It’s that time of year again

My next novel for MTV Books, Forget You, is coming out in July, and things are starting to move. I’ve already written the description for the back cover:

Zoey’s life in her Florida beach resort town is happy and organized. She’s the captain of her high school swim team, and she works for her dad at his popular water park. Then her dad has an affair with one of his employees, and her mother has a breakdown. But Zoey begins a committed relationship with a hot lifeguard, which makes her feel stable, even if things aren’t perfect at home. Everything is still under control.

Until she has a car accident that she can’t remember. She should have been with her boyfriend that night, but he doesn’t seem to know anything about the accident—and he doesn’t seem to care. The person who does care, and knows more than he’s telling, is Doug, Zoey’s darkly handsome arch-enemy who saved her from the wreckage. As Zoey begins to piece together what happened that night, she finds her sense of control over her life was only an illusion. And she inches closer to discovering the darkest secret of all: why Doug has fallen in love with her.

The folks in editorial usually have a different idea about what makes a good description, though. If my description actually appears on the back cover, that will be the first time!

I’ve also had a conversation with my editor about ideas for the cover. I told her I honestly can’t imagine a cover more beautiful than the cover of Going Too Far. Doug and Zoey look very different from Meg and John in Going Too Far, but I would be happy with a similar cover.

This can backfire. I spent three and half years as the contest coordinator for the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, and I can’t tell you how many times an author sent me copies of the wrong book because all her books looked so much alike! In the bookstore, I’m afraid this may translate as a reader picking up Forget You and thinking, “Oh, I already have this one,” and putting it back.

There’s one change I know I want to make. Take a look at my critique partner’s first book



and her sixth book, coming out in January.



Is that her name on the cover, or is she just happy to see me? As authors get bigger, their names on their covers get bigger, because readers start buying their books on the basis of their famous names alone. Now check out my name on my first book. (Hint: use a magnifying glass.)




Forget You will be my sixth book, and I’m thinking something like this will be in order:



No?

Well, all RIGHT. But by my seventh book, I will be so big, my name won’t even fit on the cover.



Next stop: revisions. I can’t wait!