Mel's Shopping Diary
First Chap Goin’ Out Tomorrow, Question Answered, Other Books You Might Like!
June 18, 2009A couple of admin things!
We will be sending out the first chapter of THE VAN ALEN LEGACY tomorrow (Friday, June 19)! Yeah! Sign up to the mailing list here.
If you don’t make the mailing list on Friday, email me at melissa (at) melissa (dash) delacruz (dot) com. (Spammers I hate you! This is why I have to spell out my email address. Every Friday until September 1st, we will send out the First Chapter to anyone who wants it.
Also, if you have emailed me in the last six months, you will be receiving a copy of the May 2009 newsletter. I’m sorry I cannot personally respond anymore. But I sometimes do on TWITTER. So follow me and I might surprise you!
Today’s question comes from Mariles: “Do you choose the covers of your books? How involved are you in the covers?”
The answer is VERY. I have cover approval on my books, and I work with my editors and the art director to figure out the best cover. For Blue Bloods, we all agreed we would have to have a lovely girl’s neck with vampire bites. The first version of it had a painting of a girl’s neck with the bites. There was something generic about it, and we agreed we would have to change it. Luckily, my editor Jen Besser, has a LOVELY neck, so our art director shot her and that is Jen’s neck on the cover! Doesn’t she have a gorgeous jaw line? We also very much wanted the pearls. One of the big book buyers did not like the pearls but we stuck with it. For Masquerade, I said we had to have a Venetian mask, and Elizabeth Clark, our genius art director, happened to have one from Venice! (The Masquerade mask is now in my office, framed.) I said we had to make sure you could see how blue her eyes were so everyone could see it was Schuyler. For Revelations, the whole idea of the girl’s back with Lucifer’s mark came from me as well, Beth worked on the star for a long time until we got it right. (Too pentagram-y, too plain, too small, too big, etc.) I was in fact TOO involved when I think about it, because now that I think about it, the size of the star which I thought was too big on one of the later drafts, was that size so that readers could see it from across the bookstore, according to the sales team who really liked the big star. But for some reason I really wanted that star SMALL. I think they were right on that and not me. For Van Alen Legacy, we hired a model for the shoot and I had approval over that and I said she had to have a veil covering her face, something mysterious. And let’s hide the hair color but have the eyes very green. (Green eyes is a big hint no?). It’s my FAVORITE of all the covers---there’s something so beautiful about it, with those juicy red lips and the veil. For GIRL STAYS IN THE PICTURE I was very involved as well, I picked out the models and looked over the clothing choices and the background shots. I feel really lucky I get to have a say in my covers.
Thanks for your questions! Email them to melissadlcoffice (at) gmail (dot) com. Subject line: BOOK QUESTION WEDNESDAY
Let’s talk about other books now! Have you read any of Elizabeth Scott’s books? My favorite is PERFECT YOU. But they are all awesome. Her new book LOVE YOU, HATE YOU, MISS YOU is out now and I cannot wait to get my little hands on it. (Amazon shipping: Hurry up!) I also cannot wait to read Kate Christensen’s TROUBLE(S?) and GIGI LEVANGIE GRAZER’S Queen Takes King and apparently since I like cooking memoirs I should read Suzanne Pirret and Adrienne Kane. (Ordered!) One of my best friends has a book coming out in the fall: SECRET SOCIETY by Tom Dolby is a ripping read and kept me up WAY late. And I just finished THE STRAIN by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Good stuff! I love a scary vampire read. I devoured CATCHING FIRE after the nice folks at Blue Willow (Hi Cathy!! And Valerie!! And Becky!!) gave me their ARC since I was unable to get one at BEA. Good stuff!! Can’t wait for the third book which is taking TOO LONG but as usual, so do mine, so you know… 
And I am still reading I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE CAKE. I was told it would be a cooking memoir. Joking! I am enjoying it a lot even though there is not a lot of cooking in it.
Happy Thursday!
xoxo
Mel