This week, Saga Press unveiled the cover for A Green and Ancient Light! (This is the novel formerly called The Sacred Woods.) The design team have truly outdone themselves, and they were even willing to make some adjustments based on a couple minor requests I made. Great people to work with! Anyway, here’s the cover, followed by a few thoughts from me:
The cover for my new book, due for publication in mid-June 2016 — just in time for Midsummer’s Eve!
I can’t imagine a cover more perfectly suited to this book. The title refers to the light that filters through the leaves of the forest — a place of timeless enchantment. I love the dark corners reflecting ever-present danger — and the arched, ancient doorway that seems both a part of the light and a part of the forest. It plays with our perspective: what is in front, and what is behind? Along with the ghostly figure of the deer, the archway invites the reader into a world of magic and mystery.
From the book jacket:
“As planes darken the sky and cities burn in the ravages of war, a boy is sent away to the safety of an idyllic fishing village far from the front, to stay with the grandmother he does not know. But their tranquility is shattered by the crash of a bullet-riddled enemy plane that brings the war — and someone else — to their doorstep. Grandmother’s mysterious friend, Mr. Girandole, who is far more than he seems, has appeared out of the night to ask Grandmother for help in doing the unthinkable.
“In the forest near Grandmother’s cottage lies a long-abandoned garden of fantastic statues, a grove of monsters, where sunlight sets the leaves aglow and the movement at the corner of your eye may just be fairy magic. Hidden within is a riddle that has lain unsolved for centuries — a riddle that contains the only solution to their impossible problem. To solve it will require courage, sacrifice, and friendship with the most unlikely allies.
“In the spirit of Peter S. Beagle and Patricia McKillip comes a gorgeous, bittersweet fantasy that is both achingly familiar and wondrously strange, a foray into the enchanted realm of the remembered past, when dreams were as real as carved stone, a day might last forever, and a summer could shape a life.”
DayLily says: 
fsdthreshold 
Mrs. Spamman 
Scott 
i am mr brown snowflake