In all of the craziness last week, I received a cover for The Appeal of Evil. I can't share it with you yet, my book team and I are planning a huge reveal, but know that it is really awesome. It's exactly what I envisioned for the book.
My entire team likes it too. The one person I showed it to outside of the team, my husband, who also happens to be one of my beta readers, says it makes the book look like a Romance novel. Actually, I believe his exact words were, "I didn't know you wrote that kind of book. I thought it was YA. Parents aren't going to let their teens buy that. I wouldn't."
I'm not exactly sure where this line of thinking came from, but his overreaction was kind of irritating. Then, it was encouraging. If he had such a strong reaction to it, maybe other people would too, but in a positive way. When he was beta reading the story for me, he couldn't make it through the manuscript. If he had, he would realize that the cover is incredibly fitting. (Just so you know, he thought the main female character was incredibly whiny and she drove him nuts. It didn't bother me, though. It makes me happy that my husband couldn't relate to the trials and tribulations of a teenage girl. The book has a specific target audience, and I think he proved that!)
And honestly, there is some romance in the story, just not the Harlequin kind. The cover is supposed to be intriguing and draw you in. And I really think it does that. It's not puppies and kittens for sure, but neither is the story. It's about finding love in all the wrong places. It's about the loss of innocence and finding out how cruel the real world can be. It's about attraction.
I'm intentionally making this post a tease. I hope you are squirming in your seat and yelling at the computer screen for me to just show you the cover. In time, dear friends. In time. It will be worth the wait!
