Last week's winner of A.S. King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz is... Lauren! Send me your address, L. This week, I have a copy of a gorgeous new book to give away...
A dancer driven to succeed.
A musical prodigy attempting to escape his past.
The summer they share.
And the moment it all goes wrong.
I first saw Caridad Ferrer's cover for When the Stars Go Blue when I was in Spain, so I have extra love for it. I did a quick story about it back then, but here's a fuller version from Caridad (with spine view, which is my new obsession):
"Since the cover was equal parts dance and drum and bugle corps, I was thinking that at the very least the cover might show a dancer, maybe standing outside or preparing to step from a stage to a football field or something to that effect. Maybe looking from backstage onto the expanse of a field with stadium lights. I did honestly think they'd employ the outdoors, especially with the word 'stars' in the title.
"I gave my publisher was the link to an artist whose work I absolutely adore, Fabian Perez. He's an Argentine artist whose work I discovered in a gallery while on vacation in La Jolla, CA. I fell so in love with it, mostly because his pieces so evoked the spirit of Carmen and of dance and passion. 
He has an entire Tango series that's magnificent but it was the piece called Flamenco that I kept coming back to, time and again, and that my husband, dear man that he is, bought me as a celebratory gift for having sold the book (there it is, right). So when editor asked for input, I of course sent her a link to that piece as well as several others of Perez's that I admired (oh, to have scads of disposable income...).
"When I first saw the cover, all I could think was that they'd truly taken their inspiration from my favorite piece, because it is so unbelievably evocative of Flamenco. I made noises that set dogs in Australia to howling. And then proceeded to pet my screen for the next several hours. I was honestly just that overwhelmed. There were three stock photos that were combined to create the cover. It was so beautifully done, it appears seamless.
"I was so thunderstruck by its perfection that it was actually my editor who suggested that my name be bigger on the cover. *g*
"I absolutely adore the cover -- especially once I saw the finished version on my author copies. It's a matte finish, which gives the image as a whole some depth and texture that it lacks as a glossy, I think, and rose petals wrap around to the back and I think, my absolute favorite part is on the spine, there's a rose, dead center that almost appears to glow. It's absolutely gorgeous! (I included I shot I took the day I received my author copies-- yeah, I was being a dork!)"
Thanks, Caridad! I think I've said 100 times how much I adore the elegance of this cover -- and the rose on the spine is the icing on the cake.
What do you guys think? One randomly chosen commenter will win the book next week.