There’s a strange alchemy to a great book cover. In a single image, you have to grab attention, communicate genre, spark curiosity, and convey just enough of the mood to make someone think, I need to know what’s inside.
There’s an old piece of writing advice that gets passed around like a family heirloom: “Kill your darlings.” It’s the idea that sometimes you have to cut even the parts of your book you love the most for the greater good of the story.
There’s something almost unnerving about watching fireworks light up the night sky while you’re inside, writing about something that, without giving too much away, also involves a sky being lit up for reasons far more unsettling.
I assumed this moment would come. It’s my first book and I’ve already hit the proverbial fork in the road. It’s not about plot holes or pacing issues. It’s about choice: one that will change the story in ways I can’t undo. And it’s not a choice between “good” and “bad” but between two equally compelling truths: one my heart wants and the one my head knows I have to follow.
Every writer has a story about the moment their first book took hold: that second when an idea stops being “interesting” and starts refusing to leave you alone.