editing blitz. But I'm comforted by the thought that, sooner or later, I have to start. I will start.

Until then, though, in case you're somehow out of the viral video loop, here's a magical little film of a rainbow of books getting up to some nighttime antics at the wonderful Type Books. Apparently it took four full nights to film. And yes, although writers often make a number of comparisons between books and children that I do not necessarily support, I can definitely always pick my book out of a crowd. I was happy to see it in the video!




I can spot it at one hundred paces. The cover is a very particular shade of yellow (I love it).

Hmmm, that also makes me realize why I may have been coveting these boots for years. I finally bought them when they went on (super) sale this week.

Although I think the book goes with everything, I'm not sure the boots will. Suggestions welcome.