Posts Tagged cover reveal

Cover Reveal: THE TILTERSMITH by Amy Herrick

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Drumroll please…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ViZqQkddCc

I am so excited for this chance to present a cover reveal and preview of Amy Herrick’s upcoming book, The Tiltersmith, which promises supernatural overtones that allude to the works of Susan Cooper and Madeleine L’Engle.

Spring is late coming to Brooklyn, NY, and while climate change might have something to do with the chaotic weather patterns bringing late snow and even a tornado to the city, there may be supernatural elements at work, too. A curious character named the Tiltersmith —Superintendent Tiltersmith, he claims — shows up at the kids’ school, in search of the tools that will bring Spring to life. But the Tiltersmith is trying to collect them himself and use them to keep the Lady of spring underground and in his power. Unbeknownst to Edward, Feenix, Danton, and Brigit, the tools have been entrusted to them, but competing forces are working to lead and mis-lead them. If the quartet can protect and use the tools properly, spring will arrive. But if the Tiltersmith has his way, as the underworld teems with life, our world will be trapped in an eternal winter.

The cover features a tight grouping of four young heroes surrounded by a maelstrom of colors. Lightning bolts strike leaves from the trees, hinting at the story’s chaotic weather themes. The kids are layered in brightly colored outerwear, arms akimbo, with hair and jewelry chains flying as if we’ve caught them in the middle of a dance.

And you’ll see it soon.

But first, an excerpt…

Edward Finds a Cocoon

Edward was dreaming. He was trying to pick something up with a spoon. The thing, which was going to lead him to a brilliant scientific discovery, kept sliding away like a piece of spaghetti. Then, just as he thought he’d finally got it, there was a tremendous kaboooooom! and he woke up.

He found himself in the deep middle of the night. A thunderbolt lit the sky outside his window, and in its brief flash of light, he saw that it was snowing again. Seriously? It was March 21. Enough already with the snow.

He lay there counting. Ten seconds and kaboooooom! This meant, he knew, that the storm was about two miles away. He waited for the next flash of lightning, which came quickly. It tore out of the clouds and shot down behind the houses beyond Ninth Street. Snow swirled madly through the air. This time the kaboooooom! came only five seconds later.

The storm was headed right this way.

Edward forced himself out of bed with his blanket around his shoulders. He stood in front of the window, scanning the sky. He wanted to see another bolt up close.

Perhaps thirty seconds later, the next strike happened, right up the street. This time the lightning appeared to burst out of the ground like an enormous electrified finger. It was met almost simultaneously by a bolt from the sky, followed by an enormous concussive baaadoooooom! The whole house shook, and the windows rattled. Peering into the darkness and the snow, Edward saw a round metal disk go flying through the air. It landed with a great crumpling noise on top of a nearby car. The roof of the car folded upward like a piece of origami paper. The disk then slid off the car and came to a stop balanced against its side.

A manhole cover! That was what it had to be. He’d read all about how these things happened. Between the flammable gases that could build up underground and the old and frayed electrical wiring down there, sometimes all it took was a little spark to cause an explosion and—boooom!—a manhole cover would go flying off.

His theory was confirmed when a long tongue of fire shot up from what he could see was an open hole in the middle of the street. All the streetlamps went out like the candles on a birthday cake as the tongue of flame reached higher and higher and slowly died back. He was surprised at what a short time it took before the fire department and then Con Edison began to arrive.

A few minutes later, Edward’s aunt Kit knocked on the door and came in without waiting for an invitation. She was barefoot and wearing her flannel pajamas. The storm had already begun to move slowly off. She joined him at the window. “Well, did you see it?” she asked.

“Did I see what? Could you be a little more specific?” Her vagueness often drove him crazy.

“The part where the lightning shot up out of the ground.”

“Well, yes, I did. That was pretty cool. But it’s common, you know. There’s a positive electrical charge on the ground, and it shoots upward to meet the negative electrical charge coming from the clouds. Happens all the time.”

“Does it, now? Well, that’s an interesting explanation.” “Isn’t it?” he said and hoped she wasn’t going to give him one of her crazy alternative theories.

She didn’t. Instead, she said, “Well, in any case, the timing is amazing, isn’t it?”

He didn’t like to encourage her, but he couldn’t help asking her what this meant.

“I mean with tomorrow being what it is.” “What’s tomorrow?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Well, you’ll remember in the morning. We’d better get to bed. We’re going to need our sleep.”


Science and supernatural weirdness in a middle-grade novel that starts on a dark and stormy night… If you liked A Wrinkle in Time, this book will hook you for sure.

And now, the big reveal


The Tiltersmith by Amy Herrick

The Tiltersmith releases on April 5, 2022 from Algonquin Young Readers.

About Amy Herrick:

Amy Herrick grew up in Queens, New York, and attended SUNY Binghamton and the University of Iowa. She lives in Brooklyn, where she has raised two sons, taught pre-K and grade school, written books, and kept company with her husband and numerous pets. A retired teacher, she loves traveling, learning Spanish, and above all reducing her carbon footprint.

Cover Reveal for Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories!

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

Hope you’re having a good start to the school year! Today, I’m really excited.

Why, you wonder?

Well, it’s because we have a cover reveal!

For those of you who follow me on social media, and by the way, if you don’t, I’m not sure why not, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, if you do follow me, you may recall that a few months ago I mentioned an anthology of Jewish stories that I helped put together, called Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories. As you might be able to deduce from the title, it’s a collection of Bar and Bat Mitzvah tales geared to a middle grade audience, and is coming out next year from Albert Whitman.

I can honestly say that it’s one of the things that I’m most proud to be associated with since I started writing kidlit. At a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing here and around the world, I feel it’s important to have Jewish stories represented in children’s books, and this anthology helps with that.

So, thanks to Henry Herz for helping me put this together and being a co-editor for this special project, my agent, Nicole Resciniti for helping find it a home, Albert Whitman for believing in it, but even more importantly, a special and heartfelt thanks to the lineup of amazing authors who all jumped aboard when asked.

Care to find out who they are?

Well, don’t fret, I’m going to tell you now!

Besides stories from me and Henry, we have ones from:

Sarah Aronson, Nora Raleigh Baskin, Barbara Bottner, Stacia Deutsch, Debbie Reed Fischer, Debra Green, Alan Katz, Nancy Krulik, Stacie Ramey, Melissa Roske, Laura Shovan, and a poem by Jane Yolen!

Thank you again to all these amazing people, and without further ado, here’s the cover for Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories!

 

Thanks for indulging me with this Mixed-Up Filers, and I can’t wait for you to be able to read it! I’d say to be on the lookout for the book, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll remind all of you at least once or twice before it happens.

So, until next time . . .

Jonathan Rosen

The Counterclockwise Heart: Cover Reveal and Excerpt

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The Counterclockwise Heart Cover Reveal

It’s always a great day when we get to reveal a brand new book cover … artwork means a book is one step closer to reaching readers. Today, we have an extra special treat: an excerpt from THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART, by Brian Farrey, set to publish in February 2022 from Algonquin Books.

But first, the moment we’ve all been waiting for (drum roll) … THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART:

The Counterclockwise Heart

The Counterclockwise Heart Cover Artist

Stunning, isn’t it? The cover artist is Rovina Cai, from Melbourne, Australia, who says, “I love creating haunting, poetic imagery, and believe that one of the most valuable things an illustrator can offer is their unique and personal perspective. I have meticulously crafted my distinctive style to reflect this.” (From her website)

Illustrator The Counterclockwise Heart

Visuals of the Story

MUF had a chance to get Brian’s reaction to his new book cover; here’s what he had to say:

MUF: What do you love about the cover artwork?

Brian: What I love most about the cover artwork is that it’s nothing like I imagined. I love watching illustrators add their own special stamp to how they see the visuals in the story. And that is ALWAYS better than anything I imagined. I also love the sheer scale of the cover and how it captures one of my favorite characters. IT’S GORGEOUS!

MUF: What do you feel you did differently in this book as compared to your other works?

Brian: With The Counterclockwise Heart, I wanted to attempt something epic in just one book–a stand alone–that involved lots of moving pieces, characters in conflict with each other and with themselves, and challenged readers to question their own assumptions and perceptions.

We’re all about books that allow us to question our assumptions and perceptions! Here’s a taste of THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART, which publishes in February 2022.

Excerpt from THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART:

The Boy Who Talked to Stone

It was the coldest winter morning ever on record in the empire of Rheinvelt when the people of Somber End awoke to find the Onyx Maiden in their tiny village.

The night before, they’d gone to bed, fireplaces blazing to ward off the bitter chill, safe in the knowledge that a statue of Rudolf Emmerich stood watch over the village center. Emmerich, Somber End’s long-deceased first burgermeister, was a beloved figure in the town’s history even to that very day.

So you can imagine the distress when dawn broke and the shivering residents scurried across the roundel in the village center on their way to work, only to find chunks of Emmerich’s statue everywhere. A hand here, a kneecap there. Clearly, there would be no repairing the venerated idol, as much of its considerable girth had been ground into dark-gray powder.

Where Rudolf Emmerich had once stood, gazing wistfully over the town he’d helped settle, something far less reassuring now held reign: As tall as a two-story house, a maiden made entirely of rough, dappled onyx loomed over the roundel. Adorned in armor, she appeared to be in the midst of a battle. Her right arm was thrown back, ready to strike with a cat-o’-nine-tails covered in rocky spikes. Her wild hair, blowing in an unseen gale, reached out in all directions, like a demonic compass rose. Most terrifying of all was her face—frozen in a permanent angry scream.

“Who could have done this?” some villagers murmured. The empire’s most contentious neighbors, the mysterious denizens of the Hinterlands, were unlikely culprits. No one had ever seen these creatures (they were, again, mysterious). But the feral howls that rang out from the barren landscape to the west didn’t come from anyone who might deliver an arguably symbolic statue.

“How could it just appear?” others asked. If the statue was the height of a house, it must have weighed twice as much. Moving it would have been tricky at best. Few ventured theories, because the most obvious answer—given the fate of the Emmerich statue—was that the Maiden had simply fallen from the sky.

Still other villagers asked a far wiser question: “Why did this happen?” These were the people who understood that sometimes whos and hows didn’t amount to nearly as much importance as whys.

When the rulers of Rheinvelt, Imperatrix Dagmar and her wife, Empress Sabine, received news of the Maiden’s mysterious appearance, they sent emissaries throughout the land, seeking answers. Master scholars pored over ancient tomes but found nothing. The Hierophants— keepers of the most mystical and arcane knowledge—had recently fled Rheinvelt, it was rumored, afraid to speak the terrible truths they knew. Soothsayers far and wide cast bones and consulted the ether. They all offered the same dire warning: One day, the Maiden would waken and bring a terrible reckoning. Not just to Somber End, but all throughout the empire.

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Thanks for letting us have a peek into your new book, Brian, and for sharing your new cover with MUF readers. Congratulations!

 

Cover Reveal: The Counterclockwise Heart

 

Brian Farrey is the author of The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse, winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award, and the Stonewall honor book With or Without You. He knows more than he probably should about Doctor Who. He lives in Edina, Minnesota, with his husband and their cat, Meowzebub. You can find him online at brianfarreybooks.com and on Twitter: @BrianFarrey.